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THE    LIFE 


OF 


JOHN     MILTON: 

NARRATED  IN  CONNEXION  WITH 
THE  POLITICAL,  ECCLESIASTICAL,  AXD  LITERARY 

HISTOEY  OF  HIS  TIME. 


BY 

DAVID  MASSON,  M.A.,  LL.D., 

I'llOFESSOR   OF    RHETOHIC   AND    ENGLISH   LITERATURE 
IN    THE   UNIVERSITY    OF   EDINBURGH. 


VOL.  VI. 

1660  —  1674. 


bonbon  : 
M  A  C  M  I L  L  A  N      VXD     C  O. 

18SO. 
\_Tla  Right  of  Translation   <V  reserved.] 


7% 

A/5. 


PREFACE  TO  VOLUME  VI. 

It  is  naturally  with  some  satisfaction  that  I  complete 
at  last  a  work  begun  so  long-  ago.  It  is  a  satisfaction  also, 
to  myself  at  least,  to  have  been  able  to  persevere  to  the  very 
end  in  the  original  plan,  omitting  nothing,  slurring  nothing, 
that  the  plan  required.  In  the  present  volume,  for  example, 
I  have  done  my  best  towards  the  conjunction  of  a  sufficient 
History  of  the  Restoration  and  its  Consequences  with  the 
concluding  Fourteen  Years  of  Milton's  Biography. 

It  is  unnecessary,  I  hope,  to  repeat  my  assurance  that  the 
historical  portions  of  the  six  volumes,  even  those  that  are 
must  summary  in  appearance,  are  no  mere  compilations  from 
any  existing  history,  or  from  all  existing  histories  together, 
but  are  the  results  of  original  and  independent  survey  and 
inquiry,  according  to  gradually  formed  notions  of  what 
English  History  ought  to  be  and  to  include,  with  very 
deep  digging,  and  much  use  of  the  pickaxe,  in  many  tracts 
and  spots  of  previously  neglected  ground.  What  may  be 
more  necessary  is  the  repetition  of  an  acknowledgment  made, 
more  than  eig-ht  years  ago,  in  the  Preface  to  Volume  II. 
"  I  never  can  pass  a  sheet  of  the  historical  kind  for  the 
press,"  I  then  wrote,  "  without  a  dread  lest,  from  inadvertence 
or  from  sheer  ignorance,  some  error,  some  blunder  even,  may 
have  escaped  me."  No  sincere  historical  inquirer  but  will 
understand  this  confession  and  sympathise  with  it ;  but 
I  would  repeat  it  now  expressly  with  reference  to  the  entire 
work.  The  errors  of  fact  that  have  yet  been  pointed  out 
in  the  previous  volumes  are  few  and  slight ;  but  I  am  awarev 
of  some    that   have    not    been    pointed    out.      The   gradual 

1838743 


IV  PREFACE. 

execution  of  the  work  and  the  publication  of  it  in  successive 
instalments  have  occasioned  also  some  flaws  of  mechanical 
form,  which  revision  might  amend.  As  it  stands,  I  can  but 
offer  it  as,  on  the  whole,  a  faithful  fulfilment  of  a  large 
design,  and  trust  that  it  may  not  be  without  its  uses  in 
its  professed  character,  as  combining  a  more  thorough  and 
minute  Life  of  Milton  than  had  before  been  attempted 
with  a  new  Political,  Ecclesiastical,  and  Literary  History  of 
Milton's  whole  Time. 

Though  the  dimensions  of  the  book  are  somewhat  unusual 
they  are  even  moderate  for  such  a  combination  of  the 
Biography  of  Milton  with  a  History  of  England,  and  of  the 
connexions  of  England  with  Scotland  and  Ireland,  and  with 
foreign  countries,  through  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Common- 
wealth, the  Protectorates  of  Oliver  and  Richard,  the  Anarchy, 
and  the  first  fourteen  years  of  the  Restoration.  A  copious 
Index  is  needed  and  is  in  preparation  ;  and  meanwhile  there 
may  be  some  convenience  in  the  Tables  of  Contents  prefixed 
to  the  several  volumes  and  in  the  studied  fulness  of  those  for 
Volumes  IV,  V,  and  VI. 

Edinburgh  :  December,  1879. 


CONTENTS. 

BOOK  I. 

MAY  16G0—  MAY  1661. 
HISTORY: — The  Year  of  the  Restoration. 
BIOGRAPHY : — Milton  through  the  Year  of  the  Restoration. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  Charles  II.  and  his  Retinue  at  the  Hague  :  Deputations  to  him 
from  London  :  Procession  from  the  Hague  :  Embarkation  for 
England  :  The  Voyage  Home  :  The  landing  at  Dover  and 
meeting  with  Monk  :  Halt  at  Canterbury  :  Royal  Progress 
from  Rochester  and  Triumphal  Entry  into  London,  May  29, 
1660:  Rejoicings  in  the  Three  Kingdoms,  and  Poetical  Con- 
gratulations :  The  Privy  Council  and  Ministry  of  the  Restored 
Monarch,  with  Monk  as  Duke  of  Albemarle  and  Montague  as 
Earl  of  Sandwich  :  The  Junto  or  Cabinet :  Lord  Chancellor 
Hyde  and  his  Premiership  :  Composition  of  the  two  Houses  of 
the  Convention  Parliament. — Question  of  Pardon  or  Revenge  : 
Charles's  Indemnity  Declaration  from  Breda,  and  the  Indemnity 
Bill  in  the  Convention  Parliament :  Proceedings  of  the  Com- 
mons with  the  Bill  before  the  arrival  of  Charles  (May  9-29)  : 
Order  for  the  Arrest  of  all  the  Regicide  Judges  living,  and 
Resolutions  for  the  Cajjital  Exception  of  Seven  of  them  and  the 
Attainder  of  Four  of  the  dead  Regicides. — Progress  of  the  Bill 
in  the  Commons  after  the  arrival  of  Charles  :  Naming  of  the 
Seven  living  Regicide  Judges  to  be  excepted  Capitally,  and  of 
five  additional  persons  to  be  similarly'  excepted  for  their  con- 
nexion with  the  Regicide :  Quest  of  the  two  masked  Execu- 
tioners of  Charles  I,  and  Order  for  the  Arrest  of  Hugh  Peters 
Royal  Proclamation  for  the  Surrender  of  the  Absconding 
Regicides  :  Resolution  of  the  Commons  for  the  Punishment  of 
Twenty  Persons  for  General  Political  Delinquencj- :  Additions 
to  the  list  of  excepted  Regicides,  and  Nomination  of  the 
Twenty  General  Political  Delinquents  :  William  Hc-wlet  and 
Hugh  Peters  capitallyr  excepted  as  special  Supernumeraries  : 
Final  Modifications  of  the  Bill  in  the  Commons,  and  Extension 
of  the  list  of  Capital  Exceptions  by  the  addition  of  Eleven  of 
the  Regicides  still  fugitive. — The  Bill  in  the  Lords  :  Deter- 
mination of  the  Lords  to  except  all  the  Regicides  capitally, 
and  to  make  capital  exceptions  also  of  Vane,  Hasilrig,  and 
Lambert  :  Debates  and  Conferences  :  Hyde's  devices  for 
Agreement :  Analysis  of  the  Bill  as  it  passed  the  two  Houses 


VI  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

and  received  the  King's  Assent,  Aug.  29. — The  Church  Ques- 
tion :  Charles's  Declaration  from  Breda  of  Liberty  for  Tender 
Consciences  :  Restoration  of  Episcopacy  and  Liturgy  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  but  Possibility  still  of  a  Limited  Episcopacy 
and  Comprehension  of  the  Presbyterians  :  Reference  of  the 
whole  matter  to  the  King:  Rapid  Return  of  the  ejected 
Anglican  Clergy  to  their  livings  :  Negotiations  with  the  lead- 
ing Presbyterians  :  No  Result. — Arrangements  for  the  Royal 
Revtnue  and  for  the  Disbandment  of  the  Army  of  the  Common- 
wealth :  Hyde's  great  Speech  on  the  Disbandment  and  the 
Indemnity  Bill:  Adjournment  of  the  Parliament  for  eight 
weeks  :  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester. — Affairs  through 
the  Recess  (Sept.  13 — Nov.  6) :  The  Royal  Family  and  the 
Court :  Touching  for  the  King's  Evil :  Quiet  Disbandment  of 
the  Army  :  Trials  of  the  Regicides :  Executions  of  Harrison, 
Carew,  Cook,  Hugh  Peters,  Scott,  Clement*,  Scroope,  Jones, 
Axtell,  and  Hacker :  The  Unhanged  Regicides  and  others  in 
Prison:  King's  Declaration  concerning  Ecclesiastical  Affairs: 
Renewed  hopes  of  Baxter  and  the  Presbyterians  :  Settlement 
of  the  English  Episcopate  in  Nov.  1660  :  Story  of  Ann  Hyde 
and  her  Secret  Marriage  with  the  Duke  of  York  :  the  Queen- 
Mother  and  the  Princess  of  Orange  in  England. — Reassembling 
of  the  Parliament :  Collapse  of  the  King's  Ecclesiastical  Decla- 
ration and  of  the  Hopes  of  a  Comprehension :  Bill  of  Attainder 
on  the  Regicides  :  Vote  for  disinterring  and  gibbeting  the 
bodies  of  Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  Ireton,  and  Pride  :  Revenue 
Settlement :  Dissolution  of  the  Convention  Parliament,  Dec.  29 : 
Death  of  the  Princess  of  Orange,  Acknowledgment  of  Ann 
Hyde's  Marriage,  and  Departure  of  the  Queen-Mother. — 
Insurrection  of  Venner  and  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men:  Effects 
of  the  Event :  Severities  against  Sectaries  and  their  Con- 
venticles :  The  Baptists  and  the  Quakers :  Anniversary  of 
King  Charles  the  Martyr,  Jan.  30,  1660-61 :  Gibbeting  of  the 
bodies  of  Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  and  Ireton  at  Tyburn,  and 
exposure  of  their  skulls  on  Westminster  Hall. — State  of  Ireland 
at  the  Restoration  :  Irish  Questions  and  Difficulties  :  Settle- 
ment of  the  Irish  Episcopate. — Scotland  severed  from  England : 
Scottish  Privy  Council  and  Ministry  in  London  :  Appearance 
of  the  Marquis  of  Argyle  in  London  :  His  Arrest :  Apprehen- 
sion of  Swinton  of  Swinton,  and  orders  for  the  apprehension  of 
Johnstone  of  Warriston  and  others  :  Revived  Committee  of 
Estates  in  Edinburgh :  Arrests  of  James  Guthrie,  Patrick 
Gillespie,  and  others  of  the  Protesters  of  1650-51 :  Escape  of 
Johnstone  of  Warriston  :  Hopes  among  the  Eesolutioner  Clergy 
of  the  preservation  of  some  kind  of  Presbytery  in  Scotland  : 
Equivocations  from  London  on  that  Subject  :  Lauderdale  and 
Middleton :  Loss  of  the  Scottish  Records :  Middleton  in 
Scotland  as  the  King's  High  Commissioner:  Meeting  of  a 
Scottish  Parliament :  Middleton  and  his  Colleagues  in  Edin- 
burgh :  Acts  of  the  Parliament  and  Drift  towards  Episcopacy : 
Trials  of  Argyle,  Guthrie,  Gillespie,  Swinton,  and  others. — 
Preparations  for  the  Coronation  of  Charles  II  in  Westminster  : 
New  Peerages  and  Knighthoods  :  Hyde  made  Earl  of  Claren- 
don :  The  Coronation  Ceremony  in  Westminster  Abbey  and 
the  Coronation  Banquet  in  Westminster  Hall,  April  23,  1661 : 
Meeting  of  a  new  English  Parliament,  May  8,  with  Bishops  in 
the  House  of  Lords :  Cavalier  Composition  of  the  Parliament : 
Abortive  Issue  of  the  Savoy  Conferences :  Burning  of  the 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant   throughout   England. — First 


CONTENTS.  vh 

CHAP.  PA.GK 

Anniversary  of  the  Restoration,  May  29,  1661  :  Renewed 
Rejoicings  in  the  three  Capitals  :  Executions  of  Argyle, 
Guthrie,  and  G-ovan  in  Edinburgh  :   Kind's  intended  marriage. 

II.  Milton  in  .Abscondence  :  The  House  in  Bartholomew  Close  :  His 
Extreme  Danger  at  the  Restoration  :  Review  of  his  Antece- 
dents as  they  might  bear  on  his  chances  with  the  new  Powers  : 
Milton's  fate  bound  up  with  the  progress  of  the  Indemnity 
Bill  through  the  two  Houses  of  the  Convention  Parliament  : 
Two  possible  forms  of  the  question  regarding  him,  viz. 
(1)  whether  he  should  be  excepted  in  the  Category  of  the 
Regicides,  (2)  whether  he  should  be  excepted  among  the 
General  Political  Delinquents  :  Fatal  possibility  of  the  first 
arrangement :  Special  importance  of  his  Tenure  of  Kin;/*  and 
Magistrates  in  that  connexion  :  Milton,  by  that  Pamphlet, 
legally  an  accessory  to  the  Regicide  before  the  Fact :  First 
naming  of  Milton  in  the  Commons  in  the  course  of  the  In- 
demnity Bill  :  Named  in  the  process  of  Selecting  the  Twenty 
General  Delinquents  to  be  excepted  noncapitally  ;  Not 
selected  among  the  Twenty  after  all,  but  conjoined  with  John 
Goodwin  for  special  prosecution  :  Order  of  the  Commons, 
June  16,  1660,  for  his  Arrest  and  Indictment  on  account  of 
his  Eiko7ioliaste$  and  Pro  Popalo  Anglicano  Defensio,  with 
petition  to  the  King  respecting  those  Pamphlets  and  Goodwin's 
Obstructors  of  Justice :  Subsequent  vote  of  the  Commons  in- 
cluding Goodwin  among  the  Twenty,  and  leaving  Milton  to 
be  prosecuted  by  himself:  Risk  then  that  he  might  have 
been  coupled  with  Hugh  Peters :  Milton  still  in  abscondence 
when  the  Indemnity  Bill  went  up  to  the  Lords  :  No  disturb- 
ance by  the  Lords  of  the  arrangement  in  his  case  made  by 
the  Commons :  Royal  Proclamation  of  August  13  against 
Milton's  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio  and  Eilionollastes  and 
Goodwin's  Obstructors  of  Justice  :  The  Indemnity  Bill  passed, 
Aug.  29,  without  mention  of  Milton  in  any  way  whatever 
among  the  Exceptions  :  Milton  legally  safe  from  that  moment. 
— Milton's  escape  at  the  Restoration  a  Historical  Puzzle  :  Tra- 
ditions on  the  subject  and  examination  of  them  :  Concern  of 
Davenant,  Marvell,  and  others  in  the  matter :  A  Combination 
of  more  powerful  influences  and  Dexterous  Parliamentary 
management  of  Milton's  Case  the  only  sufficient  Solution. — 
Milton  in  Custody  for  some  time  :  Burnings  of  his  and  Good- 
win's condemned  Books  by  the  Hangman  :  Apparently  still  in 
Custody  during  the  Trials  and  Executions  of  the  Regicides : 
Order  of  the  Commons  for  his  release,  Dec.  15,  1660  :  His 
Dispute  with  the  Sergeant-at-Arms  as  to  his  prison-fees  :  Order 
of  the  Commons  in  that  matter :  Last  mention  of  Milton  in 
the  Commons. — Milton  a  free  man  from  December  1660  :  His 
temporary  residence  in  Holborn,  near  Red  Lion  Fields  :  Various 
fates  of  his  old  friends  and  acquaintances :  Marchamont 
Needham  back  in  England  :  Royalist  Denunciation  of  Need- 
ham,  called  A  Rope  for  Pol.:  Journalists  in  succession  to 
Needham  :  Publication  in  London  of  the  Posthumous  Answer 
of  Salmasius  to  Milton,  entitled  Ad  Johannem  Miltonum 
Responsio  :  Account  of  that  Book,  with  a  Translated  Specimen  : 
Milton  necessarily  precluded  from  reply  :  Morus,  Du  Moulin, 
and  other  old  Antagonists  of  Milton  :  His  Condition  in  his 
Holborn  obscurity  in  the  beginning  of  1661  :  Hardly  safe  from 
mobbing  or  assassination  :  His  thoughts  on  public  affairs  and 
the  Clarendon  Policy  in  Church  and  State L62 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

BOOK  II. 

MAY  1661— AUGUST  1667- 

HISTORY :— -I.  The  Clarendon  Administration  continued. 

II.   Davenant's  Revived    Laureateship,    and   the   First    Seven 
Years  of  the  Literature  of  the  Restoration. 

BIOGRAPHY :— Milton's  Life  from  1661  to  1667:  with  Paradise  Lost. 

CHAP.  PAGB 

X.  Programme  of  the  first  Six  Sessions  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament : 
Clarendon's  continued  Premiership  and  settled  Policy  :  Acts 
of  July  1661  :  Acts  of  May  1662,  including  the  Corporations 
Act,  Act  against  Quakers,  The  Act  of  Uniformity,  a  Militia 
Act,  and  a  new  Press  Act :  Unsatiated  Revengefulness  of 
the  Royalists  :  Case  of  John  James  :  Ignominious  Exhi- 
bition of  three  of  the  imprisoned  Regicides  :  Capture  and 
Execution  of  Barkstead,  Corbet,  and  Okey :  Arrival  of 
the  Portuguese  Infanta  :  Her  Marriage  with  Charles  :  The 
new  Queen  and  Lady  Castlemaine  :  Trials  of  Vane  and  Lam- 
bert, and  Execution  of  Vane  :  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  Aug.  24, 
1662 :  Ejection  and  Silencing  of  over  Two  Thousand  Non- 
conformist Ministers :  Importance  of  that  Event  in  English 
History :  Responsibility  of  Clarendon  for  it  :  Ministerial 
Changes  in  1662  :  Crypto-Catholicism  of  Charles  and  the  Court : 
Mission  of  Bellings  to  Rome :  King's  Inclinations  in  favour  of 
the  Nonconformists  :  His  Toleration  Edict  of  December  1662  : 
Perplexity  of  Clarendon  :  Second  Session  of  the  Parliament, 
February — July,  1663  :  King's  designs  of  Toleration  quashed 
and  Clarendon's  Policy  confirmed  :  Abortive  attack  on  Clar- 
endon by  Bristol  :  Marriage  of  the  young  Duke  of  Monmouth  : 
Growing  dislike  of  Clarendon  at  Court :  The  Conventicles  Act, 
and  other  Proceedings  of  the  Third  Session  of  the  Parliament. 
March — May,  1664  :  Clarendon's  new  Mansion  in  Piccadilly  : 
Fourth  Session  of  the  Parliament,  Nov.  1664— March  1664-5  : 
Foreign  Policy  since  the  Restoration  :  Sale  of  Dunkirk  :  War 
with  the  Dutch :  Battle  off  Lowestoft,  June  3,  1665  :  The 
Duke  of  York  and  the  Earl  of  Sandwich  :  The  Great  Plague 
in  London  :  Its  Progress  and  Ravages  :  The  Fifth  or  Oxford 
Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  Oct.  1665,  with  the  passing 
of  the  Five  Miles  Act :  Gradual  Abatement  of  the  Plague  : 
Continued  War  with  the  Dutch :  Battles  of  Albemarle  and 
Prince  Rupert  against  Ruyter  and  De  Witt :  The  Great  Fire 
of  London,  Sept.  1666 :  Outcries  against  the  Court :  Sixth 
Session  of  the  Parliament,  Sept.  1666 — Feb.  1666-7 :  Apparent 
Security  of  Clarendon  :  Intrigues  against  him,  and  more 
Ministerial  Changes :  Exhaustion  of  Finances,  and  Mutiny 
among  the  Seamen  :  Negotiations  for  a  Peace  with  the  Dutch  : 
The  Dutch  Fleet  in  the  Thames,  June  1667:  Panic  among  the 
Londoners  :  Dutch  Revenges  in  the  Thames  and  Medway : 
Popular  rage  and  Recollections  of  Oliver :  Mobbing  of  Clar- 
endon's Piccadilly  Mansion  :  Extraordinary  Call  of  Parliament, 
July  25,  1667:  Peace  with  the  Dutch  announced  and  Par- 
liament dismissed  :  Fall  of  Clarendon,  Aug.  1667  :  His  Disgrace 
and  Exile 221 


CONTENTS.  IX 

CHAP.  PAGI 

II.  Resumption  of  the  Laureateship  by  Sir  William  Davenant :  His 
Antecedents  :  His  Gondibert,  and  his  Plays  and  other  Poems. 
— The  Septuagenarian  Thomas  Hobbes  :  His  Life  and  Writings 
before  the  Restoration :  General  Account  of  his  Philosophy  : 
Hobbes  personally  and  socially :  Prevalence  of  Hobbism  at  the 
Restoration  and  forms  of  antagonism  to  it. — The  Septuagena- 
rians Sanderson  and  Wither — The  Sexagenarians  of  Davenant's 
Restored  Laureateship,  viz.  Hernck,  King.  Hacket,  John 
Goodwin,  Bramhall,  Izaak  Walton.  Shirley,  Howell,  Prynne, 
Dr.  Brian  Walton,  0«ilby,  Heylin,  Calamy,  and  Thomas 
Goodwin. — Davenant's  Coetaneans,  viz.  Earle,  Lightfoot,  Sir 
Kenelm  Di«by,  Thomas  Fuller,  Jasper  Mayne,  Pocock, 
Edmund  Waller,  Browne  of  Norwich,  DugHale,  Whitlocke, 
Rushworth,  Hyde,  Fanshawe,  Cockayne,  Feltham,  and  Which- 
cote :  more  particular  notice  of  Waller  and  his  Poetry. — 
Davenant's  immediate  Juniors,  viz.  Harrington,  Thomas 
Killigrew,  Samuel  Butler.  Jeremy  Taj  lor,  Leighton,  Pearson, 
Dr.  Henry  More,  Wilkins,  Baxter,  Denham,  Birkenhead, 
L'Estrange,  Owen,  Wallis,  Cudworth,  Algernon  Sidney, 
Worthington,  Cowley,  Chamberlayne,  Needham,  Neville,  and 
Evelyn  :  Antecedents  of  Butler :  Account  of  Dr.  Henry  More 
and  the  Cambridge  Platonists :  Denham  and  his  Poetry : 
Cowley  and  his  Poetry:  Peculiar  Reputation  and  Position  of 
Cowley  at  the  Restoration. — Flecknoe,  Carlell,  Sir  Samuel 
Tuke,  and  Sir  Robert  Stapylton. — Younger  Effectives  and 
Latest  Recruits  of  Davenant's  Laureateship,  viz.  Andrew 
Marvell,  Henry  Vaughan,  Alexander  Broine,  the  Earl  of  Orrery, 
Sir  William  Petty,  the  Marchioness  of  Newcastle,  George  Fox, 
Sydenham,  Thomas  Staid ey,  Aubrey,  Dal/arno,  Sir  Robert 
Howard  and  his  brothers,  John  Wilson,  the  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham, Robert  Boyle,  John  Bunyan,  Temple,  Barrow,  Tillotson, 
Howe,  Charles  Cotton,  Edward  and  John  Phillips,  Anthony 
Wood,  Dryden,  Katherine  Philips,  Henry  Stubbe,  John  Locke, 
Pepys,  South,  the  Earl  of  Roscommon,  Flatman,  Stillingfieet, 
Etherege,  Sprat,  George  Mackenzie,  Lord  Buckhurst,  Sir 
Charles  Sedley,  Shadwell,  and  Wycherley. — Traditional  Fallacy 
as  to  the  effects  of  the  Restoration  on  English  Literary  Activity : 
The  Restoration  credited  with  much  that  does  not  belong  to  it : 
No  general  new  outburst  or  abundance  of  Literature  in  conse- 
quence of  the  Restoration,  but  rather  the  reverse  :  Statistics 
on  the  subject  from  the  Stationers'  Registers.  —  Especial 
Paralysis  of  the  Newspaper  Press  and  of  all  Cognate  Literature 
of  Public  Affairs  at  and  after  the  Restoration  :  Birkenhead  and 
his  Newspapers,  1660 — 1663:  L'Estrange's  Considerations 
and  Proposal*  for  the  Regulation  of  the  Press,  June  1663 : 
L'Estrange  as  Book-Licencer,  State-Journalist,  and  Inquisitor- 
General  of  the  Press,  from  1663  to  1666:  The  Oxford  Gazcttr, 
the  London  Gazette,  &c. — The  Distinctive  Literature  of  the 
Restoration  and  its  Characteristics  :  Its  uncompromising  Anti- 
Puritanism  :  Popular  Cavalier  Songs  and  Squibs :  Cowley's 
finer  Anti-Puritanism :  His  Discourse  of  Cromicell  by  way  of 
Yixion:  Appearance  of  Butler's  Hudibras,  1662-3  :  Immediate 
popularity  of  that  Burlesque:  Its  significance  as  representing 
tendencies  of  the  Restoration  Literature :  Prevalence  of  the 
Mock-Heroic  and  the  Comic  :  Coarseness  :  Tastes  and  Manners 
of  Charles  II.  and  his  Court. — Revival  of  the  Drama  just  before 
the  Restoration  :  Formal  Reconstitution  of  the  London  Stage 
in  August  1660:  The  two  London  Theatres,  Killi^rew's  or 
the  King's  and  Davenant's  or  the  Duke's  :  List  of  Actors  and 
Actresses  :  Reproduction  of  Old  Plays,  and  new  Dramatic  In- 


X  CONTEXTS. 

CRAP.  PAGE 

dustry :  Glimpses  of  Loudon  theatrical  life  from  August  1660 
to  August  1667  :  Characteristic  Comedies  and  Farces  :  French 
Influence  on  the  Restoration  Drama  :  The  Heroic  Play,  or 
Tragedy  of  Rhymed  Declamation  :  Davenant's  Operas  and  the 
Earl  of  Orrery's  Heroic  Plays:  Other  Tragedies :  The  Dramas 
of  John  Wilson  :  Emergence  of  Dryden  as,  all  in  all,  the  chief 
man  of  the  Restoration  Literature. — Dryden's  First  Poems 
after  the  Restoration:  His  First  Comedy,  The  Wild  Gallant: 
His  marriage,  and  his  Literary  Relations  with  his  brother-in- 
law,  Sir  Robert  Howard  :  His  Rival  Ladies,  Indian  Emperor, 
Maiden  Queen,  and  Sir  Martin  Mar-all :  Dryden's  Supremacy 
in  the  Restoration  Drama  assured  before  1667  :  His  Character 
and  Habits,  and  his  notions  of  Literature  :  His  Annus  Mirabilis, 
published  1666-7  :  His  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  published 
1667  :  Its  Literary  Criticisms  and  Review  of  English  Literary 
History  :  Its  Championship  of  Rhymed  Verse  and  of  Rhymed 
Tragedy  in  particular. — Two  delusions  propagated  or  fostered 
by  Dryden's  Essay,  viz.  (1)  That  the  true  art  of  English  Verse 
was  a  novelty  of  his  own  Time,  (2)  That  the  Restoration  was 
the  time  of  a  general  return  of  the  banished  English  Muses  : 
Re-exposure  of  this  latter  delusion  from  Dryden's  own  Essay 
and  from  the  Registers  of  English  Publications  between 
1660  and  1667  :  Allowance  for  Intellect  in  reserve,  and  for 
Clever  Stray  Versifying  :  Lyrics  of  Sedley  and  Buckhurst . — 
English  Science  before  and  after  the  Restoration  :  Origins  and 
Foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  :  Sketch  of  the  History  of  the 
Society  from  1662  to  1667  :  Boyle,  Hooke,  and  the  other  chief 
Fellows  :  Henry  Oldenburg's  Secretaryship  to  the  Society. — 
Retrospect  of  the  Loudon  Book  Trade  from  1640  to  1660: 
Chief  Booksellers  and  Publishers  of  those  Twenty  Years : 
Humphrey  Moseley  the  most  memorable  among  them  :  Moseley 
still  alive  and  active  at  the  Restoration  :  His  death,  Jan. 
1660-61  :  Booksellers  and  Pubbshers  of  the  first  Seven  Years 
of  the  Restoration :  Henry  Herringman  their  chief,  and  the 
real  Successor  of  Moseley  in  the  finer  Book  Trade :  Herring- 
man's  Shop  in  the  New  Exchange  :  Death  of  Cowley      .     .     .       273 

III.     Milton's  Removal  from  Holborn,  some  time  in  1661,  to  Jewin 
Street :  Thus  back  in  his  old  Aldersgate  Street  and  Barbican 
suburb,    and    again    a   parishioner  of  St.   Giles,   Cripplegate: 
Dr.  Annesley,  the  Vicar  of  the  Parish  .........       406 

Milton  in  Jewin  Street  (1661— 1664) :— Milton's  Pre- 
dictions of  the  Consequences  of  the  Restoration  :  Their  verifica- 
tion already  complete  in  1662  :  His  Reflections  in  that  year : 
Milton  and  Clarendon  :  Milton  and  the  Restored  Episcopal 
Church  :  Milton  and  the  St.  Bartholomew  Ejectment  of  the 
Nonconformists :  Milton's  Acquaintances  among  the  Ejected 
Clergy:  His  Acquaintances  among  the  new  Episcopal  Clergy  : 
Parisian  celebrity  of  his  old  Antagonist,  Alexander  Moras : 
Morus's  Letter  to  Lauderdale,  and  his  Tendency  to  England  : 
His  Six  Months'  Visit  to  London  in  1661-2,  and  his  French 
Sermons  at  Court :  The  Gauden  Episode  in  Milton's  Biography. 
— Pre-Restoration  Life  of  Dr.  John  Gauden,  Rector  of  Booking: 
Gauden  as  the  Restoration  Bishop  of  Exeter :  His  extraor- 
dinary Letters  from  Exeter  to  Clarendon  in  Dec.  1660 — March 
1660-1,  claiming  the  authorship  of  the  Eikon  Basilike,  and 
protesting  the  utter  insufficiency  of  the  Bishopric  of  Exeter  as 
a  reward  for  that  great  service  :  Clarendon's  Perplexed  Reply 
ol  March  13,   1661,  and  its  Allusion  to  Milton :  Gauden  in 


CONTENTS.  XI 

CHAP.  PAGE 

London,  prosecuting  his  claim:  His  Peremptory  Petition  to 
Clarendon  for  the  Bishopric  of  Winchester  :  His  Private  Cor- 
respondence with  the  Earl  of  Bristol :  The  Bishopric  of  Win- 
chester given  to  Morley,  and  Gauden  put  off  with  the  Bishopric 
of  Worcester  :  Death  of  Gauden,  Sept.  1662  :  Shelving  thence- 
forward of  the  inconvenient  secret  of  the  authorship  of  the 
Eikon  Basitihe. — Extent  of  Milton's  Cognisance  of  the  Secret 
still  uncertain  :  His  Occupations  in  Jewin  Street :  Probable 
extent  of  his  Advance  in  the  Dictation  of  Paradise  Lost  before 
the  end  of  1662  :  Milton's  Pecuniary  Losses  by  the  Restoration  : 
His  Probable  Income  in  1662  :  His  three  Daughters  :  Their 
Domestic  Rebellion  and  Mismanagement:  Improved  Circum- 
stances of  the  Powell  Family  in  1662,  and  Milton's  Interest 
in  the  same:  Milton's  Visitors  in  Jewin  Street  about  1662: 
Marvell  one  of  the  steadiest :  Another  of  them  a  Mr.  Samuel 
Parker,  a  young  Oxonian  :  Milton's  medical  friend,  Dr.  Nathan 
Paget :  What  now  of  Milton's  former  friends,  Lady  Ranelagh, 
Henry  Oldenburg,  and  Mr.  Richard  Jones  ? :  Specimens  of 
Lady  Ranelagh's  Letters  to  her  brothers  :  Mr.  Richard  Jones 
in  a  new  Character:  Milton's  nephews,  Edward  and  John 
Phillips,  since  the  Restoration:  Information  from  Edward 
Phillips  as  to  Milton's  methods  in  the  Composition  and  Dicta- 
tion of  Paradise  Lost :  Farther  Information  as  to  Milton's 
Literary  Habits  in  Jewin  Street. — The  young  Quaker,  Thomas 
Ell  wood  :  His  acquaintance  with  the  Penningtons  of  Chalfont 
St.  Peter's :  His  Introduction  to  Milton  :  His  Account  of  his 
Reception  by  Milton  and  of  his  Latin  Readings  with  Milton  in 
Jewin  Street :  Interruption  of  the  Readings  by  Ellwood's  Im- 
prisonment :  His  Prison  Experiences  and  Return  to  Chalfont 
St.  Peter's.— Milton's  Third  Marriage  :  Elizabeth  Minshull 
and  her  Cheshire  Relatives  :  Milton's  Allegation  preparatory 
to  the  Marriage  :  The  Marriage  itself,  Feb.  24,  1662-3.— Blank 
in  the  Records  of  Milton's  Life  for  some  time  after  his  Third 
Marriage  :  Trials  of  John  Twyn  and  others  in  Feb.  1663-4  for 
Treasonable  and  Seditious  Publications :  L'Estrange  the  In- 
former and  Chief  Witness :  Execution  of  Twyn :  Reported 
Implication  of  Milton  in  the  Business  :  Probable  Explanation 
of  the  Tradition :  Removal  of  Milton  from  Jewin  Street  to 
Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill :  Edward  Phillips  in  his  Tutorship  to 
the  Son  of  John  Evelyn  :  Marvell  away  as  Secretary  to  the 
Russian  Embassy  of  the  Earl  of  Carlisle 40S 

Milton  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  (1664 — 1665)  : — 
The  Bunhill  Neighbourhood,  and  Site  of  Milton's  House  there : 
Perseverance  in  Paradise  Lost :  The  Poem  finished  by  June 
1665:  Historical  Synchronisms:  Raging  of  the  Great  Plague 
in  London  through  the  Summer  and  Autumn  of  1665:  The 
Bunhill  Fields  Plague-Pit  close  to  Milton's  house  :  Cottage 
taken  for  Milton  and  his  Family  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles  by  the 
Quaker  Ellwood  :  Removal  of  the  Family  thither,  probably  in 
July  1665 482 

Milton  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  Buckinghamshire  (1665 
— 1666)  :— Chalfont  St.  Giles  at  present :  Milton's  Cottage 
there  :  The  Village  and  its  neighbourhood  in  the  Great  Plague 
Year  :  Ellwood  again  in  Prison  :  His  Release  and  his  two 
visits  to  Milton  in  the  Cottage  at  Chalfont:  Has  the  manu- 
script of  Paradise  Lost  lent  him  to  read,  and  suggests  the 
subject  of  Paradise  Regained:  The  Winter  .Months  at  Chalfont, 
and  Abatement  of  the  Mortality  in  London  :  Supposed  Frag- 
ment of  a  Sonnet  by  Milton  at  Chalfont 491 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

CHAP. 

Milton  back  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  (1666 — 1667) : 
Repeopling  of  London  after  the  Great  Plague :  Return  of 
Milton  and  his  Family  with  the  rest :  Relics  and  Traces  of  the 
Plague  :  Letter  to  Milton  from  his  old  acquaintance  Peter 
Heimbach  :  Milton's  Letter  to  Heimbach  in  Reply,  Aug.  15, 
1666  :  London  in  excitement  with  the  successes  against  the 
Dutch:  Outbreak  of  the  Great  Fire  in  London:  The  three 
days  and  nights  of  the  Conflagration  :  Milton  through  the 
Commotion  :  His  loss  in  Property  by  the  Great  Fire :  The  vast 
area  of  the  burnt  ruins  :  Licensing  of  Paradise  Lost  for  Pub- 
lication :  The  Licencer  Tomkyns  and  his  Hesitations  :  Effects 
of  the  Great  Fire  on  the  London  Book-Trade  :  Milton's  Nego- 
tiation with  Samuel  Simmons  ofAldersgate  Street:  Agreement 
of  Milton  and  Simmons  respecting  the  Copyright  of  Paradise 
Lost :  Printing  of  the  Poem  :  The  Dutch  in  the  Thames,  and 
the  Five  Days  of  Alarm  among  the  Londoners :  Registration 
of  Paradise  Lost,  A  ug.  20,  1667  :  Publication  of  Paradise  Lost  : 
First  Copies  in  Circulation  about  the  time  of  the  Fall  and 
Disgrace  of  Clarendon 498 

Paradise  Lost  considered  Biographicallt  : — Rarity  of 
such  Books  in  the  world  :  Recollection  of  the  Livina  Com- 
media  in  connexion  with  it :  Dante  and  Milton :  Points  of 
Resemblance  :  The  Characteristic  Difference  :  Early  fascination 
of  Milton  for  the  Subject  of  Paradise  Lost:  Significance  of  his 
tenacity  to  this  subject  through  so  many  years  and  of  his  deli- 
berate choice  of  it  at  last  for  his  great  Epic  :  The  Poem  pro- 
perly a  Cosmological  Epic,  propounding  Milton's  theory  of  the 
Universe,  visible  and  invisible,  and  of  the  History  of  Man, 
according  to  his  strict  Biblical  Theology,  but  in  the  form  of  an 
optical  phantasy  determined  by  the  Pre-Copernican  System  of 
Physics :  Importance  of  this  matter  of  the  Pre-Copernicanism 
of  Paradise  Lost. — Our  present  notions  of  the  Cosmos  or  Mun- 
dane Universe  :  Extraordinary  difference  of  the  Pre-Copernican 
mode  of  thinking  :  The  Pre-Copernican  System  of  the  Universe 
explained  and  illustrated :  Conception  of  an  Empyrean  or 
Heaven  of  Heavens  beyond  the  Primum  Mobile  or  the  last 
Sphere  of  the  Mundane  :  Notion  also  of  a  Chaos  anterior  to  the 
Cosmos :  Influence  of  the  Pre-Copernican  System  on  the 
imaginations  and  speculations  of  Mankind  for  centuries,  and 
unremarked  prevalence  of  its  effects  on  old  Poetry  and  in 
Literature  and  Language  generally  :  The  Pre-Copernicanism 
of  Dante. — Pre-Copernicanism  the  inherited  belief  of  Milton  : 
Traces  of  it  in  his  earlier  Poems  :  Probably  shaken  in  his  belief 
long  before  he  began  Paradise  Lost :  The  Struggle  between 
Copernicanism  and  Pre-Copernicanism  by  no  means  then  ended, 
and  only  a  minority  of  Copemicans  in  England :  Milton  per- 
haps one  of  them  :  The  Pre-Copernican  system  nevertheless 
retained  for  his  Epic,  though  with  caveats  and  modifications : 
Express  differences  in  Milton's  Cosmology  from  that  of  Dante. 
— Abstract  of  the  Scheme  and  Story  of  Paradise  Lost,  from  its 
beginnings  in  the  Empyrean,  on  to  the  Expulsion  of  the  Rebel 
Anirels  into  Hell,  and  the  Creation  of  the  Mundane  Universe, 
or  Mid-world  of  Man,  and  thence  again  as  far  as  to  Satan's 
Advent  into  the  Mundane  Universe  and  Arrival  on  the  Earth, 
with  Illustration  of  the  Miltonic  Cosmology  throughout  : 
Milton's  Earth,  his  Adam  and  Eve,  and  their  Terrestrial 
Paradise  :  The  Catastrophe. — Satan  the  chief  personage  in  the 
Poem,  if  not  the  hero  :  Much  of  the  action  of  the  Poem  alto- 
gether Extra-mundane,  and  much  of  the  Intra-mundane  action 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

CHAP.  PAGK 

not  properly  terrestrial :  Preference  for  the  Angelic  grandeurs 
of  the  Poem  or  its  Paradisaic  beauties  left  to  the  tastes  of 
Readers  :  Greatness  of  the  Poem  all  in  all,  and  the  variety 
and  perfection  of  its  Literary  Art  :  The  learning  of  the  Poem 
and  its  saturation  with  Classical  Mythology  and  Allusion. — 
Paradise  Lost  as  belonging  historically  to  Davenant's  Laureate- 
ship  and  the  English  Literature  of  the  Restoration  :  Probable 
first  impressions  of  it  in  the  year  1667,  and  wonder  over  such 
an  unexpected  reappearance  of  the  blind  Republican  and 
Regicide 518 


BOOK  m. 

AUGUST  1667— NOVEMBER  1674. 
HISTORY: — English  Politics  and  Literature  from  1667  to  1674, 
BIOGRAPHY: — The  Last  Seven  Years  of  Milton's  Life. 

I.  System  of  English  Government  from  1667  to  1674  describable 
as  Administration  by  Cabal  without  any  steady  Premiership. — 
I.  The  Pseuid-Premiership  of  Buckingham  or  Duumvirate 
of  Buckingham  and  Arlington  (1667-1670) :  —  Composi- 
tion of  the  Cabal  as  left  by  Clarendon,  and  Ministerial  Changes 
till  1670 :  New  and  more  tolerant  Church-Policy  :  The  Pro- 
testant Liberal  Section  of  the  Cabal  and  the  Crypto-Catholic 
Section  :  Opposition  to  the  New  Church  Policy  in  the  Seventh 
Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  Oct.  10,  1667— May  9, 
1668 :  Parliament  in  abeyance  for  seventeen  months  :  These 
seventeen  months  a  breathing-time  for  the  Nonconformists : 
Continued  Clarendonian  Temper  of  the  Parliament  in  its 
Eighth  Session,  Oct.  29— Dec.  11.  1669:  Foreign  Policy  :  The 
Triple  Alliance  of  January  1667-8,  and  the  Secret  Negotiation 
with  France  from  April  1668  onwards :  Primary  object  of  this 
Secret  Negotiation  a  Partnership  with  Louis  XIV  in  a  War 
against  the  Dutch  :  The  whole  Cabal  privy  to  this  object : 
Additional  Proposal  thrown  into  the  Negotiation  by  Charles 
himself,  viz.  That  he  should  declare  himself  a  Roman  Catholic  : 
Only  the  Crypto-Catholic  section  of  the  Cabal  privy  to  this 
proposal  :  Procedure  of  the  Negotiation  on  the  double  basis : 
Charles's  demands  for  French  money  on  both  accounts  thought 
exorbitant  by  Louis :  First  portion  of  the  Ninth  Session  of  the 
Parliament,  Feb.  1669-70— April  11,  1670:  The  Lord  Roos 
Divorce  Bill :  Continued  Parliamentary  Rigour  with  the  Non- 
confonnists :  The  New  Conventicles  Act. — II.  The  Cabal 
Administration,  usually  so-called  (April  1670  —  June 
1673): — Con-titution  of  this  Cabal :  Conclusion  of  the  Secret 
Negotiation  with  France  in  the  Secret  Treaty  of  Dover, 
May  22,  1670  :  Abstract  of  the  Treaty,  with  quotation  of  the 
Article  relating  to  the  Declaration  of  Catholicity  :  Purchase- 
money  of  the  Catholicity  settled  at  £151,000:  Death  of 
Charles's  Sister,  the  Duchess  of  Orleans,  the  chief  negotiator 
of  the  Treaty  :  Second  Portion  of  the  Ninth  Session  of  the 
Parliament,  Oct.  24,  1670— April  22.  1671  :  The  Parliament 
Prorogued,  not  to  meet  again  for  nearly  two  years  :  Deception 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

chap.  PAGE 

of  the  Protestant  Section  of  the  Cabal  by  a  simulated  Edition 
of  the  Treaty  with  Louis,  omitting  the  Article  about  the 
Catholicity :  Hesitations  of  Charles  about  the  Catholicity  after 
he  had  received  the  £154,000  on  that  account:  The  Stop  of 
the  Exchequer  :  Declaration  of  War  with  the  Dutch,  March  18, 
1671-2 :  First  Naval  Action  against  the  Dutch,  and  Death  of 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich :  French  Land-Invasion  of  the  United 
Provinces  :  The  young  Prince  of  Orange  and  his  Dutch  Army 
of  Defence  :  Eevolution  among  the  Dutch,  and  Revival  of  the 
Stadtholderate  in  the  person  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  June  30, 
1672  :  Patriotic  obstinacy  of  the  Prince-Stadtholder  and  his 
Heroic  Protraction  of  the  Defence  :  Inertness  of  the  English 
on  the  subject  of  the  Dutch  War :  Royal  Declaration  of 
March  15,  1671-2,  suspending  all  Coercive  Laws  in  matters 
of  Religion :  Apparent  Opportuneness  of  the  Declaration : 
Retrospect  of  the  Severities  against  the  Nonconformists,  and 
especially  against  the  Baptists  and  Quakers,  since  1670 :  Strange 
Division  of  the  public  mind  on  the  subject  of  the  Royal 
Declaration  of  Indulgence  :  The  Nonconformists  generally  far 
from  enthusiastic  for  it :  Causes  of  their  apathy  :  Good  practical 
effects  of  the  Declaration  nevertheless  :  Experiments  of  Charles 
and  the  Cabal  in  the  direction  of  Concurrent  Endowment : 
Ministerial  Changes :  Shaftesbury  made  Lord  Chancellor  and 
Clifford  Lord  Treasurer  :  The  Tenth  Session  of  the  Parliament, 
Feb.  4. 1672-3— March  29, 1673  :  Historical  Importance  of  this 
short  Session  :  May  be  called  the  first  "  No  Popery"  Session 
of  the  Cavalier  Parliament :  Charles  defiant,  but  beaten  :  The 
Declaration  withdrawn  and  apologised  for  :  "  No  Popery  " 
Addresses  and  Resolutions:  The  Test  Act  and  its  Consequences. 
— III.  Disintegration  of  the  Cabal  and  Beginnings  of 
the  Danby  Administration  (June  1673 — Nov.  1674) : — The 
Eleventh  Session  of  the  Parliament,  Oct.  27— Nov.  4,  1673, 
and  the  Twelfth  Session,  Jan.  7— Feb.  24,  1673-4:  "No 
Popery"  excitement  continued:  The  Duke  of  York's  second 
marriage  :  Ministers  attacked,  and  Grievances  of  the  Reign 
discussed  :  Shaftesbury  out  of  Office  and  organizing  a  Whig 
Opposition  :  Peace  concluded  with  the  Dutch  :  Beginning  of 
the  Premiership  of  the  Earl  of  Danby,  with  Arlington  in  the 
honorary  office  of  Lord  Chamberlain  and  Sir  Joseph  Williamson 
as  Principal  Secretary  of  State  :  View  of  the  State  of  the 
English  Royal  Family  in  1674.— English  Literature  from 
1667  to  1674. — Adaptation  of  Shakespeare's  Tempest  by 
Davenant  and  Dryden  :  Death  of  Davenant,  April  7,  1668 : 
The  Laureateship  vacant  for  more  than  two  years :  Dramatic 
and  other  Activity  of  Dryden  during  those  two  years:  Dryden 
appointed  Poet-Laureate,  Aug.  1670:  The  English  Drama 
through  the  first  four  years  of  Dryden's  Laureateship :  Com- 
petitors with  Dryden  and  Attacks  upon  him :  Buckingham's 
Rehearsal:  Dryden's  Defence  of  Rhymed  Heroic  Plays:  Non- 
Dramatic  Literature  from  1667  to  1674  :  Writers  and  Books 
of  the  period  :  Butler  in  Neglect :  His  Miscellaneous  Satires  : 
New  Speculative  Workings :  Infant  English  Whiggism  .     .     .       561 

II.  Curious  Trade-History  of  the  First  Edition  of  Paradise 
Lost  :  Nine  successive  issues  of  that  edition  between  1667 
and  1669,  differing  in  their  title-pages  and  in  other  respects : 
The  last  five  of  these  issues  distinguished  from  the  four  pre- 
ceding by  containing  fourteen  pages  of  prefixed  prose-matter, 
consisting  of  The  Argument  and  the  paragraph  entitled  The 


CONTEXTS.  XV 

CHAP.  PAGE 

Verse :  How  far  these  changes  owing  to  Simmons,  how  far  to 
Milton  himself. — First  Edition  of  Paradise  Lost  exhausted 
in  April  1669  :  Milton's  Receipt  of  that  date  to  Simmons  for 
his  second  Five  Pounds :  Reception  of  the  Poem  among  the 
critics :  Traditions  and  Anecdotes  on  the  subject :  Examina- 
tion of  them  :  The  Lord  Buckhurst  story :  Dryden's  necessary 
interest  in  the  poem  from  the  fact  that  it  contained  a  challenge 
to  himself :  Milton's  prefixed  paragraph  on  Blank  Verse 
manifestly  such  a  challenge :  Dryden's  admiration  of  the 
Poem  all  the  more  generous :  He  leads  the  chorus  of  praise : 
The  first  public  eulogium  of  Paradise  Lost  nevertheless  one 
by  Milton's  nephew,  Edward  Phillips. — Attention  again  at- 
tracted to  Milton  personally :  Conflux  of  visitors,  foreigners 
and  others,  to  his  house  in  Bunhill :  Dryden's  brother-in-law 
Sir  Robert  Howard,  and  the  Earl  of  Anglesey,  among  the 
most  frequent  visitors  henceforward :  Anecdote  of  Milton  by 
Howard :  Story  of  the  offer  to  reinstate  Milton  in  his  Latin 
Secretaryship :  Story  incredible :  Milton  consulted,  in  the 
King's  interest,  on  the  subject  of  the  Lord  Roos  Divorce  Bill 
in  the  House  of  Lords. — Milton's  Accedence  Commenced 
Grammar,  1669 :  Nature  of  the  Book  :  Illustration  in  it  of  one 
of  the  peculiarities  of  Milton's  English. — Milton's  History 
of  Britain,  1670  :  Description  of  the  Book :  Its  interspersed 
ethical  and  political  remarks  and  contemporary  applications : 
Query  as  to  the  perfect  genuineness  of  the  book  as  it  left  the 
licenser's  hands:  The  prefixed  Portrait  of  Milton  by  Faithorne. 
— More  about  Milton's  daughters :  All  the  three  boarded  out 
in  or  about  1670 :  Expense  to  Milton  by  this  arrangement : 
Temporary  residence  of  Milton  himself  about  this  time  with 
the  bookseller  Millington  in  Little  Britain:  His  walks  with 
Millington  in  the  streets. — Publication  of  Paradise  Regained 
and  Samson  Agonistes  together  in  1671. — Paradise  Re- 
gained :  Time  of  its  Composition,  and  its  Relation  to 
Paradise  Lost  :  Scope  and  characteristics  of  the  Shorter 
Epic :  Pictorial  coherence  of  the  story :  The  sketch  of  the 
political  state  of  the  world  in  the  Time  of  Tiberius  Caesar  : 
Miltonic  significance  of  the  contrast  between  Greek  Literature 
and  Hebrew  Literature  in  Book  IV. — Samson  Agonistes  : 
Milton's  notions  of  the  Drama  and  his  relations  to  the  English 
Drama  of  his  own  time :  His  high  estimate  of  the  Dramatic 
Form  of  Literature  and  of  the  uses  of  Theatrical  Representa- 
tions :  Obvious  Reason  of  his  choice  of  the  subject  for  his 
own  Tragedy :  The  story  of  the  Hebrew  Samson  a  metaphor 
of  Milton's  own  Life:  His  explanation  of  particulars  in  the 
form  of  his  Tragedy :  Describes  it  as  a  Tragedy  after  the 
ancient  Greek  model,  not  intended  to  be  acted :  Does  not  say 
it  might  not  be  acted  :  The  Blank  Verse  of  the  Dialogue  and 
the  peculiar  Verse  of  the  Choruses  and  other  lyrical  parts: 
Clear  plot  of  the  Tragedy  and  its  classic  Execution ;  Extra- 
ordinary Subjective  Interest  of  the  Poem,  and  artistic  in- 
weaving of  the  subjective  with  the  objective :  Much  in  the 
Poem  that  Milton  could  not  have  published  at  the  time  in  any 
other  form :  Autobiographic  Passages,  and  Passages  on  the 
Restoration  and  its  Revenges:  Autobiographic  interpretation 
of  the  last  semi-chorus. — Milton's  Appearance  and  Domestic 
Habits  in  his  last  years:  Some  of  his  opinions  on  Literary 
matters:  His  Religious  Individualism,  and  Non-Attendance 
at  any  place  of  public  worship  :  Richardson's  Anecdote  of  him 
in  this  connexion- — Milton's  A  rtis  Logicce  Flenior  Institutio, 


XVI  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAOB 

1672  :  Probable  origin  of  the  Book  :  Nature  and  worth  of  the 
Ramist  Logic. — Second  Edition  of  Milton's  Minor  Poems, 
with   his  Tract  on  Education,  in  1673  :    Differences   of  this 
Edition  from  the  First  Edition  of  1645. — Mdton's  Pamphlet 
of  1673  entitled  Of  True  Religion, Heresy, Schism,  Toleration, and 
the  Growth  of  Popery  :  Special  occasion  and  circumstances  of  the 
Pamphlet:  Its  connexion  with  the  "No  Popery"  excitement 
in  England  caused  by  the  Royal  Suspension  of  the  Coercive 
Laws  and  by  the  consequent  proceedings  of  the  Tenth  Session 
of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  including  the  Test  Act:  Milton's 
implied  advice  to  Nonconformists  to  be  content  with  Tolera- 
tion and  not  to  aim  at  Recomprehension  in  the  Established 
Church  or  at  Concurrent  Endowments :    More   general  sub- 
stance of  the  Pamphlet  presented  in  Extracts  :  Restrictedness 
of  Milton's  Theory  of  Toleration  at  this  date  :  His  sympathy 
with  the  "  No  Popery  "  outcry  :  His  Veneration  for  the  Bible, 
and  recommendation  of  the  Bible  as  the  one  safeguard  against 
Popery  and  the  sole  standard  of  true  or  tolerable  Religion. — 
Reappearance  of  Mr.  Samuel  Parker  as  the  great  Dr.  Parker, 
the    Scourge    of    the    Nonconformists :    His    Anti-Toleration 
Publications  and   their  effects :    Andrew  M;irvell's  Reply  to 
Parker  in  the  First  Part  of  his  Rehearsal  Transprosed :  Ability 
and  Instant  Popularity  of  that  Book  :  Appearance  of  Parker's 
Reproof  to  the  Rehearsal  Transprosed,  and  of  other  Pamphlets 
on  the  same  side  :  Second  Part  of  Marvell's  Rehearsal  Trans- 
prosed:  Milton's  name  dragged  into  the  controversy:  Specimens 
of  the  Mentions  of  Milton  in  the  Pamphlets  on  the  Parker 
side :  Marvell's  dignified  notice  of  these  and  Fine  Expression 
of  his  Loyalty  to  Milton. — Visit  of  Dryden  to  Milton  some 
time  in  1673  :  Milton's  Permission  to  Dryden  to  turn  parts  of 
Paradise  Lost  into  a  Rhymed  Drama  or  Opera :  The  Opera 
ready  in  1674  and  then  in  circulation  in  manuscript :  Specimens 
of  the  Performance. — Second   Edition   of  Paradise  Lost, 
1674 :  Differences  of  this  Edition  from  the  First :   The  Pre- 
fixed   Commendatory  Verses    by    Dr.    Samuel    Burrow    and 
Andrew    Marvell:    Sarcastic   reference   in    Marvell's   Verses 
to  Dryden  and  his  Opera. — Milton's  house  in  Bunhill  and  his 
neighbours  there  in  1674:    His  Pecuniary  Circumstances  in 
that  year  :  Not  in  indigence,   but  poorer  than  he  had  ever 
been  before  :  Not  indifferent  to  chance  literary  earnings  :  The 
bookseller   Brabazon  Aylmer :    Preparation  for  the  press  of 
Milton's  Latin  State-Letters  and  his  Latin  Treatise  of  Christian 
Doctrine :  Daniel  Skinner,  the  last  of  Milton's  amanuenses : 
Transcript  of  the  State  Letters  by  Skinner,  and  Revision  and 
Part-Transcript    of  the    MS.    of    the    Theological   Treatise  : 
Attempt  of  Brabazon  Aylmer  to  publish  the  State  Letters : 
Their  publication  stopped  by  authority :  Publieation  by  Aylmer 
of  the  little  volume  of  Epistolce  Familiares  and  Prolusiones 
Oratoricc  instead :    Review  of  the  Epistolce  Familiares  :    In- 
terest of  some  of  them  to  persons  still  alive  when  they  were 
published  :    The  Translation  of  the  Latin  Declaration  of  the 
Election  of  John  Sobieski  to  be  King  of  Poland  :  This  probably 
Milton's,  and  his  last  publication  in  his  life-time. — Milton's 
illness  of  July  1674 :    Visit  of  his  brother  Christopher  :    De- 
claration to    Christopher   of  his  Will  in  case  of  his  death  : 
Partial  Recovery  in  August,  September,  and  October :  Glimpses 
of  Milton  at  home  in  those  months,  and  Note  of  Events  around 
him  :  Mdton's  Last  Illness  in  November  1674 :  His  Death  and 
Burial 621 


CONTENTS.  XVII 

BOOK  IV. 

Posthumous  Miltoniana. 

Quantity  of  Posthumous  Matter  belonging  to  tlie  Biography  of  Milton. — 

I.  Milton's  Nuncupative  Will. — Application  of  the  Widow  for 
Probate  :  Objections  of  the  three  Daughters  :  Depositions  of  the 
Witnesses:  Probate  not  granted,  but  JLetters  of  Administration 
instead  ;  Effect  of  that  arrangement :  Prompt  Settlement  of  the 
Widow  with  the  three  Daughters  :  Marriage  of  Deborah  Milton 
in  Ireland  during  the  suit. — II.  The  Widow,  the  three 
Daughters,  and  Milton's  Dikect  Descendants: — Stay  of 
the  Widow  for  some  time  in  London  :  Her  removal  to  Nant- 
wich  in  or  about  1881  :  Her  long  life  of  frugal  gentility 
there  :  Her  Death  in  1727  :  Her  Will  and  Inventory  of  her 
Effects. — Death  of  Milton's  eldest  Daughter,  Anne :  Mrs. 
Powell's  Will :  Death  of  the  Second  Daughter,  Mary. — 
Milton's  youngest  Daughter,  Deborah  Clarke  :  She  and  her 
family  in  Spitalfields,  in  poor  circumstances,  from  about  1688 
to  1727:  Interest  in  her  on  her  father's  account:  Addison's 
kindness  to  her  :  Various  visits  to  her  in  her  last  years,  and 
exertions  for  her  relief :  Her  Recollections  of  her  father,  and 
Judgments  on  Portraits  of  him  :  Deborah's  eldest  son,  Caleb 
Clarke,  an  emigrant  to  Madras  :  His  death  there  in  1719, 
leaving  two  sons  :  No  trace  of  these  Clarkes  in  India  beyond 
1727  :  Urban  Clarke,  and  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Foster  :  Their  life 
in  Spitalfields  :  Their  removal  thence  to  Holloway  :  Death  of 
Urban  Clarke  :  Mrs.  Foster  and  her  husband  in  Shoreditch: 
Visits  to  Mrs.  Foster  :  Her  Family  Recollections  :  Performance 
of  Com.us  for  her  benefit  in  1750 :  Her  death  at  Islington  : 
Extinction  in  her  of  the  direct  line  from  Milton. — III.  Other 
Surviving  Relatives  of  Milton  and  their  Descendants  : — 
Milton's  brother  Christopher  :  A  Roman  Catholic  :  Made  one 
of  James  the  Second's  judges  in  1686,  and  knighted  :  His  Dis- 
missal from  his  Judgeship,  and  retirement  to  Ipswich  :  His 
Death  there  :  His  son,  Thomas  Milton :  Other  children 
and  descendants  of  Sir  Christopher. — Sketch  of  the  remaining 
life  of  Edward  Phillips,  from  1674  to  about  1698.  with  List  of 
his  chief  Publications  through  that  period. — Similar  Sketch  of 
the  Life  of  John  Phillips,  with  List  of  his  chief  Publications, 
from  1674  to  his  Death  in  or  about  1706. — Milton's  deceased 
Sister  and  her  second  husband,  Mr.  Thomas  Agar  :  His  Will  of 
1671 :  His  Legacy  to  Edward  Phillips  :  Mr.  Agar's  Daughter, 
Mrs.  Anne  Moore,  and  her  Husband,  David  Moore  :  Farther 
Milton  descent  in  the  Agar  and  Moore  branch  — IV.  InCREASI 
of  Milton's  Poetical  Celebrity  and  Multiplication  of 
Editions  of  his  Poems  : — Dryden's  tribute  to  Milton's 
memory  in  1675  :  Edward  Phillips's  tribute  in  his  Theatrum 
Poetarum  of  the  same  year  :  Aubrey's  Gatherings  about  Milton, 
and  Marvells  Intention  to  write  Memoirs  of  him  :  Marvell's 
Death  :  Third  Edition  of  Paradise  Lost,  1678  :  Quittance  to  the 
Bookseller  Simmons  by  Milton's  Widow  of  her  entire  remain- 
ing interest  in  Paradise  Lad  for  a  sum  of  £8  :  Second  Edition 
of  Paradise  Regained !  and  Samson  Agonistes  in  1680 :  Saleof  thf 
Copyright  of  Paradise  Lost  by  Simmons  to  Brabazon  Aylmer  : 
Acquisition  of  half  the  Copyright  by  Jacob  Tonson  :  Increasing 
Frequency    of   Mentions    of  Milton's   Poetry   in  books  :  The 

VOL.  VI.  b 


xvin  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

Fourth  Edition,  or  first  Tonson  Edition,  of  Paradise  Lost,  1688  : 
Names  of  some  of  the  Subscribers  :  Dryden's  famous  lines  under 
the  portrait  of  Milton  in  that  Edition  :  Accompanying  Third 
Edition  of  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes  :  Acquisi- 
tion  by   Tonson   of    all   Milton's  Poetry  :    Fifth    Edition    of 
Paradise  Lost,  1692,  with  fourth  of  Paradise  Regained  :  Sixth 
Edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1695,  with  fifth  of  Paradise  Re- 
gained, fourth  of  Samson  Agonistes,  and  third  of  the  Minor 
Poems :   Importance  of  this  Sixth   Edition  of  Paradise  Lost  : 
Patrick  Hume's  Commentary  on  the  Poem  :  Three  next  Tonson 
Editions  of  the  Poems  :  Addison's  Criticism  on  Paradise  Lost  : 
Subsecpient   Editions   of  the   Poems  as  far  as  to   1763,  with 
Remarks    on   the   Tonson    monopoly  in    Milton's    Poetry    to 
about    that    date  :     Early    Translations    of  the    Poems. — V. 
Posthumous  Prose  Publications  op  Milton  and  Fate  of 
His  Papers  : — Surviving  Prose  Manuscripts  :  The  Fair  Tran- 
script of  the  Latin  State  Letters  and  the  Manuscript  of  the 
Latin  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine  left  in  the  hands  of  Daniel 
Skinner  :  Account  of  Skinner  and  his  circumstances  in  1674-6: 
His  Acquaintance  with  Pepys  :  His  Negotiation  with  Elzevir 
of  Amsterdam  for  printing  the  two  manuscripts  :  Appearance 
in  1676  of  a  Surreptitious  London  Edition  of  the  State  Letters, 
entitled   Litera*   Pseudo-Senatus  Anglicani,   Cromwellii,  &c. : 
Skinner  in  trouble  with  Secretary  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  on 
account  of  his  possession  of  the  Milton  Manuscripts  :  Farther 
Story  of  Skinner  and  the  Manuscripts  :  Surrender  of  the  Manu- 
scripts and  their  Disappearance  in  the  State  Paper  Office. — 
Publication  in  1681  of  The  Character  of  the  Long  Parliament 
and  Assemhly  of  Divines,  professing  to  be  an  omitted  passage  of 
Milton's  History  of  Britain  :  Suspicious  Nature  of  the  Frag- 
ment :  Two  Hypotheses  on  the  subject. — Milton's  Brief  History 
of  Moscovia,  published  1682  :  Brabazon  Aylmer's  Advertise- 
ment of  the  Volume  :  Fate  of  Milton's  MS.  Collections  towards 
a  Latin  Dictionary. — Increased  Attention  to  Milton's  Prose 
Writings  after  the  Revolution  :  Toland's  Collective  Edition  of 
them  in  1698. — Publication  in   1743   of  the  volume  entitled 
Original  Letters  and  Papers  of  State  addressed  to  Oliver  Crom- 
well :  Private  character  and  importance  of  those  documents,  and 
peculiar  interest  of  the  fact  that  they  had  been  in  Milton's 
possession  :    Probable  explanation. — Accidental    Discovery  of 
the  two  Milton  manuscripts  in   the  State  Paper  Office,   and 
publication  in  1825  of  the  Latin  Treatise  De  Doctrina  Christiana, 
and    of    Sumner's    English    Translation    of    the    same. — VI. 
Milton's  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine  : — Importance  of 
this  Treatise  intrinsically,  and  also  as  a  revelation  of  Milton. — 
Fundamental    idea    of  the    Treatise :    Axiomatic   nature   of 
Milton's    Belief  in    the   Bible :    His    contention    for   the   all- 
sufficiency  of  the  plain  Bible,  and  for  the  right  of  private  inter- 
pretation :    His  recognition,  nevertheless,  of  a  superior  inner 
revelation  by  the  Spirit  :  His  theoretical  agreement  with  the 
Quakers  on  this  point :  His  explanation  of  the  mode  in  which 
his  Treatise  had  been  prepared,  and  evident  expectation  that  it 
would  become  notorious  :  Studiously  calm  and  prosaic  style  of 
the    Treatise :    Intermixture    of  disquisition    with    masses   of 
Biblical  quotations  :  Division  of  the  Treatise  into  a  Theoretical 
Part  and  a  Practical  Part. — Milton  on  the  nature  and  attri- 
butes of  God  :  Start  of  his  System  from  an  Absolute  Spiritual- 
istic  Theism  :    His  appended  Views  of  the    Divine  Decrees : 
Milton    decidedly     Arminian    and    Anti-Calvinistic    on    the 


CONTENTS.  XIX 

CHAP.  PACK 

subjects  of  Predestination  and  Free  Will :  Milton  also  an  Anti- 
Trinitarian  :  His  views  of  the  Nature  and  Sonship  of  Christ 
those  of  High  Arianism  :  The  Holy  Spirit,  according  to  Milton, 
a  mere  created  Minister  of  God,  and  far  inferior  to  the  Son  : 
Milton's  belief  in  an  Empyrean  or  Invisible  Universe  preceding 
the  Visible  Universe  of  Man  :  His  belief  also  in  a  confused 
Prime  Matter  or  Chaos:  Matter,  according  to  Milton,  not 
created  out  of  nothing,  but  an  actual  efflux  or  phenomenon  of 
the  substance  of  God  :  Pantheistic  implication  of  this  Principle  : 
Milton's  views  of  the  relation  of  the  Universe  to  God  describable 
perhaps  as  a  modified  Pantheism  :  Correspondence  of  Milton's 
real  beliefs  as  propounded  in  the  Treatise  with  his  imaginations 
in  his  Paradise  Lost :  His  view  of  the  Creation  of  the  Six  Days, 
and  peculiar  doctrine  as  to  the  constitution  of  Man  :  His  rejec- 
tion of  the  ordinary  doctrine  of  the  Immateriality  of  the  Soul : 
Finds  no  warrant  in  Scripture  for  the  usual  distinction  between 
the  Soul  and  the  Body  in  Man,  and  holds  them  to  be  organi- 
cally one  and  inseparable  :  Extension  of  this  materialistic  view 
of  Man's  Mind  or  Soul  into  a  generally  Materialistic  Concep- 
tion of  all  Cosmical  life:  First  inference  as  regards  Man,  viz. 
that  Soul  and  Body  are  propagated  naturally  together : 
Milton's  notions  of  the  Angelic  and  Diabolic  Worlds :  His 
Remarks  on  the  Paradisaic  State  on  Earth,  and  on  the  Institu- 
tions of  the  Sabbath  and  Marriage  :  The  Sabbath,  according  to 
Milton,  not  a  Paradisaic  or  Primeval  Institution  at  all  :  His 
views  of  Marriage,  with  re-assertion  of  bis  Divorce  Doctrine  and 
a  defence  of  Polygamy  :  Milton  on  the  Christian  Scheme  of 
Redemption,  or  Christ's  work  on  Earth  and  its  Consequences: 
Orthodox  here  in  the  main,  subject  to  his  Arianism  and 
Arminiani>m:  His  High  Arianism  here  re-propounded  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  Lower  Socinianism  :  His  contention  for  the  mystery 
of  the  Incarnation,  or  the  actual  appearance  of  the  Divine  Son  or 
Logos  in  the  man  Christ  Jesus  :  New  and  extraordinary  heresy 
of  Milton  at  this  point,  arising  from  farther  application  of  his 
principle  of  the  necessary  identity  of  Soul  and  Body  in  Man: 
His  Definition  of  Death  as  involving  Soul  as  well  as  Body,  and 
his  belief  in  an  entire  Cessation  or  Suspension  of  personal  con- 
sciousness between  Death  and  the  Resurrection:  This  apparently 
the  heresy  of  the  Soul-Sleepers  or  Mortalists  among  the  Sects 
of  Milton's  time  :  Milton  on  the  two  Dispensations  :  His  con- 
tention for  the  Entire  Abrogation  of  the  Mosaic  Law,  including 
the  Decalogue,  under  the  Gospel :  Milton's  Anti-Predobaptism 
and  his  Independency  or  Congregationalism  in  Church  matters  : 
His  Millennarianism  :  His  views  of  the  Resurrection,  the  Last 
Judgment,  the  General  Conflagration  and  Renovation  of  the 
Mundane  Universe,  the  Punishment  of  the  Wicked,  and  the 
Perfect  Glorification  of  the  Just. — The  Second  or  Practical  Part 
of  the  Treatise  :  General  Character  of  Milton's  Ethics  :  Peculiar 
Vein  of  Urbanity,  or  gentlemanlike  habit  and  taste,  through 
his  expositions  of  the  personal  and  neighbourly  moralities  :  His 
last  notions  on  the  duty  of  subjects  to  Kings  and  Magistrates  : 
His  dissent  from  the  Quakers  on  the  subjects  of  War  and 
Oaths  :  His  glance  at  questions  of  Casuistry  in  connexion 
with  the  virtue  of  Veracity  :  His  notions  of  Prayer  and  of  tin; 
lawfulness  of  Imprecation  :  His  Religious  Latitudinarianism  in 
general,  and  thorough-going  Anti-Sabbatarianism  in  particular. — 
Concludin<!'  Historical  Observations  on  the  whole  Treatise    .     .       735 


BOOK  I 

MAY  1660— MAY  1661. 

HISTORY: — The  Year  op  the  Restoration". 

BIOGRAPHY : — Milton     through     the    Year     of     the 
Restoration. 


vol.  VI.  B 


THE  LIFE  OF  JOHN  MILTON, 


WITII    TIIE 


HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  YEAR  OF  THE  RESTORATION:  MAY  1660 MAY  1661. 

At  the  Hague,  whither  Charles  and  his  retinue  had  removed 
from  Breda,  and  where  their  reception  by  the  States-General 
was  "  incredibly  noble  and  splendid,"  there  duly  arrived,  on 
the  15th  of  May,  1660,  the  Commissioners  from  the  two 
Houses  of  the  Convention  Parliament,  sent  to  congratulate 
his  Majesty  and  implore  his  immediate  presence  in  his  domi- 
nions. In  the  audiences  they  had  with  him  next  day  the 
chief  spokesman  was  Denzil  Holies,  one  of  the  twelve  Com- 
missioners for  the  Commons.  He  informed  his  Majesty  of 
the  boundless  joy  of  the  Parliament  in  the  prospect  of  his 
return,  and  of  their  alacrity  in  adopting  means  for  manifesting 
that  joy.  "  In  so  doing,"  proceeded  Holies,  "  they  are, 
"  according  to  the  nature  of  Parliaments,  the  true  representa- 
"  tives  of  the  whole  nation  ;  for  they  but  do  that  in  a  more 
"contracted  and  regular  way  which  the  generality  of  the 
"  people  of  the  land,  from  one  end  of  it  to  the  other,  do  in 
u  a  more  confused  and  disorderly  manner,  yet  as  heartily  and 
"  as  affectionately.  All  degrees  and  ages  and  sexes, — rich 
"  and  poor,  as  I  may  say,  and  men,  women,  and  children, — 

B2 


4  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  join  in  sending  up  this  prayer  to  Heaven,  God  Mess  King 
"  Charles  !  Long  live  King  Charles  !,  so  as  our  English  air  is 
"  not  susceptible  of  any  other  sound,  and  echoes  out  nothing 
<:  else.  Our  bells,  bonfires,  peals  of  ordnance,  volleys  of  shot, 
"  the  shouts  and  acclamations  of  the  people,  bear  no  other 
"  moral,  have  no  other  signification,  but  to  triumph  in  the 
"  triumph  of  our  King  in  the  hearts  of  his  people.  Your 
"  Majesty  cannot  imagine,  nor  can  any  man  conceive  it  but 
"  he  who  was  present  to  see  and  hear  it,  with  what  joy,  what 
"  cheerfulness,  what  lettings  out  of  the  soul,  what  expressions 
"  of  transported  minds,  a  stupendous  concourse  of  people 
"  attended  the  proclaiming  of  your  Majesty,  in  your  cities 
"  of  London  and  Westminster,  to  be  our  most  potent,  mighty, 
"  and  undoubted  King.  The  oldest  man  living  never  saw  the 
"  like  before  ;  nor  is  it  probable,  scarce  possible,  that  he  who 
"  has  longest  to  live  will  ever  see  the  like  again."  With  this 
and  the  other  speeches,  copies  of  the  Proclamation,  the  letters 
of  the  Parliament,  and  other  documents,  were  delivered  to 
Charles,  and  acknowledged  most  graciously.  Then,  for  yet 
another  week,  the  crowded  Hague  was  still  festive  round  the 
departing  Royalty  of  the  British  Islands,  the  States  main- 
taining their  hospitalities  magnificently  to  the  last.  The  only 
inconvenience  to  Charles  and  his  brothers  was  that  they  had 
some  difficulty  in  obtaining  cash  for  the  bills  on  Amsterdam 
merchants  which  had  been  sent  them  by  Parliament  in  pay- 
ment of  the  main  portion  of  the  sums  voted  them  for  their 
first  expenses.  Or,  if  there  was  any  other  inconvenience,  it 
arose  from  the  necessity  of  granting  interviews  to  Messrs. 
Reynolds,  Calamy,  Manton,  Case,  and  the  other  eminent 
Presbyterian  ministers  who  had  come  from  London  to  bespeak 
the  King's  fidelity  to  Presbytery  and  the  Solemn  League 
and  Covenant,  or  at  least  to  obtain  his  assurance  that  he 
would  not  show  sudden  favour  to  Episcopacy  by  requiring  the 
use  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  the  surplice  by  his 
own  chaplains.  In  the  particular  of  his  own  practice  the 
King  told  the  reverend  gentlemen  distinctly  that  he  reserved 
the  same  liberty  for  himself  that  he  meant  to  allow  to  others ; 
but  on  the  general  cpiestion  he  was  sufficiently  polite. 


CHARLES    AT    THE    HAGUE.  5 

There  was  then  with  his  Majesty  another  representative 
of  British  Presbyterianism,  who  had  preceded  the  English 
clergymen.  This  was  the  Scottish  Mr.  James  Sharp.  Monk, 
with  whom  he  had  been  in  close  intimacy  in  London  for  the 
last  three  months,  had  dispatched  him  to  Breda  in  a  frigate, 
with  express  and  very  private  letters  of  introduction  to  the 
King  and  to  Hyde.  It  was  thought  that  Sharp,  while  his 
main  business  wTould  be  to  secure  the  Kirk  and  Covenant  in 
Scotland,  might  be  able  to  do  something  also  for  the  cause 
of  Presbytery  in  England ;  and,  when  it  was  known  in 
Scotland  that  he  had  gone  to  Breda,  his  friends  among  the 
Scottish  Resolutioner  clergy,  and  especially  Mr.  Douglas  in 
Edinburgh  and  Mr.  Baillie  in  Glasgow,  were  intensely  in- 
terested. By  the  wild  haste  of  the  Convention  Parliament 
at  Westminster,  Charles  was  coming  in  absolutely  without 
conditions;  and  might  not  Mr.  Sharp's  dexterity,  even  at  the 
last  moment,  remedy  that  fatal  blunder  as  it  might  affect 
Scotland  ?  \Vhat  passed  between  Sharp  and  his  Majesty,  or 
between  Sharp  and  Hyde,  no  one  really  knows.  "The  King, 
"  at  my  first  address  in  Breda,  was  pleased  to  ask  very  kindly 
" about  yoa"  Baillie  was  afterwards  informed  by  Sharp,  if 
that  could  be  any  gratification  ;  and  to  Douglas  it  was  ex- 
plained at  the  time  by  a  letter  from  Sharp :  "  I  shall  not  be 
"  accessory  to  anything  prejudicial  to  the  Presbyterian  govern- 
"  ment ;  but  to  appear  for  it  in  any  other  way  than  is  within 
"  my  sphere  is  inconvenient,  and  may  do  harm  and  not  good/' 
This  referred  only  to  interference  in  behalf  of  Presbytery  in 
England  ;  in  the  business  of  his  dear  native  Kirk  he  would, 
of  course,  remain  indefatigable.  On  receipt  of  the  letter, 
Mr.  Douglas  could  only  sigh,  and  hope  the  best.  Amid  all 
that  vast  jubilation  in  the  three  kingdoms  which  Holies 
reported  to  his  Majesty  there  were,  here  and  there,  some  heavy 
hearts l. 

For  some  days  Montague's  fleet  had  been  in  the  Bay  of 


1  Clarendon,  907— 909;    Lords    and  1679),  710 ;  Pepys's  Diary, May  4—16 ; 

Commons  Journals, May  2:3 ;  Pari.  Hist.  Baillie,  III.  410;   Memoir  of  Sharp  in 

I\  .  35—40  (Holles's  Speech)  ;  Phillips  Chambers's  Biog.  Diet.  ofSe  ism  n  (eon- 

(continuation  of  Baker's  Chronicle,  edit  taining  extracts  from  Sharp's  letters). 


6  LIFE    OF  MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF  HIS  TIME. 

Scheveningen,  ready  for  his  Majesty's  orders.  Visitors  from 
the  Hague  had  been  coming  on  board  daily  in  great  numbers, 
and  some  of  the  officers  of  the  ships  had,  by  Montague's 
leave,  landed  at  the  village  of  Scheveningen  for  a  run  thence 
to  the  Hague.  One  of  those  so  favoured  had  been  Mr.  Samuel 
Pepys,  Montague's  private  secretary,  whose  delight  with  the 
city  and  its  fine  sights,  and  his  chance  meetings  with  Dr. 
Fuller  and  other  London  friends  there,  and  his  glimpses  of 
important  Dutch  personages,  and  especially  his  pleasure  in 
being  admitted  to  kiss  the  royal  hands,  are  all  duly  chronicled 
in  his  Diary.  Montague  himself  had  remained  on  board, 
waiting  the  eventful  day,  while  in  all  the  ships  there  was 
carpentering,  painting,  and  cutting  out  of  silks  and  other 
decorations.  And  lo  !  at  last,  after  a  delay  of  two  days  on 
account  of  rough  weather,  there  did  come  the  complete  pro- 
cession of  departure  from  the  Hague  to  Scheveningen.  His 
Majesty,  the  Duke  of  York,  and  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  were 
accompanied  by  the  ex-Queen  of  Bohemia,  the  widowed 
Princess  of  Orange,  and  her  young  son  Prince  William  of 
Orange,  to  see  them  off,  while  an  "  infinity  of  people  "  who 
were  to  go  with  them,  the  Parliamentary  Commissioners  in- 
cluded, either  preceded  or  followed.  This  was  on  Tuesday 
the  22nd,  when  a  cannonade  twice  round  all  the  ships  of  the 
fleet  welcomed  his  Majesty's  arrival  on  the  shore,  and 
Mr.  Pepys,  firing  the  first  gun  on  board  the  Naseby,  nearly 
blew  out  his  right  eye  by  holding  it  too  near  the  touch-hole. 
But  the  cannonading  was  nothing  to  that  of  next  day,  Wed- 
nesday the  23rd,  when  boats  from  the  shore  brought  off  his 
Majesty  and  his  Royal  relatives,  and  they  actually  stood  on 
the  deck  of  the  Naseby.  While  Montague  and  the  rest  were 
kissing  hands  there,  the  roar  of  guns  in  the  bay  was  perfectly 
astounding.  It  ceased  only  when  his  Majesty,  the  two  Dukes, 
the  Queen  of  Bohemia,  the  Princess  of  Orange,  and  little 
Prince  William,  sat  down  to  a  state-dinner  hy  themselves, — 
"  which  was  a  blessed  sight  to  see  "  says  Pepys  most  gravely. 
After  dinner  there  was  a  rather  interesting  ceremony.  It 
was  on  board  The  Naseby  that  his  Majesty  had  come,  but  that 
could  be  the  name  of  the  ship  no  longer.     It  was  agreed  that 


THE   VOYAGE    HOME.  7 

she  should  be  thenceforth  The  Charles  ;  and  the  King  and  the 
Duke  of  York,  with  Montague  assisting,  went  over  the  names 
of  the  other  ships,  changing  The  Richard  into  The  James,  The 
Dunbar  into  The  Henri/,  The  Lambert  into  The  Henrietta,  The 
Speaker  into  The  Mary,  &c.  This  ceremony  over,  the  Queen  of 
Bohemia,  the  Princess  of  Orange,  and  her  son,  took  their 
leave,  to  return  to  the  Hague,  the  Duke  of  York  at  the  same 
time  going  on  board  the  London,  and  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
on  board  the  Swiftsure,  in  which  ships  they  were  to  make  the 
voyage  severally,  while  Charles  himself  remained  in  the  re- 
christened  Naseby.  Anchor  was  weighed  in  the  afternoon, 
and,  "  with  a  fresh  gale  and  most  happy  weather,"  the 
squadron  sailed  for  England  \ 

All  the  afternoon,  while  the  Dutch  coast  was  yet  visible, 
Charles  was  walking  "  here  and  there,  up  and  down,"  about 
the  ship,  "  very  active  and  stirring "  and  chatting  and  dis- 
coursing with  everybody.  On  the  quarter-deck  he  got  on 
his  favourite  subject  of  his  escape  after  the  battle  of  Worcester, 
telling  the  most  laughable  stories  of  his  disguised  wander- 
ings and  the  queer  straits  in  which  he  found  himself,  though 
Pepys,  standing  among  the  listeners,  was  sometimes  "  ready 
to  weep."  Evening  had  come  when  Montague,  by  his  swiftest 
vessel,  sent  off  a  letter  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
reporting  all  well  so  far.  "  May  23,  1660,  about  ten  leagues 
"  from  Scheveling,  our  course  west-and-by-north ;  seven 
"  o3 clock  in  the  evening,  Wednesday ;  a  fresh  gale  at  north- 
"  and-by-east/'  is  his  sailorly  dating  of  the  letter,  corrobo- 
rated by  Pepys's  farther  report,  "  Under  sail  all  night,  and 
most  glorious  weather."  Though  the  ship  was  so  overcrowded 
that  there  was  difficulty  in  finding  beds  for  all,  Pepys  was  in 
splendid  company  and  never  enjoyed  himself  more.  Next  day 
it  was  even  better,  for  then  Pepys  had  Mr.  Holies,  Dr.  Earle, 
the  King's  chaplains,  the  King's  physicians,  and  others,  to 
dine  with  him  in  his  own  cabin,  and  on  deck  all  day  persons 
of  honour  were  walking  about,   or  distributed  into  groups, 

1  Pepys,  May  14 — 23;  Letter  of  Mon-  strange    from   him   in  such  a  matter, 

tague  to  the  Lords,  of  date  May  23,  gives  the  24th  as  the  day  of  setting  sail 

printed   in  the  Lords  Journals  of  the  (p.  910). 
25th.     Clarendon,  by  a  blunder  rather 


8  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND  HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 

and  among"  them  was  the  inimitable  Tom  Killigrew,  tellijg 
his  funniest  stories.  And  so  that  day  passed,  and  just  before 
night  they  sighted  the  Kentish  coast  1« 

On  Friday  the  25th  there  was  the  landing-  at  Dover.  The 
King"  and  the  two  Dukes  went  ashoi'e  together  about  noon  in 
one  barge,  the  captain  of  Montague's  ship  steering,  and 
Montague  himself  attending  bare-headed.  On  the  beach, 
"  infinite  the  crowd  of  people,  and  the  horsemen,  citizens,  and 
"  noblemen  of  all  sorts,"  with  shouting  and  joy  "  past  imagina- 
"  tion "  when  his  Majesty  set  foot  on  the  ground,  and 
General  Monk  stepped  forward  from  the  rest  with  a  profound 
obeisance,  as  if  to  prostrate  himself,  but  his  Majesty  took 
him  by  the  hand  most  gloriously  and  kissed  and  embraced 
him.  Others  round  Monk  were  kissing  the  hem  of  his 
Majesty's  garments ;  and  one  of  these,  who  says  he  observed 
his  Majesty's  countenance  closely  on  his  first  stepping  ashore, 
thought  he  could  see  in  it  "  a  mixture  of  other  passions  besides 
joy."  As  there  was  to  be  no  stay  at  Dover,  a  canopy  had 
been  prepared,  under  which  his  Majesty  walked,  attended  by 
Monk,  to  a  chair  of  state  at  some  little  distance  from  the 
water-side ;  and  here,  while  he  talked  with  Monk,  the  Mayor 
and  Aldermen  of  Dover  made  their  formal  salutations.  They 
presented  him  with  "  a  very  rich  Bible,"  which  he  graciously 
accepted,  saying  "  it  was  the  thing  that  he  loved  above  all 
things  in  the  world."  Then,  in  a  coach  which  was  in  waiting, 
he  and  the  two  Dukes,  with  Monk,  drove  off  through  the 
town  on  their  way  to  Canterbury,  these  four  inside,  and  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham  stowed  in  the  boot.  To  Montague,  who 
had  never  stirred  from  the  barge,  it  was  a  relief  to  know  that 
his  part  of  the  great  business  was  thus  happily  over  without 
the  slightest  mismanagement.  He  returned  to  his  ship, 
thanking  God ;  and  his  last  order  to  Pepys  that  night  was 
that  a  mark  at  the  head  of  the  chief  cabin,  which  his  Majesty 
had  made  with  his  own  hands  that  morning,  in  record  of  his 
exact  height,  should  be  carefully  gilded,  and  a  crown  and  the 
letters  C.  It.  placed  in  gold  beside  it.     All  future  visitors  to 

1  Pepys,  May  23—24  ;  Lords  Journals,  May  25. 


THE  ROYAL  PROGRESS  TO  LONDON.  V 

tl\?  ship  were  to  be  shown  that  mark,  and  to  know  that 
it  was  in  this  ship  that  Charles  had  come  over1. 

At  Canterbury  the  Royal  party  made  a  halt  of  nearly  three 
days,  with  a  fresh  influx  of  people  of  rank  to  welcome  his 
Majesty,  and  with  more  and  more  of  conversation  between  his 
Majesty  and  Monk.  Here  it  was  too  that  his  Majesty  con- 
ferred the  great  honour  of  the  Knighthood  of  the  Garter  on 
Monk  and  on  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  with  more  ordinary 
knighthoods  on  a  number  of  others.  Among  these  was 
Mr.  William  Morrice,  now  specially  introduced  by  Monk 
as  bis  intimate  friend  and  wisest  adviser,  and  on  that  ground 
at  the  same  time  admitted  of  his  Majesty's  Privy  Council  and 
made  one  of  his  Secretaries  of  State.  Monk  himself  and 
Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper  were  also  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  More  important  than  these  formalities  perhaps  was 
the  fact  that  Hyde,  the  King's  real  chief  minister  all  through 
his  exile,  first  under  his  old  title  of  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, dating  from  1642,  but  since  1658  under  the  higher 
title  of  Lord  Chancellor  of  England,  had  now  an  opportunity 
of  taking  his  private  measure  both  of  Monk  and  of  Mr. 
Secretary  Morrice.  Hyde  had  been  making  his  observations, 
and  communicating  to  the  King  his  doubts  whether  "  Old 
George "  was  altogether  the  Solomon  he  looked,  when,  on 
Monday  the  28th,  there  was  a  move  from  Canterbury  Lon- 
donwards,  by  Rochester.  One  reason  for  the  delay  at  Can- 
terbury had  been  that  his  Majesty  wished  to  enter  London 
on  his  birthday,  Tuesday  the  29th,  when  he  would  be  thirty 
years  old. 

So  it  was  arranged,  and  so  it  happened.  Of  that  extra- 
ordinary royal  progress  of  King  Charles  from  Rochester  to 
Whitehall  on  the  29th  of  May,  1660,  there  was  to  be  a 
remembrance  to  all  generations.  Who  can  describe  it  ?  The 
long  highway  of  more  than  five-and-twenty  miles  from 
Rochester  was  lined  on  both  sides  with  acclaiming  multitudes, 
so  that  it  seemed  "  one  continued  street  wonderfully  in- 
habited."     On  Blackheath  there  was  the  passage  of  review 

1  Pepysj  May  25  ;  Phillips,  Vll  ;  Pail.  Hist.  IV.  58—59. 


10  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AISTD   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

through  the  bannered  army  of  horse  and  foot,  fifty  thousand 
strong-,  drawn  up  to  salute  his  Majesty,  with  the  address  of 
loyalty  presented  by  the  commanding'  officer,  and  all  the  other 
picturesque  incidents,  as  imagined  by  Scott  for  the  last  scene 
of  his  Woodstock.  At  the  skirts  of  London  itself  there  were 
the  kneeling  Lord  Mayor,  Aldermen,  and  Common  Council, 
with  a  rest  for  civic  ceremonial,  and  for  the  collation  which 
had  been  provided  ;  and  thence  through  the  City,  the  trained- 
bands  and  City  Companies  keeping  order  in  the  streets,  and 
the  windows  all  hung  with  tapestry,  there  was  the  proces- 
sion as  far  as  to  Fleet  Street  and  Temple  Bar.  After  it 
had  passed  Temple  Bar  one  could  see  how  it  was  finally  mar- 
shalled. Major  General  Browne  led  the  whole,  with  a  troop 
of  three  hundred  in  cloth  of  silver ;  next  came  a  marching 
mass  in  purple  velvet;  next,  a  troop  in  buff,  with  silver 
sleeves  and  green  scarfs ;  then  smaller  troops,  in  blue  and 
silver,  grey  and  silver,  and  pure  grey,  all  with  trumpeters 
before  them,  as  finely  apparelled  as  those  of  the  former  troops; 
then  three  troops  more  in  rich  habits,  but  of  colours  not  re- 
ported ;  then  the  Sheriff 's-men,  in  red  cloaks  and  with  pikes 
in  their  hands,  to  the  number  of  four-score,  and  six  hundred 
picked  men  of  the  City-companies,  in  black  velvet  suits  with 
chains  of  gold  ;  then  kettledrums,  trumpets,  and  streamers  ; 
then  twelve  London  ministers  ;  then  the  Knights  of  the  Bath 
and  their  Esquires  ;  then  more  kettledrums  and  trumpets, 
preceding  his  Majesty's  life-guard  of  horse  ;  then,  in  a  blaze 
of  various  colours,  the  City-marshal,  the  City-waits,  and  all 
other  City-officers,  concluding  with  the  two  Sheriffs,  the 
Aldermen,  the  Heralds  and  Macers,  and  the  Lord  Mayor  car- 
rying the  sword;  then  Lord  General  Monk  and  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham ;  then,  O  then,  His  Majesty  himself,  between 
the  Dukes  of  York  and  Gloucester  ;  then  a  number  of  the 
King's  servants ;  and,  last  of  all,  a  troop  of  horse  with  white 
colours,  and  the  Lord  General's  life-guard,  and  five  regiments 
more  of  horse,  and  two  troops  of  mounted  noblemen  and  gen- 
tlemen. It  was  about  half-past  seven  in  the  evening  when 
his  Majesty  thus  arrived  at  Whitehall,  where  meanwhile  the 
two  Houses  of  Parliament  were  assembled  in  the  Banqueting 


THE  ENTRY  INTO  LONDON.  11 

House,  ranged  in  due  order.  In  among  these  his  Majesty 
walked,  with  strange  thoughts  perhaps  as  he  remembered 
his  father's  last  moments  in  that  fatal  room,  w7ith  the  scaffold 
ready  outside  ;  and,  after  he  had  seated  himself  in  the  chair 
of  state  and  there  had  been  all  obeisances,  he  was  addressed 
in  prepared  orations  by  the  two  Speakers, — by  the  Earl  of 
Manchester  for  the  Lords,  and  by  Sir  Harbottle  Grimstone 
for  the  Commons.  His  Majesty  replied  briefly,  but  suitably, 
excusing  himself  for  his  brevity  by  declaring  that  the  fatigue 
of  his  journey,  and  the  confusion  of  joyful  noises  still  in  his 
ears,  unfitted  him  for  saying  much.  He  was,  indeed,  so 
completely  tired  out  that  the  religious  service  in  Westminster 
Abbey  with  which  the  day  was  to  have  ended  had  to  be  ex* 
changed  for  private  service  in  the  presence-chamber  of 
Whitehall.  He  slept  in  Whitehall  that  night,  the  first  time 
since  January,  1641-2,  when  he  had  left  it  with  his  father  as 
a  boy  of  twelve.  Gossip  says  that  the  beautiful  Mrs.  Palmer, 
to  be  known  afterwards  as  Lady  Castlemaine,  and  finally  as 
the  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  was  already  near  the  Palace  1. 

Over  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland  flew  the  news  of  the 
King's  triumphant  entry  into  his  capital,  and  everywhere 
with  the  same  delirium  of  joy.  In  Edinburgh,  Dublin,  and 
all  considerable  towns,  there  were  proclamations  and  re- 
proclamations,  with  peals  of  bell-ringing,  bonfires  and  shouting 
mobs,  public  feasts  and  wine  running  from  the  spouts  for  the 
general  benefit,  drinkings  of  his  Majesty's  health  and  of 
Monk's,  and  burnings  of  Oliver  in  effigy,  by  himself  or  with 
a  twin-effigy  of  the  Devil.  For  months  and  months  the 
delirium  was  to  continue,  and  even  to  grow ;  nor  through  the 
whole  reign  of  Charles  was  there  ever  to  be  an  end,  or  even 
much  visible  abatement,  of  that  mood  of  popular  adoration  of 
the  monarch,  with  hatred  to  the  memory  of  Oliver  and  all  his 
belongings,  which  ran  through  the  Islands,  like  a  sudden 
epidemic,  in  the  first  year  of  the  Restoration 2. 

1  Clarendon,  994 — 996  {Continuation  of  State  and  Lord  Privy  Seal  in  the 

of  Life);    Phillips,   709 — 710;    Whit-  reign  of  Queen  Anne. 

locke,  IV.  415—416;   Pari.    Hist.  IV.  -  Phillips, 714;  Chambers's  Domestic 

54—63;   Burnet   (edit.   1823),  I.    160,  Annah  of  Scotland,  11.  261;  and  tra- 

footnote  by  Lord  Dartmouth,  Secretary  dition  passim.      From   an    Edinburgh 


12  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

From  that  year,  for  example,  what   a  universal  wheel  of 
popular  English  literature  to  abject  Stuartism  and  systematic 
Anti-Oliverianism  in  politics !     Passing  from  the  books  and 
pamphlets  of  the  Protectorate,  or  even  from  those  of  1659, 
to  the  new  mass  from  1660  onwards,  one  is  amazed  at  the 
discovery  that  the   Muses  in   a  nation   can   be  such  arrant 
turncoats.     While  Oliver  lived,  and  for  some  time  after  his 
death,   they  had  applauded  him  and  panegyrised  him,  even 
the  honest  Royalist  wits  who  remained  within  his  dominions 
subdued  at  length  into  respect  for  him,  and  expressing  that 
respect  in  language  which  was  the  more  remarkable  because 
it  was  cautious  and  reluctant.     Now  it  was  all  otherwise.     In 
prose  and  in  verse,  nothing  but  panegyrics  to  Charles,  lauda- 
tions of  Charles  and  his  kindred  day  after  day,  renunciations 
of  Oliver  in  every  form  of  posthumous  insult,  reports  of  his 
meditations  in  Hell  and  of  his  blasphemous  messages  upwards 
from  his  pre-eminence  among  the  damned.     Take  a  few  of 
the   leading  instances: — Among   the   first  to    celebrate   the 
Restoration  in  verse  was  Edmund  Waller,  of  whose  relations 
to  Cromwell  we    have  already  seen    enough,  and   of  whose 
"Panegyric  to  my  Lord  Protector  in  May  1655  there  may  be 
some  recollection  (Vol.  V.  pp.  85,  86).    Waller  must  have  been 
busy  with  the  necessary  recantation  as  soon  as  he  heard  of 
the  King's  arrival  at  Dover  ;  for  his  poem  To  the  King  on  his 
Majesty's   Happy   Return   was    registered    by  the   publisher, 
Richard  Marriott,  on  May  30,  the  day  after  his   Majesty's 
entry  into  Whitehall  \    Amid  120  lines  of  heroics  his  Majesty 
miffht  read  these  : — 


"SJJ 


"  Much^suffering  Monarch,  the  first  English-born 
That  has  the  crown  of  these  three  nations  worn, 
How  has  your  patience  with  the  barbarous  rage 
Of  your  own  soil  contended  half  an  age, 


correspondent   of  the  London  Parlia-       "casions)  ;  after  which  followed  all  the 
m  titary  Intelligencer  of  June  25— July       "guns  in  Edinburgh  Castle,  Leith  cita- 


A 


2,  1660,  we  learn  that  the  rejoicings  in  "del,  and  the  ships  in  the  Road."    There 

that   city  were  protracted   into  June.  was  a  largess  to  the  soldiery ;  and  at 

One   day  in   that   month    the    Major-  night  "  about  1500  bonfires  were  made 

General  in  command  "fired  the  great  on  Arthur  Seat,  one  of  40  loads  of  coals." 

'■'  cannon  called  Mounce  Meg  (a  cannon  l  Stationers'  Registers, 
"never  fired  but  on  extraordinary  oc- 


POETICAL   CONGRATULATIONS   OF   CHARLES.  13 

Till  (your  tried  virtue  and  your  sacred  word 

At  last  preventing  your  unwilling  sword) 

Armies  and  fleets  which  kept  you  out  so  long 

Owned  their  great  sovereign  and  redressed  his  wrong; 

When  straight  the  people,  by  no  force  compelled, 

Nor  longer  from  their  inclination  held, 

Break  forth  at  once,  like  powder  set  on  fire, 

And  with  a  noble  rage  their  king  require  !  .  .  . 

Faith,  Law,  and  Piety,  that  banished  train, 

Justice  and  Truth,  with  you  return  again ; 

The  city's  trade  and  country's  easy  life 

Once  more  shall  flourish  without  fraud  or  strife. 

Your  reign  no  less  assures  the  ploughman's  peace 

Than  the  warm  sun  advances  his  increase, 

And  does  the  shepherds  as  securely  keep 

From  all  their  fears  as  they  preserve  their  sheep. 

But,  above  all,  the  muse-inspired  train 

Triumph  and  raise  their  drooping  heads  again : 

Kind  Heaven  at  once  has,  in  your  person,  sent 

Their  sacred  judge,  their  guard,  their  argument." 

Another  of  the  "  muse-inspired  train "  who  made  all  haste 
was  Abraham  Cowley.  His  Ode  upon  the  Blessed  Restoration 
and  Return  of  his  Sacred  Majesty  Charles  the  Second  was  out  on 
the  31st  of  May,  published  by  Henry  Herring-man1.  Much 
is  to  be  excused  to  Cowley,  a  man  of  far  finer  intellect  and  of 
more  generous  nature  than  Waller,  and  whose  compliance  with 
Cromwell's  rule,  though  it  involved  the  rupture  of  intimate 
previous  connexion  with  the  Stuarts,  had  been  the  effect  of 
mere  momentary  despair.  All  things  considered,  however, 
was  not  Cowley  labouring  too  consciously  in  this  poem  to  win 
his  pardon  by  skilful  phraseology?  He  doubts  whether  the 
Isle,  after  its  long  lapse  into  barbarism,  can  yet  expect  back 
any  of  the  virtues. 

"  Of  all,  methinks,  we  least  should  see 
The  cheerful  looks  again  of  Liberty. 
That  name  of  Cromwell,  which  does  freshly  still 
The  curses  of  so  many  sufferers  fill, 
Is  still  enough  to  make  her  stay, 
And  jealous  for  a  while  remain, 
Lest,  as  a  tempest  carried  him  away, 
Some  hurricane  should  bring  him  back  again." 

1  Dated  Thomasou  copy  in  the  British  Museum. 


14  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Still  there  are  signs  of  hope  : — 

"  Where 's  now  that  ignis  fatuus  which  ere  while 
Misled  our  wandering  Isle  1 
Where 's  the  impostor  Cromwell  gone  ? 
Where 's  now  that  falling  star,  his  son  ? " 

And  Charles  is  on  the  horizon  : — 

"  Come,  mighty  Charles !    desire  of  nations,  come  ! 
Come,  you  triumphant  exile,  home  ! 

He 's  come,  he 's  safe  at  shore  :    I  hear  the  noise 
Of  a  whole  land  which  does  at  once  rejoice ; 
I  hear  the  united  people's  sacred  voice. 
The  sea  which  circles  us  around 
Ne'er  sent  to  land  so  loud  a  sound; 
The  mighty  shout  sends  to  the  sea  a  gale, 
And  swells  up  every  sail ; 
The  hells  and  guns  are  scarcely  heard  at  all ; 
The  artificial  joy's  drowned  by  the  natural. 

All  England  but  one  bonfire  seems  to  be, 
One  iEtna  shooting  flames  into  the  sea  ; 
The  starry  worlds  which  shine  to  us  afar 
Take  ours  at  this  time  for  a  star. 
With  wine  all  rooms,  with  wine  the  conduits,  flow; 
And  we,  the  priests  of  a  poetic  rage, 
Wonder  that  in  this  golden  age 
The  rivers  too  should  not  do  so. 
There  is  no  Stoic,  sure,  who  would  not  now 
Even  some  excess  allow, 

And  grant  that  one  wild  fit  of  cheerful  folly 
Should  end  our  twenty  years  of  dismal  melancholy." 

Sir  William  Davenant  could  at  no  time  write  so  well  as  Cowley ; 
but,  as  having-  been  Poet-Laureate  of  the  late  reign  from  1637. 
and  as  now  stepping  legitimately  into  the  Laureateship  again, 
something  was  expected  of  him.  He  had  been  a  faithful 
Royalist  all  along,  had  suffered  for  his  Royalism  more  than 
Cowley,  had  never  lapsed  as  Cowley  had  done,  and  had  been 
under  no  greater  obligations  to  the  Protectorate  than  for 
shelter,  and  permission  at  last  to  set  up  an  English  Opera.  In 
these  circumstances  his  Poem  upon  Ms  Sacred  Majesty's  most 
happy  return  to  his  Dominions 1  is  even  creditable  to  his  modera- 
tion.    There  is  little  of  retrospective  malice  in  it,  but  chiefly 

]  Printed  for  Herringman,  and  out  in  London  June  25,  as  I  learn  from  a  copy  in 
the  Thomason  Collection. 


POETICAL    CONGRATULATIONS   OF   CHARLES.  15 

a  heavy  enumeration  of  the  undoubted  virtues  of  Charles, — his 
clemency,  his  judgment,  his  "fire  of  thought,"  his  valour,  his 
social  and  domestic  graciousness,  and  his  care  for  religion  ; 
and  the  only  thing  one  cannot  wholly  forgive  in  the  poem  is 
its  existence.  Here  are  the  six  lines  following  the  list  of 
Charles's  virtues : — 

"  Thus  showing  what  you  are,  how  quickly  we 
Infer  what  all  your  subjects  soon  will  be  ! 
For  from  the  monarch's  virtue  subjects  take 
The  ingredient  which  does  public  virtue  make ; 
At  his  bright  beam  they  all  their  tapers  light, 
And  by  his  dial  set  their  motion  right." 

But  what  shall  we  say  of  Dryden  ?  He  had  grown  up  in  the 
Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate,  connected  with  their 
statesmen  and  acknowledging  their  principles ;  he  had  been 
in  official  employment  under  Thurloe  for  Oliver  (Vol.  V. 
p.  375) ;  and  his  best  known  literary  performance  hitherto 
had  been  his  Heroic  Stanzas  consecrated  to  the  memory  of  his 
Highness  Oliver,  written  just  after  the  entombment  of  Oliver  in 
Westminster  Abbey.      Among  the  stanzas  had  been  these  : — 

"  How  shall  I  then  begin  or  where  conclude 
To  draw  a  fame  so  truly  circular  ? 
For  in  a  round  what  order  can  be  shewed, 
Where  all  the  parts  so  equal-perfect  are  1 

His  grandeur  he  derived  from  Heaven  alone  ; 

For  he  wa3  great  ere  Fortune  made  him  so, 
And  wars,  like  mists  that  rise  against  the  sun, 

Made  him  but  greater  seem,  not  greater  grow .  .  . 

And  yet  dominion  was  not  his  design ; 

We  owe  that  blessing  not  to  him  but  Heaven, 
Which  to  fair  acts  unsought  rewards  did  join, 

Rewards  that  less  to  him  than  us  were  given." 

And  so,  through  a  sustained  eulogy  on  all  Cromwell's  military 
and  political  career,  till  death  took  him.  Even  then  his  grand 
influence  remained  : — 

"  No  civil  broils  have  since  his  death  arose, 
But  faction  now  by  habit  does  obey  ; 
And  wars  have  that  respect  for  his  repose 

As  winds  for  halcyons  when  they  breed  at  sea. 


16  LIFE   OF  MILTON  AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

His  ashes  in  a  peaceful  urn  shall  rest; 

His  name  a  great  example  stands  to  show 
How  strangely  high  endeavours  may  be  blessed 

Where  piety  and  valour  jointly  go." 

And  yet  now,  in  the  series  of  Dryclen's  poems,  that  which 
stands  next  to  the  stanzas  to  Oliver's  memory  is  the  Aslraea 
Redux,  or  celebration  of  Charles's  Return,  published,  as 
Cowley's  similar  poem  had  been,  by  Herringman1.  Here 
there  is  the  most  unblushing  retractation  of  all  that  he  had 
written  less  than  eighteen  months  before.  There  is  a  poetic 
account  of  the  voyage  of  Charles  home,  with  note  of  the 
ship  that  brought  him, — 

"  The  Naseby,  now  no  longer  England's  shame, 
But  better  to  be  lost  in  Charles's  name ; " 

and,  after  praises  of  Charles,  and  predictions  of  his  beneficent 
reign,  the  poem  ends : — 

"  The  discontented  now  are  only  they 
"Whose  crimes  before  did  your  just  cause  betray  : 
Of  these  your  edicts  some  reclaim  from  sins, 
But  most  your  life  and  blest  example  wins. 
0  happy  prince,  whom  Heaven  hath  taught  the  way 
By  paying  vows  to  have  more  vows  to  pay ! 
O  happy  age  !    O  times  like  those  alone 
By  fate  reserved  for  great  Augustus'  throne, 
"When  the  joint  growth  of  arms  and  arts  foreshew 
The  world  a  Monarch,  and  that  Monarch  you  ! " 

It  is  refreshing,  after  all  this,  to  read  a  piece  of  verse  on  the 
same  subject  that  came  afterwards  from  the  pen  of  honest 
Andrew  Marvell.  At  the  very  least,  it  has  the  merit  of 
bringing  us  close  to  the  actual  figure  and  physiognomy  of 
the  man  that  had  come  over  in  the  Naseby  : — 

"  Of  a  tall  stature  and  of  sable  hue, 
Much  like  the  son  of  Kish,  that  lofty  Jew, 
Twelve  years  complete  he  suffered  in  exile, 
And  kept  his  father's  asses  all  the  while. 
At  length,  by  wonderful  impulse  of  fate, 
The  people  call  him  home  to  help  the  State; 


1  Publisher  and  author  were  turncoats       had  published  the  stanzas  to  Cromwell's 
together  in  this  case,  for  Herringman       memory. 


THE    PRIVY   COUNCIL    OF  THE   RESTORATION.  17 

And,  what  is  more,  they  send  him  money  too, 
And  clothe  him  all,  from  head  to  foot,  anew  : 
Nor  did  he  such  small  favours  then  disdain 
Who  in  his  thirtieth  year  began  his  reign. 
In  a  slashed  doublet  then  he  came  ashore, 
And  dubbed  poor  Palmer's  wife  his  royal " 1. 

The    following-    was   the   composition    of   Charles's    Privy 

Council  and   Ministry  in  June  1660,  immediately   after  his 

return : — 

Or  the  Blood  Royal. 

James,  Duke  of  York  (aetat.  27),  Lord  High  Admired  of  England, 

and  Lord  Warden  of  the  Cinque  Ports. 
Henry,  Duke  or  Gloucester  (setat.  20).     He  died  of  small-pox, 

Sept.  13,  1660. 

Great  Officers  of  State  and  of  the  Household. 

Sir  George  Monk,  K.G.  (setat.  52),  Captain-General  of  the  Forces 
of  the  Three  Kingdoms,  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  Master  of  the 
Horse  to  his  Majesty,  and  Gentleman  of  the  Bedchamber.  On  the 
7th  of  July  1660  he  was  created  Duke  of  Albemarle,  Earl 

OF  ToRRINGTON,  AND  BARON  MONK  OF  POTHERIDGE,  BeAUCHAMP, 

and  Teyes  ;  and  there  was  thenceforth  much  interest  in  observing 
how  he,  and  his  slatternly  wife, — remembered  as  Nan  Clarges, 
a  blacksmith's  daughter,  and  once  a  milliner, — comported  them- 
selves in  the  ducal  dignity. 

Sir  Edward  Hyde,  Knt.  (aetat.  52),  Lord  High  ChanceUor  of 
England,  and  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  The  king  wanted  to 
make  him  a  peer  at  once  ;  but  he  declined  the  honour  for  the 
present. 

James  Butler,  Marquis  of  Ormond  (aetat.  50),  Lord  Steward  of 
the  Household.  His  Marquisate  (raised,  March  20,  1660-1,  to  the 
Dukedom  of  Ormond)  was  in  the  Irish  peerage ;  but,  on  the  20th 
of  July  1660,  he  was  made  an  English  peer  also,  as  Earl  of 
Brecknock  and  Baron  Butler  of  Llanthony. 

Thomas  Wriothesley,  Earl  of  Southampton  (setat.  51),  Lord 
High  Treasurer.  He  was  put  into  this  office  in  September  1660, 
the  Treasury  having  meanwhile,  at  his  request,  been  managed  by 
commissioners,  of  whom  he  and  Hyde  were  the  chief. 

"William  Fiennes,  Viscount  Saye  and  Sele  (aetat.  67),  Lord 
Privrj  Seal.  This  is  "  Old  Subtlety  "  (Vol.  II.  p.  1 55)  at  the  close 
of  his  life. 

Sir  Edward  Montague  (aetat.  35),  Master  of  the  Wardrobe.  This  is 
the  Oliverian  Admiral  Montague,  the  naval  agent  of  the  Restora- 
tion, as  Monk  had  been  the  military  one.     In  July  1660  he  was 

1  "  An  Historical  Poem"  :  Grosart's  edition  of  Marvell's  Works,  I.  313. 
VOL.  VI.  C 


18  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

made  K.G.,  and  created  Earl  of  Sandwich,  Viscount  Mon- 
tague OF  HlTCHINBROOK,  AND  BARON  St.  NeOTS. 

Montague  Bertie,  Earl  of  Lindsey,  Hereditary  Lord  Great 
Chamberlain  of  England.  His  tenure  of  office  dated  from 
1642. 

Edward  Montague,  Earl  of  Manchester  (setat.  57),  Lord  Cham- 
berlain of  the  Household. 

Francis  Seymour,  Lord  Seymour  of  Trowbridge,  Chancellor  of 
the  Duchy  of  Lancaster. 

Sir  George  Carteret,  Knt.  (setat.  61),  Vice-Chamberlain  of  the 
Household.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Hyde  ;  he  had  been  in 
charge  of  Jersey  for  Charles  II,  till  that  Island  was  surrendered 
to  the  Commonwealth  in  1653;  and  he  had  since  then  resided  in 
France. 

Sir  Frederick  Cornwallis,  Knt.,  Treasurer  of  the  Household. 

Sir  Charles  Berkeley,  Knt.,  Comptroller  of  the  Household. 

Sir  Edward  Nicholas,  Knt.  )  n  .     .     ,  a      .    ;       .  -;. 

Sir  William  Morrice,  Knt.  )  *»»»F*  Secretaries  of  State. 

Other  Privy  Councillors. 

William  Seymour,  Marquis  of  Hertford.  This  aged  Royalist 
lived  only  long  enough  to  see  the  Restoration,  and  to  be  rewarded 
with  a  revival,  in  his  honour,  of  that  Dukedom  of  Somerset 
which  had  been  dormant  since  the  attainder  of  his  great-grand- 
father, the  Protector  Somerset,  in  1552.  He  died  Oct.  24, 
1660. 

Henry  Pierrepoint,  Marquis  of  Dorchester  (setat.  54).  He 
was  the  sou  and  heir  of  that  Robert  Pierrepoint,  Earl  of  Kings- 
ton and  Viscount  Newark,  who  had  been  killed  on  the  king's 
side  in  1643  (vol.  II.  p.  248). 

Thomas  Howard,  Earl  of  Berkshire,  son  of  the  former  Royalist 
Earl  (Vol.  II.  p.  152  and  p.  428). 

Robert  Sidney,  Earl  of  Leicester,  known  to  us  at  intervals 
since  1638,  both  on  his  account,  and  as  the  father  of  Viscount 
Lisle  and  Algernon  Sidney. 

Algernon  Percy,  Earl  of  Northumberland,  first  known  to  us 
before  the  Civil  Wars,  and  afterwards  as  a  conspicuous  Parlia- 
mentarian through  the  Wars,  from  1642  to  1649. 

George  Goring,  Earl  of  Norwich,  Royalist  since  1643  (Vol.  II. 
p.  429),  and  remembered  most  by  his  connexion  with  the  siege 
of  Colchester  in  the  Second  Civil  War. 

Henry  Jermyn,  Earl  of  St.  Alban's.  As  Lord  Jermyn,  he  had 
been  chief  of  the  household  to  the  Ex-Queen  Henrietta-Maria 
in  France,  arid  also,  it  is  believed,  secretly  her  husband  (Vol.  III. 
]>.  495).  The  earldom  had  recently  been  conferred  on  him  abroad 
by  Charles  II.  at  his  mother's  request.  On  July  18,  1660,  he 
returned  to  France  for  a  while,  as  ambassador  for  Charles  to 
Louis  XIV. 


THE   JUNTO   OR   CABINET.  19 

Lord  Colepeppeb,  known  to  us  as  the  staunch  Royalist  Sir  John 
Colepepper,  minister  for  Charles  I.  just  before  the  Civil  War,  and 
colleague  and  friend  of  Hyde  in  the  councils  of  Charles  II.  in  his 
exile.  He  died  July  12,  1660,  having  barely  lived  to  see  the 
Restoration  and  join  in  its  first  proceedings. 

Lord  Roberts,  one  of  the  Parliamentarian  Peers  in  the  Civil  Wars 
(Vol.  II.  p.  431),  but  Royalist  since  then.  It  was  intended  that 
he  should  be  Lord  Deputy  of  Ireland. 

Lord  Wentworth  (Vol.  II.  p.  429).  He  had  been  with  the  King 
in  Scotland,  and  had  commanded  an  English  regiment  for  him, 
raised  abroad. 

Colonel  Charles  Howard.  This  is  the  Oliverian  on  whom 
Oliver  had  conferred  one  of  the  only  two  peerages  he  created. 
By  01ivei''s  patent  he  had  been  Viscount  Howard  since  July  20, 
1657.  That  title  was  null  now;  but  in  his  new  position  as 
a  king's  man  he  might  expect  compensation. 

Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  Bart,  (setat.  39). 

Mr.  Denzil  Holles  (setat.  63),  sufficiently  known  already. 

Mr.  Arthur  Annesley,  late  President  of  the  Council  of  State 
which  had  been  appointed  by  the  Parliament  of  the  Secluded 
Members,  and  chief  manager,  along  with  Monk,  of  the  proceed- 
ings towards  the  Restoration  in  the  interval  between  that  Parlia- 
ment and  the  Convention  Parliament l. 

In  this  body  of  thirty  mixed  old  Royalists  and  new  Royal- 
ists, forming"  the  King's  Privy  Council,  some  with  ministerial 
offices  and  others  without,  there  was,  of  course,  a  more  private 
Junto  or  Cabinet.  It  consisted  at  first  of  Hyde,  Monk,  the 
Marquis  of  Ormond,  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  Lord  Colepepper, 
and  Secretaries  Nicholas  and  Morrice ;  but,  in  fact,  there  was 
no  fixed  number,  and  the  King  might  call  any  councillor  he 
chose  to  an  occasional  meeting.  In  the  Junto  itself,  which 
was  professedly  only  a  Committee  for  Foreign  Affairs,  Hyde, 
Ormond,  and  Southampton,  all  men  of  stately  character  and 
great  ability,  and  knit  together  by  the  strongest  mutual 
trust  and  respect,  overswayed  the  rest,  and  combined  especially 
to  keep  Monk  in  his  proper  place,  as  Commander-in-chief 
of  the  Army,  Duke  of  Albemarle,  and  much  else  nominally, 
but  in  reality  "  Old  George  "  defunct2. 

]  List  in  Phillips,  713,  and  another  consulting    him),    and    from    Peerage- 

(lcss  perfect)  in  Mercurrius  Veridieus  of  books  and  the  Lords  Journals. 
June  5— 12, 1660 ;  with,  particles  of  in-  2  Clarendon,    992—3    and     1004—6 

fi  >rmati<  >n  from  Phillips  afterwards,  from  {Continuation  of  Life) ;  Burnet,  1. 160 — 

Clarendon  (whose   want   of  dates  is  a  167. 
constaut  drawback  and  annoyance  in 

c  a 


20  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Chancellor  Hyde,  however,  was  the  Supreme  Minister.  To 
this  honour  he  was  entitled  by  his  indefatigable  services 
through  all  the  weary  years  of  the  exile  of  the  Royal  Family. 
It  was  he  that  had  never  given  up  the  game ;  it  was  he,  with 
Ormond,  that  had  always  steered  Charles  in  what  they  thought 
the  right  course  of  policy  abroad,  even  offending  the  imperious 
Queen-mother  by  setting  aside  her  interferences  and  sugges- 
tions from  Paris  ;  it  was  he  that  had  organized  and  main- 
tained the  correspondence  with  the  Sealed  Knot  and  with 
other  Royalists  in  England,  urged  them  on  or  checked  them 
on  occasion,  and  been  at  the  centre  of  all  the  strings.  He 
but  stepped  into  his  natural  place,  therefore,  in  becoming  the 
Prime  Minister  of  Charles  at  the  Restoration.  With  such 
a  king,  and  with  such  a  complexity  of  interests  and  intrigues 
round  him,  it  was  a  position  of  enormous  risk  and  enormous 
responsibility.  The  English  premiership  was  not  then  the 
organized  institution  it  has  since  become.  All  the  ministers 
held  directly  from  the  King,  could  negotiate  with  him  inde- 
pendently in  the  affairs  of  their  several  departments,  and  could 
be  dismissed  by  him  at  his  own  pleasure  ;  it  was  in  the  power 
of  the  King  also  to  have  private  consultations  with  persons 
about  him  not  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  to  do  acts  by  their 
persuasion  of  which  the  Privy  Council  or  the  nominal  Cabinet 
knew  nothing  ;  and  it  was  only  in  so  far  as  the  King  might 
choose  to  follow  the  custom  of  having  a  "  Favourite  "  for  the 
time,  and  regulating  his  dealings  with  everybody  else  by  the 
advice  of  this  Favourite,  that  any  one  minister  could  exercise 
general  control.  There  is  no  more  interesting  passage  in 
Clarendon  than  those  pages  of  the  Continuation  of  his  Life 
where  he  specifies  the  difficulties  of  such  an  undefined  minis- 
terial supremacy.  His  conclusion,  he  tells  us,  was  to  accept 
the  place  as  clearly  his  by  right  and  by  necessity,  and  to  do 
his  best  as  prime  minister  for  Charles  till  Charles  should 
discard  him,  but  to  avoid  the  name  of  "  prime  minister,"  as 
unpopular  in  England,  and  to  exercise  the  functions,  in  as  con- 
stitutional a  manner  as  possible,  in  his  capacity  as  Lord  High 
Chancellor.  In  this  capacity,  and  as  Privy  Councillor  and 
member  of  the  Junto,  he  could  have  access  to  the  King  at  all 


PREMIERSHIP   OF   HYDE.  21 

times,  know  all  that  went  on,  and  have  sufficient  power  of 
check  or  remonstrance  where  he  disapproved,  without  lodging 
himself  permanently  in  Whitehall,  and  so  imposing  his  grave 
presence  upon  the  King  unofficially  or  unnecessarily,  and 
interfering  with  his  companionships  and  pleasures.  And 
Charles,  in  the  beginning  of  his  reign  at  least,  was  most 
willing  to  accept  this  Premiership  of  the  Chancellor.  He 
had  his  conferences  with  other  ministers,  and  his  more  careless 
hours  with  many  sorts  of  companions,  not  without  effects  that 
were  annoying  or  thwarting  to  Hyde ;  but,  in  the  main,  he 
saved  himself  trouble  by  deferring  to  Hyde  in  everything, 
and  sending  everybody  to  Hyde  that  came  on  any  public 
business. 

The  King  and  The  Prime  Minister,  The  Junto  or  Select 
Cabinet  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  The  Privy  Council 
itself:  such  was  the  top  of  the  apparatus  of  the  Restoration 
Government.  But  the  apparatus  included  The  Parliament  ; 
and  all  depended  on  the  proper  connexion  and  cooperation 
of  the  top  of  the  apparatus  with  this  main  body  of  it. 

Now  the  Parliament  to  which  the  King,  the  Prime  Minister, 
the  Junto,  and  the  Privy  Council,  had  to  adjust  themselves, 
for  some  time  at  least,  was  that  Convention  Parliament 
which  had  met  on  the  25th  of  April  1660,  and  which  on  the 
seventh  day  of  its  sittings  had  received  the  King's  communi- 
cations from  Breda,  transmitted  their  enthusiastic  response,  and 
arranged  for  his  return.  I.  The  House  of  Lords. — At  the  first 
meeting  of  the  Parliament  this  House  had  been  merely 
a  voluntary  gathering  of  such  of  the  old  peers  as  had  chosen 
to  come,  knowing  that  they  were  wanted.  There  were  but 
ten  peers  present,  with  the  Earl  of  Manchester  in  the  chair. 
But  these  had  beaten  up  for  recruits,  with  such  effect  that 
on  April  27  twenty-six  peers  were  present,  and  on  the  1st  of 
May,  when  there  was  the  reception  of  the  King's  letters  and 
the  invitation  for  him  to  return,  as  many  as  forty-one.  This 
number  remained  pretty  steady  through  the  subsequent  days, 
till  May  31,  the  second  day  after  his  Majesty's  arrival  at 
Whitehall,  when  it  was  voted,  by  his  Majesty's  request,  that 
peers  made   by  his  father  during  the  Civil   War  should  be 


22  LIFE    OP   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OP   HIS   TIME. 

admitted.     That  day,  accordingly,  the  House  rose  to  seventy. 
It  was  the  last  day  of  the  provisional  speakership  of  the  Earl 
of  Manchester.     The  arrangement  thenceforward  was   that, 
as   by  old  custom,  the   Lord  Chancellor  should    occupy  the 
woolsack,  or,  in  his  absence,  by  commission  from  the  King, 
Sir  Orlando  Bridgman,  who  had  just  been  appointed  Chief 
Baron  of  the  Exchequer.     On  the   1st  of  June   Hyde  took 
the  chair  for  the  first  time,  with  eighty  lords  present :  viz. 
their  Royal  Highnesses  the  Dukes  of  York  and  Gloucester, 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  the  Marquises  of  Dorchester  and 
Newcastle,  thirty-seven  Earls  (among  whom  the  Earl  of  Salis- 
bury ventured  to  show  his  face),  five  Viscounts  (of  whom 
Cromwell's  son-in-law   Falconbridge  was   one),    and   thirty- 
three  Barons.     The  King  himself  made  his  appearance  in  the 
House  that  day,  and,  the  Commons  having  been  summoned 
to  meet  him,  made  his  first  address  to  the  two  Houses,  fol- 
lowed by  a  longer  speech  from  the  Chancellor.     He  also  gave 
his  assent,  Le  Hoy  le  veult,  to  three  Bills  of  pressing  import- 
ance that  had  been  prepared  by  the  two  Houses,  one  of  them 
being  an  Act  for  confirming  the  present  Parliament  and  re- 
moving all  doubts  of  its  validity  hitherto.     This,  as  it  were, 
reconstituted  the  two  Houses  ;    and  from  that  day  between 
seventy  and  a  hundred  peers  continued  to  be  the  maximum 
attendance  in  the  Upper  House,  though,  as  the  same  peers 
were  not  always  present,  the  total  number  of  peers  available 
may  have  exceeded  a  hundred.     They  were  all  temporal  or 
lay  peers,  the   readmission  of  Bishops  not  having  yet  been 
even   discussed.     Between   twenty  and   thirty  of  the   peers 
had  been  Parliamentarians,  and  were  of  Presbyterian  prepos- 
sessions1.    II.  The  House  of  Commons. — This  House,  it  is  to 
be    remembered,    no    longer   included    representatives    from 
Scotland  and  Ireland,  but  was  a  representation  of  England 
and  Wales  only,  in  the  old  fashion.     Of  the  500  members 
who   had   been   returned   by  the    constituencies   more    than 
400  had  taken  their  seats  at  once.     When  the  House  was 
counted  on  the  5th  of  May  there  were  400  present.    Returned 

1  Lords  Journals,  from  April  25  to  June  1,  1GG0. 


THE    CONVENTION    PARLIAMENT.  23 

as  they  had  been  in  a  fervour  of  Royalism  among1  the  consti- 
tuencies, they  were,  almost  to  a  man,  friends  of  the  Restoration 
at  all  risks,  and  prepared  to  support  Charles  after  they  had 
received  him.  Lambert,  Harrison,  Ludlow,  Scott,  Weaver, 
Miles  Corbet,  and  other  Republicans  or  Regicides  who  had 
been  daringly  proposed  for  constituencies,  had  been  rejected. 
Actually,  however,  two  of  the  Regicides  had  got  in, — Colonel 
John  Hutchinson  for  Nottingham,  and  Colonel  Richard 
Ingoldsby  for  Aylesbury ;  and  there  were  at  least  two  more 
who,  though  they  had  not  signed  the  death-warrant  of 
Charles  I,  as  these  had  done,  had  taken  part  in  his  trial, — 
Francis  Lassels,  member  for  Allerton  in  Yorkshire,  and  Robert 
Wallop,  member  for  Whitchurch.  Several  others  must  have 
been  uneasy  in  their  seats,  in  recollection  of  their  extremely 
Republican  antecedents.  There  was  also  in  the  House  a  consi- 
derable sprinkling  of  Oliverians  proper,  or  persons  who  had 
been  conspicuous  supporters  and  servants  of  the  Protectorate, 
as  distinct  from  the  old  Republicans.  Monk  himself,  Admiral 
Montague,  and  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper  were  Oliverians 
who  had  already  splendidly  redeemed  themselves  by  hailing 
the  Restoration  or  helping  towards  it, — to  whom  may  be 
added  Lord  Broghill,  Clarges,  and  William  Pierrepoint. 
Oliverians  not  so  sure  of  forgiveness,  but  who  had  yet  to 
earn  it,  were  Sir  Charles  Wolseley,  Richard  Norton,  and 
Andrew  Marvell,  member  for  Hull.  Among  Royalists  in 
Monk's  retinue,  whether  Oliverians  or  not  before,  were,  be- 
sides his  brother-in-law  Clarges,  Colonels  Knight  and  Clobery, 
and  Mr.  William  Morrice.  Among  the  members  one  notes, 
more  miscellaneously,  Fairfax,  Lord  Bruce,  Sir  "W  illiani 
Waller,  Holies,  Arthur  Annesley,  Prynne,  Major-General 
Browne,  Colonel  Massey,  Sir  George  Booth,  Colonel  Fagg, 
Viscount  Falkland,  Sir  Thomas  Wenman,  Alexander  Popham, 
Sir  John  Evelyn  of  Surrey,  Sir  John  Evelyn  of  Wilts,  Sir 
Thomas  Middleton,  Sir  Samuel  Luke,  Sir  Robert  Pye,  Sir 
William  Penn,  Sir  Edward  Deering,  John  Rushworth,  John 
Crewe,  Sir  Richard  Onslow,  Arthur  Onslow,  Sir  Anthony 
Irby,  Sir  Horatio  Townshend,  Alderman  Robinson  of  London, 
and  the  lawyers  Sir  Thomas  Widdrington,  Glynne,  Matthew 


24  LTFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Hale,  Maynard,  and  Heneage  Finch.    Altogether,  the  House, 
though   with    old  Episcopalian  Royalists    in   it,  and   young 
Royalists  pliable  enough  on  the  Church-question,  was  mas- 
sively  Presbyteriano-Royalist.— In  the  month  it  had  sat  be- 
fore the  King's  arrival  the  most  active  members  in  shaping 
the    business   and   keeping   all    in    proper  order,  under    Sir 
llarbottle    Grimstone's    Speakership,    had    been    Annesley, 
Prynne,  Pierrepoint,  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  Morrice, 
Clarges,  Crewe,  Alderman  Robinson,  and  the  lawyers.     The 
two  first  are  especially  conspicuous  in  the  journals.    Annesley, 
as  President  of  the  Council  in  State,  had  reported  daily  from 
that  body  and  submitted  the  most  important  motions,  while 
Prynne,  as  an  independent  member  of  peculiar  celebrity,  had 
taken  a  great  deal  upon  himself.     Holies  had  gone  to  the 
Hague  as  one  of  the  Commissioners  to  the  King,  or  he  would 
have  been    as   prominent.     There  was    no    division    till    the 
29th  of  May,  and  then  only  on  the  question  of  adopting  some 
amendments  by  the  Lords  on  a  bill  that  had  been  sent  up 
to  that  House.     There  were  then  170  present,  of  whom  104 
voted  Yea  and  66  voted  No.     It  was  the  day  of  the  King's 
arrival  in  Whitehall.     On  the  1st  of  Jane,  when  the  House 
was  summoned  for  the  first  time  to  meet  his  Majesty  in  the 
Lords,  as  many  as  400  may  have  been  again  present. — Thence- 
forward,   the    Parliament    having    been    confirmed   and    re- 
constituted that  day  by  the  King's  assent  to  the  Act  for  the 
purpose,  and  the  interim  Council  of  State  having  been  super- 
seded   by  the   new    Ministry   and   Privy    Council,    and   the 
members  of  the  House  having  taken  the  oaths  of  supremacy 
and  allegiance,  all  was  to  go  in  regular  routine.     While  the 
Chancellor  presided  in  the  Lords,   Sir  Harbottle  Grimstone 
sat  on  as  Speaker  of  the  Commons,  with  steady  attendances 
about  him  of  from  200  to  300,  rising  on  occasion  to  about 
350 ;  and  Annesley,  Holies,  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  and 
Air.  Secretary  Morrice,   the  leading  councillors  or  ministers 
in    the    House,    interpreted    between    it    and   the    Junto,    or 
between  it  and  the  King,  and  managed  accordingly.     There 
were  other  members  who  were  much  about  the  King  or  in 
employment  at  Court ;  and  Prynne  was  still  most  conspicuously 


ROYAL  DECLARATION  OF  INDEMNITY.         25 

active  as  an  independent  member1.  Monk  and  Montague 
were  soon  to  be  removed  by  their  peerages  to  the  other 
House. 

One  great  business  in  which  the  Parliament  had  been 
engaged  before  his  Majesty's  arrival  was  that  of  Pardon  or 
Revenge.  The  basis  for  proceedings  in  this  business  was 
furnished  by  that  Declaration,  dated  from  Breda,  April  4, 
and  entitled  His  Majesty's  Gracious  Declaration  to  all  his 
Loving  Subjects,  which  had  been  one  of  the  documents 
brought  over  by  Greenville  to  Monk,  and  which,  after  having 
been  kept  in  reserve  till  the  fit  moment,  had  been  produced 
in  the  two  Houses  on  the  1st  of  May  with  such  immense 
effect  (Vol.  V.  pp.  696-698).  Monk's  advice  having  been 
that  his  Majesty  should  promise  the  freest  and  widest  in- 
demnity possible,  and  Hyde  and  his  associates  abroad  having 
concurred,  this  was  one  portion  of  the  Declaration  : — 

"  And,  to  the  end  that  the  fear  of  punishment  may  not  engage 
any,  conscious  to  themselves  of  what  is  past,  to  a  perseverance  in 
guilt  for  the  future,  by  opposing  the  quiet  and  happiness  of  their 
country  in  the  restoration  both  of  King,  Peers,  and  People  to  their 
just,  ancient,  and  fundamental  rights.  We  do,  by  these  presents, 
declare, — That  We  do  grant  a  Free  and  General  Pardon,  which  We 
are  ready,  on  demand,  to  pass  under  Our  Great  Seal  of  England,  to 
all  Our  subjects,  of  what  degree  or  quality  soever,  who  within  forty 
days  after  the  publishing  hereof  shall  lay  hold  upon  this  Our  grace 
and  favour,  and  shall  by  any  public  act  declare  their  doing  so,  and 
that  they  return  to  the  loyalty  and  obedience  of  good  subjects  : 
excepting  only  such  persons  as  shall  hereafter  be  excepted  by  Parlia- 
ment,— these  only  to  be  excepted.  Let  all  Our  subjects,  how  faulty 
soever,  rely  upon  the  word  of  a  King,  solemnly  given  by  this  present 
Declaration,  that  no  crime  whatsoever,  committed  against  Us  or 
Our  Royal  Fatlier  before  the  publication  of  this,  shall  ever  rise  in 
judgment,  or  be  brought  in  question,  against  any  of  them,  to  the 
least  endamagement  of  them,  either  in  their  lives,  liberties,  or 
estates,  or  (as  far  forth  as  lies  in  Our  power)  so  much  as  to  the 
prejudice  of  their  reputations  by  any  reproach  or  term  of  distinc- 
tion from  the  rest  of  Our  best  subjects  :  We  desiring  and  ordaining 
that  henceforth  all  notes  of  discord,  separation,  and  difference  of 
parties,  be  utterly  abolished  among  all  Our  subjects;  whom  We  invite 

1  Commons  Journals  from   April  25       1—66  (including  complete  list  of  the 
to  June  4,  1660 ;   and  Pari.  Hist.  IV.       Commons). 


26  LIFE  OF  MILTON  AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

and  conjure  to  a  perfect  union  among  themselves  under  Our  pro- 
tection V 

As  this  Declaration  was  published  in  London  on  the  1st  of 
May  by  order  of  the  Houses,  all  who  chose  to  avail  themselves 
of  it  before  the  10th  of  June  were  to  be  safe,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  such  as  might  be  implied  in  the  passage  in  Italics. 
Who  the  excepted  culprits  were  to  be  depended  on  the 
Parliament  itself.  The  two  Houses  were  to  make  the  excep- 
tions, and  not  the  King  or  his  Councillors. 

The  business  had  begun  in  the  Commons  on  the  9th  of 
May,  the  day  after  the  proclamation  of  his  still  absent 
Majesty.  "  Mr.  Finch  reports  a  Bill  of  General  Pardon, 
"  Indemnity  and  Oblivion,  which  was  this  day  read  the  first 
"  time,"  is  the  record  in  the  Commons  Journals.  The  second 
reading  was  on  the  12th,  when  a  significant  indication  was 
given  where  the  exceptions  would  lie.  Passages  from  the 
Journals  of  the  Rump  concerning  the  late  King's  Trial  were 
read,  and  also  a  Journal  of  the  Proceedings  at  the  Trial  itself. 
Naturally  this  caused  a  scene.  Divers  members  present,  who 
had  been  among  the  King's  Judges,  "  did  severally  express 
"  how  far  they  were  concerned  in  the  said  proceedings,  and 
"  their  sense  thereon."  Happy  those  who  could  say  that, 
though  named  among  the  Commissioners  for  the  Trial,  they 
had  never  sat  in  the  Court,  or  had  discontinued  their  sittings 
before  the  fatal  close.  For  it  was  the  actual  Regicides  that 
the  House  was  now  in  search  of,  first  of  all,  as  the  necessary 
exceptions  from  the  General  Indemnity,  and  these  Regicides 
were  now  voted  to  be  such  of  the  Kind's  Judges  as  had  been 
present  at  the  last  sitting  of  the  Court  and  the  pronouncing 
of  the  sentence  on  Saturday  the  27th  of  January,  1648-9, 
whether  they  had  or  had  not  signed  the  subsequent  death- 
warrant  of  Mondav  the  29th.  The  debate,  having  been 
adjourned,  was  resumed  on  the  14th  of  May,  with  very 
definite  farther  results.  It  was  then  resolved  "That  all 
those   persons  who    sat    in  judgment  upon  the  late  King's 

1    Declaration,  as  given  in  Lords  and       Phillips,  702—3,  and  in  Pari.  Hist.  IV. 
Commons  Journals  of  May  1,  ltib'O,  in       16—17. 


QUEST   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  27 

Majesty  when   the    sentence    was   pronounced   for   his    con- 
demnation be  forthwith  secured," — a  resolution  which,  though 
absolute    in   the    wording-,    could    apply,   of  course,   only  to 
such  of  them  as  were  still  alive ;    also  that  Mr.  John  Cook, 
who    had  been  the   solicitor  or  prosecuting  counsel    at   the 
Trial,    and    Messrs.    Andrew   Broughton    and    John    Phelps, 
who  had  been  the  clerks  of  the  Court,  and  Edward  Dendy, 
who    had   been   the    sergeant-at-arms,    should    be   forthwith 
secured ;  also  that  the  two  executioners  of  the  King,  if  they 
were   discoverable,   should   be  secured,  with  specification   on 
chance  of  a  certain  person  named  Matthew,  who  had  boasted 
of  being  one  of  them  and  of  having  received  ^300  for  the 
work  ;  also  that  Cornet  Joyce,  of  Holmby  House  celebrity, 
should  be  secured  ;  and,  finally,  "  That  the  number  of  Seven, 
';  of  those  who   sat  in  judgment   when    sentence   was  given 
"  upon  the  late  King's  Majesty,  be  the  number  who  shall  be 
"  excepted,   for   life  and  estate,    out   of  the  Act  of  General 
"Pardon  and  Oblivion."     These  Resolutions  were  unanimous. 
They  amounted  to  this : — that,  while  all  the  Regicide  Judges 
were  to  be  branded  as  infamous,  and  all  the  survivors  of  them, 
and  six  or  seven  persons  more,  were  to  be  secured,  to  await 
consideration  of  the  penalties  to  be  inflicted  on  them,  it  was 
the  desire  of  the  House  that  the  number  of  the  surviving 
Regicide  Judges  to  be  proceeded  against  capitally  should  be 
restricted  to  seven,  and  that  the  rest  should  be  reserved  for 
minor  punishments.     There  was  no  security  so  far  that  other 
culprits,  not  among  the  Regicide  Judges,  e.  g.  the  additional 
six  or  seven  above-named,  might  not  be  thought  worthy  of 
death  for  their  particular  shares  in  the  great  crime 1. 

At  this  stage  it  may  be  well  to  enumerate  the  Regicide 
Judges  present  at  the  sentence  in  Westminster  Hall  on 
Saturday,  Jan.  27,  1648-9.  They  were  sixty-seven  in  all, 
of  whom  twenty-three  were  now  dead.  In  the  following  list 
they  are  arranged  alphabetically,  save  that  the  first  four  are 
put  in  a  group  by  themselves.  An  asterisk  prefixed  to  a 
name  denotes  the  aggravation  of  having  been  not  only  one 

1  Commons  Journals  of  dates. 


28 


LIFE   OP   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS  TIME. 


of  the  sixty-seven  present  at  the  sentence,  but  also  one  of  the 
fifty-nine  who  signed  the  death-warrant  two  days  after : — 

*  John  Bradshaw  (dead).  *  John  Hutchinson. 

*  Oliver  Cromwell  (dead).  *  John  Jones. 

*  Henry  Ireton  (dead).  *  Robert  Lilburne. 

*  Thomas  Pride  (dead).  John  Lisle. 

'  Sir  Michael  Livesey. 

Nicholas  Love. 

Edmund  Ludlow. 

Henry  Marten. 

Sir  Thomas  Mauleverer  (dead). 

Simon  Mayne. 

Gilbert  Millington. 

John  Moore  (dead). 

Sir  Gregory  Norton  (dead). 

John  Okey. 

Peregrine  Pelham  (dead). 

Isaac  Pennington. 

Vincent  Potter. 

William  Purefoy  (dead). 

Owen  Rowe. 

"William  Say. 

Thomas  Scott. 

Adrian  Scroope. 

Henry  Smith. 

Anthony  Stapley  (dead). 

James  Temple. 

Peter  Temple. 

Robert  Tichbourne. 

Matthew  Tomlinson. 

John  Venn  (dead). 

Sir  Hardress  Waller. 

Valentine  Walton. 

Thomas  Wayte. 

Edward  Whalley. 

Thomas  Wogan  \ 

Two  most  positive  Regicides  are  here  omitted.  These  are 
Thomas  Challoner,  and  Cromwell's  kinsman,  Richard  In- 
goldsby,  commonly  called    Dick  Ing-oldsby.     The    reason   is 


Francis  Allen  (dead). 

*  John  Alured  (dead). 

* 

Thomas  Andrews  (dead). 

* 

*  John  Barkstead. 

* 

*  Daniel  Blagrave. 

* 

*  John  Blakiston  (dead). 

* 

*  Sir  John  Bourchier. 

* 

*  John  Carew. 

* 

*  William  Cawley. 

* 

*  Gregory  Clements. 

* 

*  Sir  William  Constable  (dead). 

*  Miles  Corbet. 

* 

*  Sir  John  Dan  vers  (dead). 

* 

*  Richard  Dean  (dead). 

* 

*  John  Dixwell. 

* 

*  John  Downes. 

* 

*  Humphrey  Edwards  (dead). 

* 

*  Isaac  Ewer  (dead). 

sfc 

*  George  Fleetwood. 

* 

*  Augustine  Garland. 

* 

*  William  Goffe. 

* 

*  Lord  Grey  of  Groby  (dead). 

* 

Thomas  Hammond  (dead). 

*  Thomas  Harrison. 

* 

Edmund  Harvey. 

* 

William  Heveningham. 

* 

*  John  Hewson. 

* 

Cornelius  Holland. 

* 

N  Thomas  Horton  (dead). 

* 

1  List  in  Lords  Journals  of  July  23, 
1660;  where,  however,  the  names  of 
Hutchinson  and  Tomlinson  are  omitted, 
for  reasons  there  given.  Forthe  asterisks 
I  ha  to  the  death-warrant  itself, 

as  given  in  V,.].  III.  pp.  719—720.    The 
da  Journals  of  the  above  date  also 


give  the  names  from  the  death-warrant, 
but  with  two  omitted  for  certain  reasons. 
■ — I  have  culled  the  dead  in  the  list 
from  Noble's  Lives  of  the  'Regicides. 
The  date  of  death  is  unknown  in  a  good 
many  cases. 


THE   INDEMNITY   BILL  IN   THE   COMMONS.  29 

that  the  Commons  had  now  defined  the  Regicides  to  be  those 
Judges  who  had  been  present  at  the  sentence,  and  Challoner 
and  Ingoldsby  were  in  the  peculiar  predicament  of  having 
signed  the  death-warrant  without  having  been  present  at 
the  sentence.  Challoner  had  been  present  almost  every  day 
of  the  trial,  including  that  sitting  in  which  the  sentence  had 
been  agreed  to  ;  nay,  he  had  been  in  his  place  on  the  very 
day  of  the  sentence;  but  he  had  been  absent  at  the  moment 
when  it  was  pronounced, — to  compensate  for  which  he  had 
sig-ned  the  death-warrant.  Ingoldsby,  it  is  believed,  had 
signed  the  death-warrant  without  having  been  present  at 
the  trial  at  all.  How  it  was  to  fare  with  Challoner  in  the 
circumstances  we  shall  see  very  soon.  That  Ingoldsby  was 
to  escape  without  any  punishment  whatever  was  a  foregone 
conclusion  even  now.  And  no  wonder.  Regicide  though  he 
was,  had  he  not  amply  purchased  his  pardon  by  his  gallant 
capture  of  Lambert  and  suppression  of  the  last  struggle  of  the 
Republic,  and  had  he  not  been  thanked  for  that  service  by 
the  House  itself  not  three  weeks  ago?  There  could  be  no 
thought  now  of  penal  procedure  in  his  case.  He  was  even 
to  be  exceptionally  recommended  to  his  Majesty's  favour ; 
and,  though  the  awkward  fact  of  his  name  on  the  death- 
warrant  was  to  be  remembered  jocularly  against  him  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  he  had  his  famous  explanation  ready,  and  could 
turn  off  the  laugh  1. 

With  the  list  of  the  sixty-seven  before  them,  the  Commons 
advanced  a  step  on  the  15th  of  May.  They  at  once  dis- 
tinguished the  four  at  the  top  of  the  list  from  the  rest,  for 
reasons  perfectly  obvious ;  and,  these  four  being  dead  and 
beyond  the  reach  of  punishment  personally,  they  excepted 
them  from  the  Bill  of  Pardon  and  Oblivion  by  the  method 
of  posthumous  Attainder  for  High  Treason.  This  involved 
the  absolute  and  immediate  forfeiture  of  all  the  property 
possessed  by  them  at  the  date  of  their  treason,  and  also  the 
"  corruption  of  their  blood,"  or  the  stoppage  of  all  titles, 
properties,  or  rights  that  might  come  from  them,  or  through 

i  See  note,  Vol.  III.  pp.  720—721. 


30  LIFE    OF   MILTON  AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

them,  to  their  descendants.  Accordingly,  it  was  formally 
resolved  "That  John  Bradshaw,  deceased,  late  sergeant-at- 
"  law  be  one  of  those  that  shall,  by  Act  of  Parliament,  be  at- 
"  tainted  of  high  treason  for  the  murthering  of  the  late  King's 
"  Majesty,"  and  similarly  for  "  Oliver  Cromwell,  deceased," 
"  Henry  Ireton,  deceased,"  and  "Thomas  Pride,  deceased  ;" — 
each  attainder  to  date  from  the  1st  of  January,  1648-9.  This 
specification  of  four  of  the  sixty-seven  having  been  made  by 
the  House  itself,  the  Bill  of  Pardon  and  Oblivion  was  referred, 
for  the  rest,  to  a  committee  for  consideration  and  report. 
Much  depended  on  the  composition  of  this  committee.  It 
consisted  of  fifty-two  members,  and  included  Annesley, 
Prynne,  Lord  Commissioner  Tyrrel,  Lord  Commissioner 
Widdrington,  Glynne,  Maynard,  Matthew  Hale,  Lord  Howard, 
Sir  Anthony  Irby,  and  Mr.  Heneage  Finch.  Having  ap- 
pointed the  committee,  the  House  turned  to  other  matters 
for  a  while,  taking  care,  however,  on  the  17th  of  May,  to 
pass  comprehensive  resolutions  empowering  sheriffs  and  other 
officers  to  search  for  and  seize  all  or  any  of  the  forty-four 
Regicide  Judges  that  were  still  living,  and  also  to  seize  the 
estates,  real  or  personal,  of  all  the  sixty-seven,  living  or  dead  ; 
with  an  accompanying  resolution  requiring  the  Council  of 
State  to  stop  all  the  ports,  so  as  to  prevent  the  escape  of 
the  fugitives.  The  House  of  Lords,  when  asked  to  concur 
with  these  resolutions,  demurred  somewhat  to  the  one  which 
vested  powers  in  the  Council  of  State,  regarding  that  body  as 
temporary  and  anomalous  ;  but  this  did  not  prevent  the  most 
energetic  action  of  the  police  by  the  order  of  the  Lords  too. 
The  Regicides  were  hunted  for  most  diligently.  Harrison  had 
been  already  captured  in  Staffordshire,  and  on  the  21st  of 
May  he  was  committed  to  the  Tower 1. 

The  Committee  on  the  Indemnity  Bill  were  still  engaged 
with  it  when  the  King  crossed  from  the  Hague  to  Dover 
in  Montague's  fleet,  journeyed  thence  to  Canterbury  and 
Rochester,  and  made  his  great  entry  into  London  on  the 
29th  of  May.     After  his  Majesty  was  in  London,  he  himself, 

1  Commons  Journals  of  dates. 


THE    INDEMNITY   BILL   IN   THE    COMMONS.  31 

or  Hyde  for  him,  or  the  Junto  and  the  Courtiers  genei'ally, 
might  have  something  to  do  privately  with  the  farther 
progress  of  the  Bill,  and  with  the  suggestion  of  the  persons 
that  ought  to  be  excepted. 

Publicly,  however,  the  business  went  on  still  within  the 
Commons.  On  the  31st  of  May,  the  second  day  after  the 
King's  arrival,  Mr.  Heneage  Finch,  from  the  Committee,  re- 
ported several  amendments  to  the  Bill ;  these  and  other 
amendments,  some  of  them  originating  in  the  House  itself, 
were  discussed  that  day,  and  on  the  1st,  2nd,  and  4th  of  June  ; 
and  on  the  5th  of  June  the  House  was  in  a  position  to  put 
the  question  "  That  the  Seven  Persons  who  by  former  order 
"  are  to  be  excepted  out  of  the  Act  of  General  Pardon  for  life 
"and  estate  be  named  here  in  this  House."  The  question 
having  been  carried  unanimously  in  the  affirmative,  one  of 
the  seven  to  be  so  excepted  was  'at  once  named.  He  was 
Thomas  Harrison.  No  more  were  named  that  day  ;  but  next 
clay  the  other  six  were  named  and  agreed  to  in  this  order — 
William  Say,  John  Jones,  Thomas  Scott,  Cornelius  Holland, 
John  Lisle,  and  John  Barkstead.  Of  these  only  Jones,  in 
addition  to  Harrison,  was  yet  in  custody ;  most  had  es- 
caped, or  were  to  escape,  to  the  continent.  The  tale  of  the 
seven  surviving  Begicide  Judges  to  be  proceeded  against 
capitally  was  now  complete.  The  roll  of  the  doomed,  however, 
was  not  yet  closed;  for  on  the  7th  of  June  it  was  resolved 
that  John  Cook,  Andrew  Broughton,  and  Edward  Dendy 
should,  in  respect  of  their  prominent,  though  subordinate, 
parts  at  the  King's  trial,  be  in  the  extreme  class  of  those 
excepted  both  for  life  and  estate,  and  also  that  the  two 
executioners  "  who  were  upon  the  scaffold  in  a  disguise " 
should  be  in  the  same  extreme  class.  About  these  two  the 
House  had  been  making  every  inquiry.  One  hears  no  more 
of  the  person  called  Matthew,  suspected  on  the  14th  of  May; 
but  William  Lilly  the  astrologer  had,  by  order  of  the  House 
of  June  2,  been  examined  by  a  committee  as  to  his  know- 
ledge of  the  subject,  and  the  report  from  this  committee  had 
been  read  to  the  House  by  Prynne,  June  6.  What  it  was 
we  do  not  learn  from  the  Journals:  but  we  have  Lillv's  own 


32  LIFE   OF  MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

account  of  the  evidence  he  gave.  "The  next  Sunday  but 
"one  after  Charles  the  First  was  beheaded,"  says  Lilly, 
"  Robert  Spavin,  secretary  unto  Lieutenant- General  Cromwell, 
"  invited  himself  to  dine  with  me,  and  brought  Anthony 
'■  Peirson  and  several  others  along  with  him  to  dinner.  Their 
"  principal  discourse  all  dinner-time  was  only  who  it  was  that 
"  beheaded  the  King.  One  said  it  was  the  common  hangman  ; 
"  another,  Hugh  Peters ;  others  were  nominated,  but  none 
"  concluded.  Robert  Spavin,  so  soon  as  dinner  was  done, 
"  took  me  to  the  south  window.  Saith  he,  '  These  are  all 
"  mistaken  ;  they  have  not  named  the  man  that  did  the  fact ; 
"  it  was  Lieu  enant-Colonel  Joyce.  I  was  in  the  room  when 
"  he  fitted  himself  for  the  work — stood  behind  him  when  he 
"  did  it — when  done,  went  in  again  unto  him.  There  's  no 
"  man  knows  this  but  my  master  [Cromwell],  Commissary 
"  Ireton,  and  myself.'  '  Doth  not  Mr.  Rushworth  [then 
"Army  Secretary]  know  it?'  said  I.  fNo,  he  doth  not,' 
"  saith  Spavin.  The  same  thing  Spavin  since  had  often 
"related  to  me  when  we  were  alone."  Substantially  this  had 
been  Lilly's  information  to  Prynne  ;  who,  says  Lilly,  "  did  with 
"  much  civility  make  a  report  hereof  to  the  House."  Accord- 
ingly, next  day  (June  7),  after  Mr.  Annesley  had  reported 
the  examination  of  another  witness,  Leonard  Watson,  touching 
the  person  whp  executed  the  late  King,  there  was  a  repetition 
of  the  order  of  May  14  for  the  arrest  of  Joyce,  with  an  order 
for  the  arrest  also  of  Hugh  Peters.  There  could  be  no  more 
popular  candidate  for  one  of  the  executionerships,  if  not  for 
the  executionership-in-chief,  than  this  unfortunate  preacher. 
It  was  with  delight  that  the  town  heard  of  his  probable  in- 
dictment in  that  character;  and  this  rhyme  was  at  once 
concocted  for  the  newspapers, — 

'  The  best  man  next  to  Jupiter 
"Was  put  to  death  by  Hugh  Peter.' 

In  the  House  itself  the  notion  that  Peters  had  struck  the  blow 
was  too  ludicrous  for  serious  belief;  but  it  seems  to  have 
occurred  to  them  that  the  rhyme,  if  not  true  in  the  literal 
sense,  might  be  construed  in  another,  and  that,  in  any  case 


THE   INDEMNITY   BILL    IN   THE  COMMONS.  33 

the  arrest  of  the  notorious  parson  would  be  universally  satis- 
factory. Really,  as  far  as  one  can  see,  the  order  for  the 
arrest  of  Peters,  at  this  stage  at  least,  came  about  by  the 
accident  of  Lilly's  babble  in  the  Committee l. 

On  the  same  7th  of  June  on  which  there  were  the  five 
additional  exceptions  for  life  and  the  order  for  the  arrest  of 
Joyce  and  Peters  there  were  two  other  incidents  in  the 
history  of  the  Act  of  Indemnity.  One  was  the  completion 
of  a  resolution  by  the  Commons  in  these  words :  "  Resolved 
"  and  declared  by  the  Commons  in  Parliament  assembled 
'•  that  they  do  by  this  their  public  act,  for  and  in  behalf  of 
"  themselves  and  every  one  of  them,  and  of  all  the  Commons 
"  of  England,  of  what  quality  or  degree  soever  they  be, — ex- 
'•  cepting  only  as  is,  or  shall  hereafter  be,  excepted  by  this 
"  Parliament  in  an  Act  of  Free  and  General  Pardon,  Indemnity, 
11  and  Oblivion,  now  under  consideration, — lay  hold  upon  his 
"Majesty's  free  and  general  Pardon,  in  his  late  gracious 
"  Letters  and  Declaration  granted,  tendered,  or  expressed." 
The  other  was  the  issue  of  a  Proclamation  by  the  King, 
recommended  by  the  two  Houses,  and  dated  June  6,  requiring 
all  the  surviving  Regicide  Judges  not  already  in  custody, 
forty  in  number,  with  Cook,  B  rough  ton,  and  Phelps,  to  sur- 
render themselves  within  fourteen  days  to  the  Speaker  of  the 
Lords,  the  Speaker  of  the  Commons,  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
London,  or  some  Sheriff,  "  under  pain  of  being  excepted  from 
any  pardon  or  indemnity  for  their  l'espective  lives  and  estates." 
Both  these  incidents  might  bear  a  merciful  construction. 
By  the  first  the  House  had,  with  the  exception  we  have  put 
in  italics,  taken  the  whole  nation  under  its  wing,  many  of 

1   Commons  Journals  of  dates  ;  Lilly's  final  s.     Though  this  may  have  been 

History  uf  /tin  Life  and  Times,  as  quoted  for  the  sake   of  the  rhyme  only,  it  is 

in  Chambers's  Book  of  Days,  1.189  ;  and  correct.     In  his  own  letters  he  signed 

two  news-pamphlets'  in  the  Thomason  himself  always  "  Hugh  Peter."    So  we 

Collection — An   Exact   Accompt    com-  are  informed  in  Vol.  VI.  of  the  Fourth 

municating  the  Chief  Transactions  of  Series   of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 

the  Three  Kingdoms,  &c,  with  the  daily  Society  Collections  (p.  91),  where  many 

Votes  and  Resolves  in  both  Houses  of  letters  of  his  are  printed  from  the  MSS. 

Parliament:    published    by    Authority  They   are    addressed    chielly   to    John 

(No.  for  June  1—  8,  1660),  and  Mer-  Winthrop,  Juur.  ;  whom,  on  account  of 

curias   Veridicus    (June    5—12,   1660).  their  peculiar  relationship  by  marriage, 

The    second   contains   the   rhyme.— In  he  calls  "dear  and  loving  son."     But 

that  rhyme,   it  may  be  observed,  the  Peter  will  be  Peters  so  long  as  he  is 

name   is   given   as   Peter,  without   the  remembered  in  the  world. 

VOL.  VI.  D 


34  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

its  own  culpable  members  included,  assuring-  them  that  they 
were  safe.  The  other  might  be  interpreted  as  a  distinct 
pledge  by  the  King  that  those  of  the  Regicides  that  should 
surrender  in  terms  of  the  Proclamation  would  fare  the  better 
for  their  confidence  in  his  clemency  l. 

Still,  in  that  phrase  of  the  Commons  which  we  have  put  in 
italics,  a  vast  deal  was  left  dubious.  It  left  several  questions 
open.  In  the  first  place,  what  was  to  be  the  fate  of  the 
thirty-seven  Regicide  Judges  still  living,  over  and  above  the 
seven  that  had  been  selected  capitally,  and  what  was  to  be 
the  posthumous  dealing  with  the  nineteen  dead,  over  and 
above  the  four  it  had  been  decided  to  attaint  in  chief?  In 
the  second  place,  were  any  others  not  yet  named  to  be  classed 
especially  as  Regicides  and  dealt  with  as  such?  As  the 
House  had  marked  its  determination  to  seek  its  chief  victims 
from  among  those  immediately  concerned  in  any  way  with  the 
King's  death,  and  had  consequently  doomed  Cook,  Broughton, 
Dendy,  and  the  two  executioners,  if  they  could  be  found  out, 
to  the  same  gibbet  with  the  seven  selected  Regicide  Judges 
themselves,  might  they  not  now  enlarge  their  definition  of  the 
Regicides  by  bringing  in  some  of  those  of  the  Judges  who, 
though  not  present  at  the  actual  sentence,  had  taken  some 
active  previous  part  in  the  Trial,  and  also  some  others  who 
had  officiated  at  the  Trial,  though  not  as  Judges?  If  so,  how 
many  more  were  to  be  so  counted  as  Regicides  ?  Then,  apart 
altogether  from  the  fate  of  those  implicated  in  the  one  crime 
of  the  regicide,  there  was  the  farther  question  of  the  selection 
of  victims  from  the  community  at  large,  on  account  of  the 
notoriety  of  their  actings,  whether  civil  or  military,  through 
the  time  of  the  Republic,  the  Protectorate,  and  the  Anarchy. 
There  could  be  no  general  security  till  that  question  also 
was  decided. 

1  Commons  Journals  of  date,  and  clamation  were  Gregory  Clements,  Har- 
ongrnal  black  letter  copy  of  the  King's  rison,  John  Jones,  and  Matthew  Tom- 
Proclamation.  On  comparing  the  list  linson.  Probably  Clements  was  by  this 
ot  t'1'  Regicide  Judges  summoned  to  time  already  in  custody,  with  Harrison 
surrender  in  this  Proclamation  with  and  Jones.  Tomlinson  was  at  hand 
that  ..i  the  Regicide  Judges  given  ante  when  wanted,  whether  in  custody  or 

p.  28,  I jfind  that  the  four   surviving  not. 
Regicide  Judges  not  named  in  the  Pro- 


THE   INDEMNITY   BILL   IN   THE   COMMONS.  35 

On  the  8th  and  9th  of  June  there  was  some  farther  light 
in  the  Commons  on  all  these  questions.  On  the  first  of  those 
days,  "  a  question  being  propounded,  That  the  number  of 
"  twenty  and  no  more  (other  than  those  that  are  already  ex- 
"  cepted,  or  sat  as  Judges  upon  the  late  King's  Majesty) 
"  shall  be  excepted  out  of  the  Act  of  General  Pardon  and 
"  Oblivion,  for  and  in  respect  only  of  such  pains,  penalties, 
"  and  forfeitures,  not  extending  to  life,  as  shall  be  thought 
"  fit  to  be  inflicted  on  them  by  another  Act,  intended  to  be 
"  hereafter  passed  for  that  purpose,"  there  were  two  divisions. 
On  the  previous  question,  "  whether  the  question  should  be 
put?  "  there  were  160  Yeas  against  131  Noes  ;  and,  the  ques- 
tion itself  having  been  put,  there  were  153  Yeas  against  135 
Noes.  In  other  words,  it  was  carried,  though  not  by  a  large 
majority,  that  from  the  general  community,  apart  from  the 
Regicides,  the  number  of  victims  to  be  selected  should  be 
limited  to  Twenty,  and  the  punishments  of  these  should  not 
extend  to  death.  But,  next  day,  it  became  evident  that,  as 
regarded  the  Regicides  still  to  be  designated,  the  House  was 
in  a  mood  of  severity.  On  a  report  from  Prynne,  who  had 
been  in  his  element  in  a  committee  for  studying  all  the 
records  of  the  King's  Trial,  it  was  found  that  eleven  of  the 
King's  Judges,  in  addition  to  the  sixty-seven  who  had  been 
present  at  the  pronouncing  of  the  sentence,  had  taken  such 
a  part  in  the  trial  by  sitting  in  the  Court  once,  twice,  or 
oftener,  that  it  would  be  a  farce  not  to  include  them  among 
the  Regicides.  The  eleven,  here  arranged  alphabetically, 
were  these  : — 

James  Challoner  :  present  at  three  sittings  of  the  Court  continu- 
ously, though  not  after  Jan.  22. 

*  Thomas  Challoner  :  present  at  six  sittings,  including  that  of  the 
26th  Jan.,  where  the  sentence  was  agreed  to,  and  present  also  on 
the  actual  sentence-day,  though  not  at  the  moment ;  also  a  signer 
of  the  death-warrant. 

John  Dove  :  at  one  sitting  only,  but  it  was  that  at  which  the 
sentence  was  agreed  on. 

John  Fry  (dead)  :  six  sittings  continuously,  to  that  of  Jan.  25,  at 
which  the  sentence  was  rough-drafted. 

Sir  James  Harrington  :  twice  present. 

D  2 


36  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Francis  Lassels :    three  times  present  continuously,  but  not  after 

Jan.  22, — i.e.  same  as  James  Challoner. 
Thomas  Lister  :  one  sitting  only,  and  that  the  first. 
Sir  Henry  Mildmay:  four  sittings  continuously,  including  those  at 

which  the  sentence  was  rough-drafted  and  finally  agreed  on. 
William,  Lord  Monson  :  five  sittings,  including  that  of  agreement 

on  the  sentence. 
Sir  Gilbert  Pickering  :  three  sittings,  but  not  after  Jan.  23. 
Robert  Wallop  :  three  sittings,  of  which  that  of  Jan.   23  was  the 

last. 

Besides  the  fifty-six  Regicide  Judges,  thirty-seven  of  them 
living,  that  had  been  left  in  suspense  out  of  the  total  of  sixty- 
seven  already  reckoned,  there  were  now,  therefore,  these 
eleven,  of  whom  ten  were  alive,  to  be  treated  as  also  Regicides. 
Then  and  there,  in  a  series  of  Resolutions,  the  House  disposed 
of  all  of  both  sets.  In  one  Resolution,  fifty-two  out  of  the 
former  fifty-six,  including  thirty-four  of  those  living  and 
eighteen  of  those  dead,  were  named  together  for  exception 
from  the  Indemnity  in  respect  of  all  pains  and  penalties,  not 
capital,  that  it  might  be  thought  right  to  inflict  upon  them 
by  another  Act.  The  four  thus  left  out  were  Lord  Grey  of 
Groby,  among  the  dead,  and  John  Hutchinson,  Adrian  Scroope, 
and  Matthew  Tomlinson,  among  the  living.  Influence  was 
1  icing  exerted  for  the  family  of  Lord  Grey  of  Groby,  and  it 
was  resolved  not  to  except  him  "  as  to  his  own  estate," 
i.  e.  to  leave  his  family  in  possession  of  what  property  had 
been  really  his.  Hutchinson,  who  was  a  member  of  the 
House,  had  been  expressing  his  repentance,  and  had  won 
sympathy;  and,  while  it  was  resolved  to  expel  him  from  the 
House,  and  also  to  declare  him  incapable  of  bearing  any  office 
of  trust  in  futui'e,  there  was  a  separate  resolution  that,  "  in 
respect  of  his  signal  repentance/'  he  should  be  subject  to  no 
fine,  and  no  forfeiture  out  of  any  part  of  his  estate  "  not  pur- 
chased from,  or  belonging  to,  the  public."  Adrian  Scroope 
had  sent  in  a  humble  petition  to  the  House,  in  consideration 
of  which  it  was  resolved  that,  by  "  paying  a  year's  rent  of  his 
lands  in  lieu  of  a  fine,"  he  should  be  exempt  from  farther  fine 
or  loss  of  estate.  Tomlinson,  for  recent  good  conduct,  had 
been   virtually  condoned  since  the  17th  of  May,   when  the 


THE    INDEMNITY    BILL    IN   THE   COMMONS.  37 

Commons  omitted  him  singly  from  the  list  of  Regicides 
to  be  apprehended  and  the  Lords  concurred. — But  what  of 
the  new  eleven  ferreted  out  by  Prynne,  to  be  added  to  the 
former  list  ?  By  separate  resolutions,  eight  of  these  were  at 
once  put  in  the  same  class  with  the  fifty-two  excepted  in 
every  respect  not  capital.  These  were  James  Challoner, 
Thomas  Challoner,  Fry  (dead),  Harrington,  Lister,  Mildmay, 
Lord  Monson,  and  Pickering.  The  remaining  three  were 
treated  differently.  The  case  of  Dove,  on  his  humble  petition, 
was  referred  to  a  committee  ;  Lassels,  who  was  a  member  of 
the  House,  was  expelled  and  declared  incapable  of  any  public 
trust,  but  was  admitted,  by  a  majority  of  votes,  to  the  benefit 
of  the  General  Pardon  on  payment  of  a  fine  of  one  year's 
value  of  his  estate  ;  and  Wallop,  also  a  member  of  the  House, 
was  required  to  appear  at  next  sitting. — The  same  oppor- 
tunity was  taken  of  disposing  of  the  case  of  John  Phelps,  the 
other  clerk  of  the  Court  at  the  King's  trial.  Though  he  had 
escaped  being  conjoined  with  his  fellow-clerk  B  rough  ton  in 
exception  for  life,  it  was  voted  now  that  he  should  be  among 
those  amenable  to  any  penalty  short  of  death  \ 

On  Monday  the  11th  of  June  Wallop  appeared  in  the 
House  according  to  order.  There  was  no  such  favour  for  him 
as  for  his  fellow-members  Hutchinson  and  Lassels.  Expelled 
the  House  and  declared  incapable  of  public  trust,  he  was 
reserved  moreover  for  all  penalties  that  might  be  thought  fit, 
short  of  death,  and  taken  at  once  into  custody2.  The  state 
of  matters  in  the  House  of  Commons,  as  regarded  the  Regi- 
cides, then  stood  thus : — Eighty-four  persons  in  all,  living 
or  dead,  had  been  classed  as  Regicides  :  to  wit,  the  sixty-seven 
judges  who  had  been  present  at  the  pronouncing  of  the  sen- 
tence and  the  eleven  who  had  taken  a  culpable  part  in  the 
trial,  with  four  of  the  court-officers  at  the  trial,  and  the 
two  executioners,  whoever  they  were.  Of  these  eighty-four 
the  votes  had  been  that  four,  who  were  dead,  should  be  pun- 
ished by  the  most  absolute  posthumous  attainder,  twelve  of 
the  living  should  be  punished  capitally  (seven  of  the  King's 

1  Commons  Journals  of  June  8  and  9.  2  Ibid.  June  11. 


38  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

iudffes.  three  of  the  court- officers  at  the  Trial,  and  the  two 
executioners),  sixty-two  should  stand  excepted  in  every 
respect  not  capital  (viz.  forty-two  of  the  judges  yet  living, 
with  nineteen  of  the  dead  judges  and  one  of  the  court- 
officers),  one  should  have  his  case  farther  considered  (Dove), 
three  should  be  admitted  to  the  benefit  of  the  Pardon  on  cer- 
tain conditions  (Hutchinson,  Lassels,  and  Scroope),  and  two 
unconditionally  (Grey  of  Groby  among  the  dead,  and  Matthew 
Tomlinson  among  the  living).  For  the  forty-two  of  the 
living  judges  excepted  from  death-punishment  much  might 
depend,  however,  on  their  alacrity  in  surrendering  themselves 
according  to  the  King's  Proclamation.  As  that  had  been 
dated  June  6,  the  term  of  fourteen  days  would  expire  on  the 
20th,  or,  with  allowance  of  a  day  for  the  publication,  on  the 
21st.  For  those  who  did  not  surrender  it  might  go  worse 
than  had  been  arranged. 

The  Regicides  having  been  disposed  of,  it  remained  for  the 
House  to  select  the  twenty  out  of  the  general  community 
deserving  to  be  regarded  as  prime,  or  all  but  prime,  culprits, 
and  so  to  be  conjoined  with  the  main  mass  of  the  Regicides 
by  being  also  excepted  from  the  Pardon  in  all  particulars  not 
extending  to  life.  This  difficult  and  intricate  business,  begun 
on  Monday  the  11th  of  June,  was  pursued  daily  till  Monday 
the  18th,  as  follows : — On  the  11th,  ex-Speaker  Lenthall  and 
Sir  Henry  Vane  were  put  among  the  Twenty.  There  wTas 
a  letter  from  Monk  in  Lenth all's  behalf;  but  it  went  against 
Lenthall  notwithstanding,  by  215  votes  to  126,  Clarges  one 
of  the  tellers  in  his  favour.  There  was  no  division  in  Vane's 
case. — On  the  12th,  a  William  Burton,  better  known  then 
than  now,  was  made  one  of  the  Twenty.  Sergeant  Richard 
Keble  was  named  for  another,  but  the  question  was  not  put. 
— On  the  13th,  Oliver  St.  John,  Alderman  John  Ireton,  Sir- 
Arthur  Hasilrig,  Colonel  William  Sydenham,  and  Colonel 
John  Desborough,  were  added  to  the  list,  the  only  division 
being  in  the  case  of  Sydenham,  who  lost  by  147  to  106.— On 
the  14th,  Bui  strode  Whitlocke,  who  had  presented  a  humble 
petition,  went  through  the  ordeal  and  came  off  by  a  vote  of 
175  to  134  not  to  put  the  question.     After  all,  this  mode  of 


THE   INDEMNITY    BILL    IN   THE    COMMONS.  39 

escape  might  amount  only  to  a  respite.  Daniel  Axtell  was 
at  the  same  time  unanimously  made  one  of  the  Twenty,  in 
recollection  perhaps  that  he  had  been  with  Lambert  in  the 
last  rising  for  the  Republic,  but  also  of  the  fact  that  he  had 
commanded  the  guard  in  Westminster  Hall  during  the  King's 
trial. — On  the  15th,  William  Butler,  one  of  Cromwell's  major- 
generals,  was  named  ;  but  such  interest  had  been  made  for 
him  that,  after  two  divisions,  he  escaped  by  160  to  131.  A 
John  Black  well  of  Mortlake,  the  reasons  for  whose  unpopu- 
larity might  need  research,  was  added  without  hesitation. — 
On  the  16th,  Lambert  and  Alderman  Christopher  Pack  were 
unanimously  added,  as  was  also  Sergeant  Keble  now,  on 
second  thoughts  ;  while  Sir  William  Roberts  escaped  by  one 
vote  only.  It  was  now  Saturday,  and  the  House  in  one  week 
had  settled  on  only  thirteen  of  the  proposed  Twenty. — 
On  that  same  Saturday,  in  evidence  of  the  fact  that,  in  look- 
ing about  for  a  suitable  Twenty,  the  demerits  of  various  stray 
persons  besides  those  that  have  been  named  had  come  duly  to 
mind,  and  had  been  much  discoursed  of  and  canvassed,  there 
is  a  memorable  entry  in  the  journals.  The  last  piece  of  business 
that  day,  it  appears,  consisted  of  two  consecutive  orders  and 
a  resolution  appended.  The  orders  were  (1)  that  his  Majesty 
should  be  moved  to  issue  his  Royal  Proclamation  for  the 
calling  in  of  all  copies  of  John  Milton's  Eikonoklastes  and  his 
first  Pro  Popdo  Auglicano  Defensio,  and  of  all  copies  of  John 
Goodwin's  Obstmctors  of  Justice,  with  other  books  of  which 
the  House  would  prepare  a  schedule,  in  order  that  all  might 
be  burnt  by  the  hands  of  the  hangman,  and  (2)  that  Mr. 
Attorney-General  Geoffrey  Palmer  should  be  instructed  to 
institute  immediate  proceedings,  by  indictment  or  information, 
against  Milton  and  Goodwin  for  their  defences  of  the  Regicide 
in  the  books  named.  The  appended  Resolution  was  that 
Milton  and  Goodwin  should  be  forthwith  taken  into  custody 
by  the  Sergeant  at  Arms.  In  relation  to  Milton  there  will 
be  subsequent  investigation  of  this  incident.  We  note  it  now 
in  its  proper  chronological  place  as  an  occurrence  in  the  week 
of  deliberations  by  the  Commons  concerning  the  twenty  persons 
in  the  general  community  that  were  to  be  excepted  from  the 


40  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Pardon  in  all  respects  save  that  of  life.    It  happened  precisely 
at  that  point  of  their   deliberations  when  they  had  chosen 
thirteen  of  the  Twenty  and  had  seven  more  to  choose.     In 
their  ranging-  for  suitable  persons,  one  sees,  they  had  naturally 
thought  of  the  two  most  conspicuous  literary  defenders  of  the 
Regicide. — Hyde  and  the  Privy  Council  were  growing-  im- 
patient with  the  slow  course  of  the  Indemnity  Bill  in  the 
Commons;  and  on  Monday  the  18th  Mr.  Secretary  Morrice 
delivered  a  written  message  to  the  House  from  his  Majesty. 
In  very  gracious  terms,  it  urged  expedition  with  the  Indem- 
nity Bill.     That  day,  accordingly,  the  House  completed  the 
Twenty  b}^  adding  Charles  Fleetwood,  John  Pyne  (called  "  The 
King  of  the  West "  and  described  by  his  enemies  as  "  a  great 
tyrant"  there),  Richard  Dean  (not  the  Regicide  of  that  name, 
but  another,  represented  as  "  an  Anabaptist "),  Major  Richard 
Creed  (with  Lambert  in  the  last  rising),    Philip    Nye  (the 
famous  Independent  preacher),  John  Goodwin  (now  separated 
from  Milton  and  taken  by  himself),  and  Ralph  Cobbet  (with 
Lambert  in  his  last  rising,  but  remembered  also  as  the  officer 
who  had  brought  Charles  I.  from  the  Isle  of  Wight).     The 
nominations  appear  in  the  Journals  as  all  unanimous,  except 
Creed's,  in  favour  of  whom  there  were  two  divisions  without 
success.     There  is  evidence,   however,  both  in  the  Journals 
and  elsewhere,  that  this  day's  debate  was  very  vehement,  and 
that,  as  only  seven  of  the  Twenty  then  remained  to  be  chosen, 
there  was  a  competition  for  their  nominations  correspondingly 
keen.    There  had  even  been  motions  by  Prynne,  Lord  Falkland, 
and  others,  for  debarring  members  of  Republican  or  Oliverian 
connexions  from  the  vote  on  such  an  occasion  ;  and,  when  that 
idea  was  set  aside,  there  were  various  proposals  of  names,  with 
arguments  for  and  against  each.     Prynne  was  the  most  ruth- 
less and  reckless  in  his  nominations.    It  was  he  that  proposed 
Fleetwood,   and  secured    him    in    spite    of  some    defence  by 
military  members.     He  actually  proposed  Richard  Cromwell, 
but  was  not  seconded  in  that  instance ;    he  then    proposed 
Major  Salway,  but  only  to  be  met  by  arguments  for  Salway 
which,  with  a  petition  from  himself,  saved  him.    Philip  Jones 
was  similarly  saved,  by  his  own  petition  and  the  intervention 


THE   INDEMNITY    BILL   IN    THE    COMMONS.  41 

of  Mr.  Annesley  and  Mr.  Finch.  Bulstrode  Whitlocke  had 
again  a  narrow  escape.  Prynne  was  eager  for  including  him 
after  all,  and  was  supported  by  some  ;  but  the  defences  of 
Attorney-General  Palmer,  Sir  Geoge  Booth,  and  others, 
brought  Whitlocke  off  a  second  time.  Richard  Dean  was 
nominated  by  Clarges ;  John  Goodwin  by  Prynne :  Nye  by 
Sir  William  Wylde,  who  denounced  him  as  a  fellow  that 
had  enriched  himself  hugely  in  the  troubles,  while  others 
attacked  his  conduct  as  one  of  Oliver's  triers  of  church-pre- 
sentees, and  one  speaker  insisted  that  he  ought  to  be  made 
a  special  example  by  being  excepted  capitally.  Judge  Thorpe 
was  proposed  in  competition  with  Cobbet  for  the  last  place, 
and,  to  make  room  for  him,  it  was  suggested  that  Cobbet 
also  might  be  reserved  for  trial  for  his  life  ;  but,  the  House  not 
rising  to  this  pitch  of  severity  in  Cobbet's  case  either,  Thorpe 
had  to  be  dropped. — The  notion,  however,  of  excepting  some 
capitally,  over  and  above  the  twenty  reserved  for  any  penalties 
short  of  the  capital  one,  had  struck  the  House  as  convenient. 
They  were  at  the  end  of  their  Twenty,  and  yet  there  were 
several  left  over  that  they  longed  to  include  somehow.  "Twenty 
and  no  more "  had  been  the  wording  of  their  original  Reso- 
lution of  June  8,  in  prospect  of  the  only  exceptions  they 
were  to  make  from  the  Bill  of  Indemnity  in  addition  to 
the  direct  mass  of  the  positive  Regicides.  Without  heeding 
that,  they  ended  their  sitting  of  Monday,  June  18,  their 
Journals  tell  us,  as  follows: — "The  information  of  William 
"  Young,  of  Piellcrochun  in  the  County  of  Pembroke,  Doctor 
"  of  Physic,  concerning  Hugh  Peters,  was  read :  Besolved, 
"  That  William  Hewlet  be  excepted  out  of  the  Act  of  General 
"  Pardon  and  Oblivion ;  Besolved,  That  Hugh  Peters  be  ex- 
"  cepted  out  of  the  Act  of  General  Pardon  and  Oblivion." 
In  the  Hewlet  here  mentioned,  an  old  Parliamentary  soldier 
who  had  risen  to  captain's  rank,  the  House  thought  they  had 
found  one  of  the  King's  executioners  at  last ;  and,  if  they 
were  riffht,  their  resolution  in  his  case  was  onlv  a  confirma- 
tion  of  a  previous  resolution  by  inserting  his  name  in  one  of 
two  blank  spaces  there.  But  Peters  was  clearly  a  supernu- 
merary.    He  was  not  one  of  the  outstanding  Regicide  Judges 


42  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

that  alone  remained  to  be  added  in  the  class  of  the  positive 
Regicides  when  the  House  passed  their  resolution  for  twenty 
and  no  more  beyond  that  class;  nor  had  he  been  included  in 
that  Twenty  ;  nor  was  there  any  relic  now  in  the  House  of  the 
absurd  belief,  which  might  have  justified  his  conjunction 
with  Hewlet,  that  he  had  been  one  of  the  two  executioners. 
What  then?  Was  not  Dr.  Young's  information  from  Pembroke- 
shire to  the  effect  that  Peters,  when  dangerously  ill  at 
Plymouth  on  his  return  from  Ireland,  and  attended  by  Dr. 
Young,  had  told  him  that  "  he  and  Oliver  Cromwell,  when 
"  the  said  Cromwell  went  from  the  Parliament  unto  the  Army 
"  in  1648,  did,  in  a  field  on  this  side  Ware,  none  being  present 
"  besides,  contrive  and  design  the  death  of  his  late  Majesty,  with 
"  the  change  of  the  Government  ?"  What  evidence  could  be 
clearer  ?  Could  not  one  see  the  very  field,  and  Cromwell  and 
Peters  talking  in  the  middle  of  it,  and  not  a  soul  else  on  the 
horizon  ?  In  such  an  extraordinary  case  why  should  there 
not  be  a  twenty-first  man  ?  Why  should  not  Peters,  who 
was  yet  skulking  somewhere,  but  sure  to  be  captured,  be  con- 
joined with  Hewlet,  and  left  to  the  law  among  the  capital 
exceptions?  That,  at  any  rate,  was  what  the  House  did. 
His  real  crime  was  that  he  was  Hugh  Peters1. 

One  would  have  expected  Thurloe  to  be  among  the  twenty 
excepted.  He  had  been  under  arrest,  by  order  of  the  Commons, 
on  a  special  charge  of  high  treason,  since  May  15,  when  a 
small  committee  of  the  House,  including  Annesley  and 
Prynne,  had  been  appointed  for  his  examination.  He  had 
been  found  very  reasonable,  and  willing  to  be  of  any  use  to 
the  King's  government  that  would  not  be  dishonourable  to 
himself.  The  understanding,  therefore,  had  come  to  be  that 
he  should  suffer  no  very  severe  punishment.  Still  the 
Commons  had  inserted  into  the  Bill  a  special  clause  for 
putting  some  mark  of  disgrace  upon  him  2. 


1  Commons  Journals  of  dates;  Mrs.  paper  called  Exact  Accompt,  &c,  No. 

Green's  Calendar   of  State  Papers   for  10L  (June  15—22, 1660).    The  summary 

1660—1661.  ]i|>.  52,  57  ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  of  Dr.  Young's  information  about  Peters 

68 — 75  including  extracts  from  a  manu-  is  from  the  last. 

script  diary  of  the  House  by  a  Member,  2  Commons  Journals  of  May  15  and 

beginning  .June   18,  1600);   the  news-  June  29. 


THE    INDEMNITY   BILL    IN    THE    COMMONS.  43 

For  yet  another  three  weeks  the  Bill  dragged  through  the 
Commons.     There  had  to  be  adjustments  of  the  wording  to 
bring  it  into  coherence  ;   and  amendments  and  provisos  still 
suggested  themselves.     Thus,  after  reconsideration  of  various 
particulars  on  June  19,  22,27,  29,  and  30,  and  when  the  Bill  was 
in  the  stage  of  the  third  reading,  there  was  an  exciting  and  com- 
plex debate,  from  July  2  to  July  7,  over  certain  provisos  moved 
by  one  member  or  another  in  order  to  make  the  Bill  even 
then  more  stringent  and  revengeful.     One  unknown  member 
had  put  in  a  proviso  for  disabling  all  who  had  sat  in  high 
courts   of  justice    since  1648,  all  Cromwell's   major-generals 
and  decimators,  and  all  who  had  petitioned  against  the  King. 
Prynne  strenuously  supported  the  proviso,  and  others  were  for 
extending  it  so  as  to  include  all  who  had  sat  in  Parliament 
in  1647  and  1648,  or  had  been  active  in  any  way  through  the 
Protectorate ;    and  it  required  all  the  exertions  of  Annesley, 
Finch,  Clarges,  and  Matthew  Hale,  to  quench  this  "hand- 
grenado  thrown  into  a  barrel    of  gunpowder."     Then  there 
was  a  proviso  for  causing  all  in  office  through  the  Protectorate 
to  refund  their  salaries, — a  worse  hand-grenado  than  the  last, 
inasmuch  as  the  punishment  it  threatened  would  have  been 
worse  to  many  than  inclusion  among  the  Twenty.     Prynne, 
of  course,  spoke  for  the  proviso,  which  was  opposed  and  scouted 
by   Sir  Thomas  Widdrington,  Clarges,  Sir  Anthony  Ashley 
Cooper,  and  others,  and  set  aside  by  180  votes  to  151.     Yet 
other  provisos,  tending  to  the  disablement  of  large  classes  of 
persons,   were    set   aside  by  the  steadiness  of  the   moderate 
members ;  and,  though  minor  alterations  and  additions  were 
agreed  to,  the  Bill  emerged  at  last  on  the  9th  of  July,  ready 
for  one  other  important  proviso,  the  addition  of  which  had 
been    rendered  necessary  by  circumstances. — Before  the  ex- 
piring of  the  fourteen  days  allowed  by  the  King's  Proclamation, 
twenty  of  the  Regicides  till  then  at  large  had  been  reported  to 
the  House  as  having  surrendered  themselves,  in  this  order, — 
Heveningham,  Wayte,  Mayne,  Peter  Temple,  Isaac  Penning- 
ton, Alderman  Tichbourne,  George  Fleetwood,  James  Temple, 
Sir  John  Bourchier,  Owen  Rowe,  Robert  Lilburne,  Scroope, 
Garland,  Harvey,  Henry  Smith,  Henry  Marten,  Sir  Hardress 


44-  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Waller,  Lord  Monson,  Ludlow,  and  Carew.  Wogan  had  also 
surrendered,  though  after  the  proper  date  ;  Downes,  Milling- 
ton,  and  Potter  are  heard  of  as  having  surrendered ;  and 
Dixwell  had  announced  himself  as  ill,  but  as  intending  to 
surrender.  Only  eleven  of  the  Regicide  Judges  apart  from 
the  seven  capitally  prejudged  seem  now  to  have  remained  at 
large.  It  was  deemed  proper  that  these  should  suffer  for 
their  contumacy;  and,  accordingly,  almost  the  last  proviso 
added  to  the  Bill  on  the  9th  of  July  was  one  removing  them 
from  the  second  class  of  the  excepted,  and  putting  them  into 
the  first  or  extreme  class,  who  were  to  be  excepted  for  life 
as  well  as  for  estate.  They  were  Daniel  Blagrave,  William 
Cawley,  Miles  Corbet,  John  Dixwell,  William  Goffe,  John 
Hewson,  Sir  Michael  Livesey,  Nicholas  Love,  John  Okey, 
Valentine  Walton,  and  Edward  Whalley.  It  would  seem 
that  Dixwell  had  changed  his  mind,  and  that  Wogan's  late 
surrender  had  been  accepted. — All  was  now  complete  ;  and  on 
the  11th  of  July  the  Bill  passed  the  Commons,  and  was  sent 
up  to  the  Lords  *. 

The  Lords  took  their  own  time  over  the  Bill,  examining 
it  in  gross  and  in  detail  from  their  own  point  of  view,  which 
was  by  no  means  that  of  the  Commons.  No  sooner  had  it 
been  brought  up  by  Mr.  Annesley  than  there  was  a  request 
to  the  Commons  for  all  the  documents  concerning  the  King's 
Trial ;  and,  on  the  first  reading  of  the  Bill,  on  July  12,  there 
was  a  sign  already  that  at  least  one  of  the  "  twenty  "  of  the 
Commons  would  fare  worse  in  the  Lords.  Axtell  had  been 
talking  imprudently  in  his  prison,  saying  that  "  Monk's 
reign  would  be  short,"  that  the  King  and  Council  "  would 
involve  the  kingdom  again  in  blood,"  &c. ;  and  it  happened 
that,  just  as  Axtell's  good  friend  reported  this  to  the  Council, 
there  came  also  a  letter  from  Ireland,  written  by  an  old 
servant  of  Charles  I,  expressing  surprise  that  Axtell  was  to 
escape  with  life,  when  the  writer  could  testify  that  he  had 
heard  him  incite  his  soldiers  in  Westminster  Hall  to  cry  out 

Pari.  Hist.  IV.  75—80  (with  ac-  surrenders  of  the  Regicides  were  re- 
counts ..I  the  debates  from  MS.) ;  Com-  ported  successively,  June  9,  13,  15, 16, 
mons   Journals   of  dates   given.     The       18,  19,  20,  and  21. 


THE   INDEMNITY    BILL    IN   THE    LORDS.  45 

for  the  King's  execution.  The  letter  was  sent  by  the  King- 
to  the  Lords,  and  there  read  with  effect.  But  it  was  after 
the  second  reading-  of  the  Bill,  on  July  17,  when  the  Lords 
went  into  Committee  of  the  whole  House  upon  it,  with  Lord 
Roberts  for  chairman,  that  the  procedure  became  practical. 
On  report  from  the  Committee  by  Roberts  on  the  20th,  it 
was  agreed  that  all  the  Regicide  Judges,  sentencers  or  signers 
of  the  death-warrant,  should  be  excepted  from  the  Indemnity ; 
and  on  the  23rd  the  House  had  the  two  fatal  lists  before 
them, — that  of  the  sixty-seven  sentencers  and  that  of  the  fifty- 
nine  signers.  Then,  to  make  their  meaning  more  exact,  they 
ordered  that  Colonel  Hutchinson's  name  should  be  struck  out 
of  both  documents,  agreeing  with  the  Commons  that  he  de- 
served pardon  ;  and,  Ingoldsby's  name  also  being  regarded  as 
deleted  from  the  warrant,  there  remained  sixty-six  sentencers, 
of  whom  fifty-six  were  also  signers,  while  Thomas  Challoner, 
as  the  only  signer  who  had  not  been  a  sentencer,  was  put  in 
a  corner  of  the  list  of  sentencers  as  virtually  one  of  them. 
Thus,  in  the  reckoning  of  the  Lords,  there  were  sixty-seven 
Regicide  Judges  ;  regarding  whom  they  could  come  to  no 
other  conclusion  than  that  they  should  be  "  absolutely  ex- 
cepted "  from  the  Bill,  whereas  the  Commons  had  put  only 
twenty-two  in  that  extreme  category,  viz.  the  four  dead  and 
seven  living  originally  named,  and  the  eleven  afterwards  added 
because  they  had  persisted  in  absconding  after  the  King's 
Proclamation.  In  the  afternoon  sitting  of  the  same  day, 
however,  it  was  agreed  by  the  Lords  to  spare  Tomlinson, 
though  not  without  a  protest  by  the  Earl  of  Lichfield  and 
Lord  Maynard.  This  reduced  the  number  to  sixty-six.  The 
lists  before  the  House  hitherto  were  the  most  authentic  that 
could  be  had  ;  but,  on  intimation  that  Colonel  Francis  Hacker, 
who  was  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  could  produce  the  original 
death-warrant,  on  which  he  had  acted  on  the  dreadful  day, 
with  all  the  names  attached  in  autograph,  it  was  ordered  that 
Hacker  should  be  examined  on  the  subject.  On  the  24th  it  was 
reported  that  Hacker  said  the  parchment  was  still  extant,  but 
that  it  was  in  the  country,  and  could  only  be  obtained  by  send- 
ing his  wife  to  fetch  it ;  also  that,  on  being  questioned  who  the 


46  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

actual  executioner  was,  he  said  he  believed  him  to  have  been  of 
the  rank  of  a  major  in  the  army,  but  did  not  know  his  name. 
The  same  day  John  Rushworth  was  brought  into  the  House 
and  interrogated,  but  could  give  no  information  to  the  point. — 
Bv  this  time  the  feeling-  in  the  Commons  was  that  the  Lords 
were  very  dilatory.  It  had  been  hoped  that  they  would 
accept  the  Bill  very  much  as  the  Commons  had  sent  it  up ; 
but  their  Lordships  were  inquiring  into  all  afresh,  as  if  bent 
on  shaping  an  entirely  new  Bill  of  their  own.  There  had 
been  messages  from  the  Commons  urging  expedition ;  and 
on  July  27  his  Majesty  himself  appeared  among  the  Lords 
and  made  an  earnest  speech  to  the  same  effect.  He  reminded 
their  Lordships  of  his  large  promises  of  pardon  in  his  Declara- 
tion from  Breda,  quoting  the  entire  paragraph  textually ;  he 
hinted  that,  but  for  those  promises  and  the  very  breadth  of  the 
wording  of  them,  neither  he  nor  their  lordships  might  have  been 
where  they  now  were  ;  and  he  exhorted  them  to  pass  the  Indem- 
nity Act  ' '  without  other  exceptions  than  of  those  who  were 
immediately  guilty  of  that  murder."  Their  Lordships  thanked 
his  Majesty,  and  moved  that  he  would  be  pleased  to  cause 
his  speech  to  be  printed  ;  but,  having  thus  given  him  the 
benefit  of  whatever  popularity  might  accrue  from  his  inter- 
ference, they  persevered  in  their  own  course.  —  Hacker's  poor 
wife  had  brought  the  terrible  parchment  from  the  country ; 
Hacker  had  delivered  it  to  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower ; 
and  on  the  31st  it  was  in  their  Lordships'  House,  where  it 
has  remained  ever  since.  On  that  day  and  the  next  there 
was  reconsideration  of  the  case  of  Matthew  Tomlinson.  His 
name  was  not  on  the  death-warrant ;  but,  as  one  of  the 
sentencers,  and  as  the  colonel  in  chief  charge  of  the  King 
between  his  sentence  and  his  execution,  ought  he  not  after 
all  to  be  included  among  the  Regicides  ?  On  evidence  pro- 
duced that  the  dead  King  himself  had  spoken  of  Tomlinson 
as  one  who  had  treated  him  with  civility  and  respect  in  his 
last  hours,  it  was  finally  agreed  to  show  him  favour  and  to 
omit  his  name  from  the  list  of  sentencers.  This  was  on 
Aug.  1 ;  on  which  day  also  the  House  resolved,  on  report 
from  Roberts,  that   Hacker,  Vane,    Hasilrig,   Lambert,   and 


THE    INDEMNITY    BILL   IN   THE   LORDS.  47 

Axtell,    should    be    "  wholly  excepted "  from   the  Bill,   thus 
adding   Hacker  and  Axtell  to   the  list  of  the  unpardonable 
Regicides,  and  conjoining-  with  them  three  general  culprits 
whom  the  Commons  had  placed  among  the  twenty  reserved 
for  penalties  not  capital.     As  Axtell  also  had  been  put  among 
these  twenty  by  the  Commons,  there  remained  but  sixteen 
of  that  body   whom  the  Lords   agreed  to  consider  not  ab- 
solutely unpardonable.    These  the  Lords  proposed  to  deal  with 
in  a  different  way  from  that  which  the  Commons  had  designed. 
On  August  2  it  was  resolved,  on  report  from  Roberts,  "  That 
"  if  any  of  these  persons   following, — viz.  William  Lenthall, 
"  esquire,  William  Burton,  Oliver  St.  John,  Colonel  William 
"  Sydenham,   Colonel  John  Desborough,   John  Blackwell    of 
"  Mortlake,     Christopher    Pack,   alderman,    Richard    Keble, 
"  Charles    Fleetwood,     John    Pyne,     Richard    Dean,     Major 
"  Richard   Creed,  Philip  Nye,   clerk,  John    Goodwin,    clerk, 
"  Colonel  Ralph  Cobbet,   and   John  Ireton,  alderman, — shall 
';  hereafter  accept  or  exercise  any  office,  ecclesiastical,  civil,  or 
"  military,    or   any    other    public    employment,    within    this 
"  Kingdom,  Dominion  of  Wales,  Town  of  Berwick-upon-Tweed, 
"  or  Ireland,  then  such  person  or  persons  as  do  so  accept  or 
"  execute  as  aforesaid  shall,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  of  law, 
"  stand  as  if  he  or  they  had  been  totally  excepted  by  name  in 
"  this  Act."     Whether  intentionally  or  not,  this    brand    of 
perpetual  incapacitation  upon  the  sixteen  might  prove  a  less 
severe  punishment  for  some  of  them  than    might  have  been 
awarded  if  they  had  been    reserved,  as    the   Commons    had 
proposed,  for  penalties,  not  extending  to  death,  to  be  fixed 
by   a  future  Act.     On  Aug.  4   and  Aug.  6,   at   all  events, 
there  were  two  slight  relapses  into  mercy ;  for  it  was  agreed, 
on   consideration    of    the    expressed    repentance    of  Thomas 
Lister  and  Sir  Gilbert  Pickering,  and  of  the  fact  that  their 
part  in   the   King's  Trial    had    been    small,  to    cancel  their 
names  from   the  list   of  Regicides  and   give   them    the   full 
benefit  of  the  Act.     But  on  the  7th  the  House  proposed  four 
additional  capital  victims,  in  a  second  (?)  John  Blackwell,  a 
Colonel  Croxton,  a  William  Wyberd,  and  an  Edmund  Waring, 
selected,  by  private  agreement,  from  among  those  who  had 


48  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

sat  in  the  courts  that  had  sent  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  the 
Earl  of  Holland,  and  Lord  Capel  to  the  scaffold  in  March 
1648-9,  and  the  Earl  of  Derby  in  October  1651.  On  the 
8th  there  was  a  resolution  freeing-  Thurloe  from  penalties 
altogether ;  but  on  the  9th  there  was  exactly  such  a  final 
sweep  of  indiscriminate  vindictiveness  as  Prynne  and  others 
had  demanded  in  the  Commons  when  the  Bill  was  leaving 
that  House.  It  took  the  form  of  a  resolution  "  That  all 
"  those  that  sat  in  any  High  Court  of  Justice  shall  be  made 
"uncapable  of  bearing  any  office,  ecclesiastical,  civil,  or 
"military,  within  the  Kingdom  of  England,  and  Dominion 
"  of  Wales,  and  that  all  such  persons  that  have  sat  in  any 
"  High  Court  of  Justice  shall  be  liable  to  such  further 
"  penalties  as  by  any  future  Act  of  Parliament  shall  be  in- 
"  fiictecl  upon  them,  not  extending  to  life."  It  was  intended, 
though  not  here  expressed,  that  the  resolution  (which,  it 
will  be  observed,  brought  back  some  of  the  sixteen  for 
penalties  besides  incapacitation)  should  not  apply  to  Ingoldsby, 
Tomlinson,  Lister,  or  Pickering,  who  had  already  been  con- 
doned otherwise.  There  were  yet  some  concluding  adjust- 
ments ;  but  on  the  10th  the  Bill,  as  amended,  passed  the 
Lords,  and  went  back  to  the  Commons  for  their  con- 
currence 1. 

There  was  a  debate  of  two  days  in  the  Commons  over  the 
amendments  of  the  Lords  (Aug.  11  and  13).  Some  of  the 
amendments  were  accepted, — e.  g.  that  condoning  Thurloe 
entirely,  that  removing  Lister  and  Pickering  from  the  list  of 
excepted  Regicides,  and  that  adding  Hacker  to  their  number. 
A  more  difficult  question  was  that  of  adopting  the  proposal 
of  the  Lords  to  brand  sixteen  of  the  "  twenty  "  with  perpetual 
incapacitation,  instead  of  reserving  them  to  be  dealt  with  in  a 
special  Act  inflicting  other  penalties.  By  a  division  of  197  to 
102  it  was  agreed,  however,  to  concur  with  the  Lords  here  too, 
though  adding  Lister  and  Pickering  to  the  sixteen. — But  on 
the  question  of  transferring  the  remaining  four  of  the  twenty, 
viz.  Yane,  Hasilrig,  Lambert,  and  Axtell,  to  the  list  of  capital 

1   Lords  Journals  of  dates  ;  Mrs.  Green's  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  1660—1661, 
p.  116  .about  Axtell). 


DIFFERENCES    ON    THE    INDEMNITY    BILL.  49 

exceptions,  the  Commons  stood  firm.  They  negatived  that 
amendment,  adhering-  to  their  own  more  merciful  intention 
for  the  four.  No  wonder,  either,  that  there  was  a  resolute 
opposition  to  that  amendment  of  the  Lords  which  decreed 
capital  penalties  to  all  the  surviving-  King's  Judges  who  had 
been  sentencers  or  signers  of  the  death-warrant,  except  the 
three  specially  condoned.  It  proposed  the  capital  condem- 
nation of  forty-three  in  this  class,  whereas  the  Commons  had 
been  content  with  seven  originally,  though  they  had  at  the 
last  added  eleven  more  for  their  contumacy  in  absconding 
after  the  King's  Proclamation.  Some  were  for  concurring 
with  the  Lords ;  but  others  pleaded  the  honour  of  the  House 
for  the  lives  of  all  it  had  already  voted  to  save,  and  a  large 
majority,  including-  Annesley  and  Sir  George  Booth,  argued 
that  the  honour  of  the  King  himself,  as  well  as  that  of  the 
House,  was  pledged  for  at  least  the  lives  of  all  the  sentencers 
and  signers  of  the  death-warrant  who  had  come  in  on  the 
Proclamation.  These,  it  would  seem,  were  reckoned  now  as 
only  twenty-one, — Carew,  Dovvnes,  George  Fleetwood,  Garland* 
Harvey,  Heveningham,  Robert  Lilburne,  Henry  Marten, 
Mayne,  Millington,  Pennington,  Potter,  Rowe,  Adrian 
Scroope,  Smith,  James  Temple,  Peter  Temple,  Tichbourne, 
Sir  Hardress  Waller,  Wayte,  and  Wogan.  Ludlow,  who  had 
surrendered,  had  again  absconded  ;  and  old  Sir  John  Bourchier 
had  died  since  his  surrender,  testifying  to  the  Regicide,  it  is 
said,  on  his  deathbed,  "  It  was  a  just  act,  and  all  good  men 
will  own  it."  For  the  twenty-one  named  the  House  resolved 
to  adhere  to  their  previous  votes,  repeating  expressly  their 
stipulation  that  Adrian  Scroope's  penalty  should  be  limited  to 
a  year's  value  of  his  lands.  The  proposal  of  the  Lords  for 
four  additional  capital  victims  from  among  the  judges  of  the 
Royalist  peers  was  negatived  with  some  indignation.  Was 
it  seemly  that  the  blood  of  the  mere  Peerage  should  be 
mingled  at  such  a  moment  with  that  of  the  King?  Had  the 
Commons  asked  for  victims  on  account  of  misdeeds  or  insults 
to  their  House  ?  Finally,  on  the  complex  proviso  of  the  Lords 
for  incapacitating  all  that  had  sat  in  any  High  Court  of 
Justice  through  the  interregnum,  and  also  for  inflicting 
VOL.  vi.  is 


50  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

penalties  on  such  by  a  separate  Act,  the  Commons  also  dis- 
agreed with  the  Lords.  They  negatived  the  second  clause  of  the 
proviso,  reserving  such  culprits  for  penalties  ;  and  they  voted 
to  accept  the  first  clause  if  worded  as  follows  :  "  Provided 
"likewise  that  all  those  who,  since  the  5th  of  December,  1648, 
"  did  give  sentence  of  death  upon  any  person  or  persons  in 
"  any  of  the  late  illegal  and  tyrannical  high  courts  of 
"justice  in  England  or  Wales,  or  signed  the  warrant  for  the 
"  execution  of  any  person  there  condemned  (except  Colonel 
"  Richard  Ingoldsby  and  Colonel  Matthew  Tomlinson)  shall 
"be,  and  are  hereby,  made  incapable  of  bearing  any  office, 
"ecclesiastical,  civil,  or  military,  within  the  kingdom  of 
"  England  or  dominion  of  Wales,  or  of  serving  as  a  member 
"in  any  Parliament  after  the  1st  day  of  September,  1660." 
The  Bill  then  went  back  to  the  Lords 1. 

There  had  to  be  four  Conferences  between  the  two  Houses, 
— Aug  17,  21,  22,  25, — with  speeches  and  reasonings  at  each, 
besides  debates  in  the  Houses  themselves  in  the  intervals, 
before  they  could  come  to  agreement.  The  Lords  gave  up 
their  demand  for  four  additional  capital  victims  for  the  slain 
peers,  and  they  accepted  also  the  modification  of  the  pro- 
viso for  those  who  had  sat  in  high  courts  of  justice  ;  but 
they  stood  to  their  determination  to  make  Vane,  Hasilrig, 
Lambert,  and  Axtell  capital  exceptions,  and  also  to  their 
determination  to  deal  capitally  with  all  the  Regicides  on  their 
list  (the  sentencers  and  signers),  except  Ingoldsby,  Tomlinson, 
and  Hutchinson.  On  these  two  questions  there  was  a  keen 
controversy. — That  of  the  four  culprits  on  general  grounds 
was  first  decided.  It  was  decided  on  the  24th  of  August, 
and  chiefly  in  consequence  of  a  suggestion  thrown  out  by 
Chancellor  Hyde,  who  had  managed  the  third  conference  for 
the  Lords  and  reasoned  in  defence  of  their  severe  policy  with 
all  his  lawyerly  skill.  Vane,  Hasilrig,  Lambert,  and  Axtell,  he 
had  contended,  were  "  persons  of  a  mischievous  activity,"  such 
criminals  that  the  Lords  could  not  consent  to  record  a  punish- 
ment against  them  less  than  capital ;  but  their  lordships  would 

1  Commons  Journals   of  dates,  and       ferences  to  Noble's  Regicides,— a.  most 
Pari.  Hi.-t.  IV.  9C — 97  ;  with  some  re-       slovenly  and  careless  book. 


CONFERENCES   ON  THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  51 

join  with  the  Commons,  if  they  pleased,  in  a  petition  to  his 
Majesty  that,  if  they  should  be  capitally  condemned,  he  would 
spare  their  lives.  This  was  far  from  satisfactory  to  many  in 
the  Commons,  but  it  had  such  an  effect  that  they  debated  on 
the  four  severally.  Axtell  was  easily  given  up,  as  a  kind  of 
assessor  of  the  Regicide.  There  was  a  fight  for  Vane,  in 
which  Holies  took  a  brave  part ;  but  Vane  was  given  up  too. 
For  Lambert  the  chief  speaker  was  Sir  George  Booth,  the 
very  man  whose  Cheshire  insurrection  for  the  King  had  been 
crushed  by  Lambert ;  but  Lambert  too  was  given  up.  Finally 
came  Hasilrig's  turn.  There  was  more  speaking  for  and 
against  in  his  case  than  in  any  of  the  others.  On  one  side 
were  Mr.  Tomkins,  Lord  Ancram,  and  Sir  Roger  Palmer, 
reminding  the  House  of  his  evil  actings  and  his  evil  speak- 
ings. Was  it  not  he  that  had  stirred  up  the  vote  for  no  more 
addresses  to  the  King  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  saying  to  the 
Speaker,  "  Sir,  shall  we  believe  that  man  of  no  faith  ?" 
Had  he  not  said  to  Sir  Roger  Palmer  not  long  ago  that,  if 
Charles  II.  did  come  in,  he  knew  the  consequence  for  himself 
"  It  was  but  three  wry  mouths  and  a  swing  ?  "  Let  him  have 
what  he  had  expected  !  On  the  other  hand,  Annesley,  Ashley 
Cooper.  Colonel  Birch,  and  others,  spoke  for  him,  adducing 
also  Monk's  opinion  in  his  favour.  When  it  went  to  a  divi- 
sion, there  were  141  votes  for  Hasilrig  to  116  against  him  ; 
and  so  he  was  saved.  There  had  been  no  division  in  the  cases 
of  Vane  and  Lambert ;  but  it  was  agreed,  on  a  motion  by 
Mr.  Pierrepoint,  going  beyond  Hyde's  suggestion,  to  petition 
the  King  that  they  should  not  be  tried  for  their  lives.  No 
one  had  anything  more  to  say  for  Daniel  Axtell. — Only  the 
question  of  the  Regicides  now  remained.  Not  all  Hyde's 
special  pleading  could  convince  the  Commons  that  the  King 
was  not  bound  in  honour  to  make  a  difference  in  favour  of 
those  who  had  come  in  on  his  Proclamation.  Otherwise  they 
had  been  "  snared  "  ;  all  argument  to  the  contrary  by  Ilvde 
or  anyone  else  was  but  ingenious  sophistication.  But  Prynne 
and  a  few  more  were  for  agreeing  entirely  with  the  Lords, — 
Prynne,  in  especial,  standing  up,  with  his  obdurate  ghastly 
face  and  the  cowl  over  the  spots  where  his  ears  had  been,  and 

E   2 


52  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

speaking  for  agreement.     He  had  been  for  excepting-  all  at 
first,  he  said,  and  was  so  still ;  such  miscreants  ought  not  to 
live  ;  by  sparing  these  men  would  not  the  nation  itself  incur 
the  guilt  of  the  Regicide  ?     The  wave   of  generous  feeling 
overwhelmed  Prynne,  if  it  could  not  silence  him;  and  Hyde 
had  to  be  ready  with  another  of  his  "  expedients."     It  was 
propounded  at  the  fourth  conference,  and  was  to  the  effect 
that  the  Commons  should  agree  with  the  Lords  as  to  all  the 
Regicides,  so  that  all  might  be  tried  for  their  lives,  but  that 
there  should  be  a  special  clause  in  favour  of  stopping  execu- 
tion of  the  capital  sentence  in  the  eases  of  those  who  had 
"  rendered  themselves  upon  an  opinion  that  they  might  safely 
do  so."     He  professed  not  to  know  their  names,  and  so  had 
left  a  blank  for  them  in  the  clause  as  it  had  been  drafted. 
That  same  day  (Aug.  25),  the  Lords  having  acquiesced  in  the 
decision  of  the   Commons  respecting  Hasilrig  and    in    their 
other  desires,  the  Commons  reluctantly  agreed  to  Hyde's  com- 
promise  about   the    Regicides,    appointing   a    committee   to 
ascertain  which  of  them  were  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the 
saving  clause,  and  at  the  same    time  to  see   to   the  verbal 
coherence  of  the  whole   Bill.     This   committee  reported  on 
the  28th.     Then  the  House,  transferring  Sir  John  Bourchier 
to  the  list  of  the  dead  Regicides,  and  also  distinctly  reiterating 
their  vote  that  the  dead  Lord  Grey  of  Groby's  name  should 
be  omitted  from  the  Bill,  so  that  his  representatives  might 
not  suffer  in  property,  agreed,  on  the  other  hand,  to  recant 
one  of  their  own  former  resolutions  of  mercy.     Though  they 
had  voted  for  condoning  Adrian  Scroope,  so  far  as  to  take 
him  out  of  the  list  of  exceptions  in  the  Bill  altogether,  and 
allow  him  to  escape  with  a  mulct  of  one  year's  value  of  his 
estates,  there  had  been  such  reports  to  them  of  private  dis- 
courses of  Scroope  since  the  King's  return,  and  such  remon- 
strances with  them   on    their   extraordinary  charity  to  him, 
that  they  now  flung  him  overboard.     They  would  not  even 
return  him  among   those  who  had    surrendered  themselves, 
but,  by  omitting  him,  reduced  the  number  of  such  to  exactly 
twenty.     Even  these,  it  seems,  were  too  many  for  the  Lords  ; 
for,  when  the  Bill  was  carried  up  to  them  that  day  by  sergeant 


THE   INDEMNITY  BILL   PASSED.  53 

Glynne,  in  the  name  of  the  Commons,  as  now  complete,  they 
requested  yet  another  conference.  At  this  conference  they 
objected  to  two  of  the  names.  They  objected  to  including  Sir 
Hardress  Waller  among-  those  to  have  the  benefit  of  the 
saving  clause,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  "  absented  himself 
since  his  coming  in."  On  explanation,  they  accepted  him  ; 
but  in  the  case  of  another  of  the  twenty  they  were  obstinate. 
This  was  John  Carew.  It  was  admitted  that  he  had  surren- 
dered himself;  but  it  was  pointed  out  that  he  had  done  so 
before  the  Proclamation  had  gone  out.  The  Commons  could 
only  return  to  their  own  House  to  vote  on  the  subject.  For 
insisting  that  Mr.  Carew  should  have  the  benefit  of  the 
saving  clause  in  his  peculiarly  hard  circumstances  there 
were  70  votes,  against  80  for  leaving  him  to  his  fate.  This 
concluded  the  whole  business.  It  was  still  the  28th  of 
August,  and  Mr.  Holies  was  instructed  to  carry  the  Bill  up 
again  to  the  Lords  as  absolutely  finished  this  time,  and  to 
request  their  Lordships  to  move  his  Majesty  to  come  to  their 
House  and  give  his  assent  to  it  next  day.  Mr.  Holies  brought 
back  word  immediately  that  it  should  be  so  K 

On  Wednesday  the  29th  of  August  his  Majesty  did  appear 
in  the  Lords,  and,  the  Commons  having  been  summoned,  did 
give  his  assent  to  the  Bill,  and  then  address  the  two  Houses 
in  a  speech  concerning  it  and  other  matters.  From  that  day, 
all  not  excepted  in  the  "Act  of  Free  and  General  Pardon, 
Indemnity,  and  Oblivion "  might  consider  themselves  safe 
and  might  breathe  freely.  It  was  even  expressly  provided 
in  the  Act  that  there  should  be  penalties  on  any  sheriff  or 
other  officer  that  should  molest  any  person  not  excepted  in 
the  Act  for  anything  pardoned  or  discharged  in  it,  that  for 
three  years  there  should  be  penalties  on  the  use  of  any  words 
of  reproach  or  disgrace  "  tending  to  revive  the  memory  of  the 
late  differences,"  and  that  the  construction  of  the  Act  in  any 
dubious  case  should  always  be  to  the  advantage  of  the  accused. 
We  may  now,  therefore,  recapitulate  the  exceptions  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  Act  itself : — 

1  Commons  and  Lords  Journals   of      abstract  of  speeches  in  the  Commons 
dates,  and  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  97 — 111  (with       from  a  MS.  Diary). 


54  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

I.  Four  Dead  Eegicides  excepted  in  chief  : — These  were 
Oliver  Cromwell,  Henry  Ireton,  John  Bradshaw,  and  Thomas 
Pride,  now  enumerated  in  that  order. 

II.  Twenty  moke  Dead  Regicides  excepted  : — They  were 
Francis  Allen,  John  Alured,  Thomas  Andrews,  John  Blakiston, 
Sir  John  Bourchier,  Sir  William  Constahle,  Bart.,  Sir  John  Dan- 
vers,  Richard  Dean,  Humphrey  Edwards,  Isaac  Ewer,'  John  Fry, 
Thomas  Hammond,  Thomas  Horton,  Sir  Thomas  Mauleverer,  Bart., 
John  Moore,  Sir  Gregory  Norton,  Bart.,  Peregrine  Pelham,  William 
Purefoy,  Anthony  Stapley,  and  John  Venn.  The  "  lands,  tene- 
ments, goods,  chattels,  rights,  trusts,  and  other  the  hereditaments  " 
of  these  were  to  be  subject  to  such  "  pains,  penalties,  and  for- 
feitures "  as  should  be  expressed  and  declared  by  another  Act  of 
Parliament,  which  should  also  confirm  the  Attainder  of  the  four 
already  named. 

III.  Thirty  Living  Regicides,  with  two  unnamed,  abso- 
lutely excepted  : — These  comprised  twenty-two  of  the  Regicide 
Judges, — to  wit,  John  Barkstead,  Daniel  Blagrave,  John  Carew, 
William  Cawley,  Thomas  Challoner,  Gregory  Clements,  Cornelius 
Holland,  JVIiles  Corbet,  John  Dixwell,  William  Goffe,  Thomas 
Harrison,  John  Hewson,  John  Jones,  John  Lisle,  Sir  Michael 
Livesey,  Nicholas  Love,  Edmund  Ludlow,  John  Okey,  William  Say, 
Thomas  Scott,  Adrian  Scroope,  Valentine  Walton,  and  Edward 
Whalley  ;  together  with  Daniel  Axtell,  Francis  Hacker,  John  Cook, 
Andrew  Broughton,  Edward  Dendy,  William  Hewlet,  Hugh  Peters, 
and  those  two  persons  "  who,  being  disguised  by  frocks  and  visors, 
did  appear  upon  the  scaffold  erected  before  Whitehall."  Hewlet 
and  Peters,  whether  on  their  own  account,  or  to  stand  for  the  two 
executioners  in  default  of  the  real  men,  were  huddled  with  the 
Regicides. 

IV.  Nineteen  Living  Regicides  excepted  with  a  Saving 
Clause  : — They  were  John  Downes,  George  Fleetwood,  Augustine 
Garland,  Edmund  Harvey,  William  Heveningham,  Robert  Lil- 
burne,  Henry  Marten,  Simon  Mayne,  Gilbert  Millington,  Isaac 
Pennington,  Vincent  Potter,  Owen  Rowe,  Henry  Smith,  James 
Temple,  Peter  Temple,  Robert  Tichbourne,  Sir  Hardress  Waller, 
Thomas  Wayte,  and  Thomas  Wogan.  The  saving  clause  ran  that, 
whereas  these  persons  had  surrendered  on  the  King's  Proclamation 
of  June  6,  wherein  they  had  been  named,  and  "  do  pretend  thereby 
"  to  some  favour,  upon  some  conceived  doubtful  words  in  the  said 
"  Proclamation,"  it  was  part  of  the  Act  that,  if  they  or  any  of  them 
should  be  "  legally  attainted  for  the  horrid  treason  and  murther 
aforesaid,"  then  nevertheless  their  execution  should  be  "suspended 
"  until  his  Majesty,  by  the  advice  and  assent  of  the  Lords  and 
"Commons  in  Parliament,  shall  order  the  execution,  by  Act  of 
"  Parliament  to  be  passed  for  that  purpose." 

V.  Six  more  of  the  Living  Regicides  excepted,  but  not 
capitally  : — T.iese  were  the    five  judges  deemed  most  culpable, 


AESTRACT    OF   THE    INDEMNITY   BILL.  55 

for  the  part  they  had  taken  in  the  trial,  though  not  present  at  the 
sentence  nor  signers  of  the  death-warrant — to  wit :  James  Challoner, 
Sir  James  Harrington,  Sir  Henry  Mildmay,  Lord  Monson,  and 
Bobert  Wallop,  with  John  Phelps,  one  of  the  clerks  of  the  Court. 
They  were  "  reserved  to  such  pains,  penalties,  and  forfeitures,  not 
extending  to  life,"  as  might  be  settled  by  another  Act. 

VI.  Two  Regicides  excepted,  but  for  Incapacitation 
only  : — These  were  John  Hutchinson  and  Francis  Lassels,  neither 
of  whom  was  to  hold  thenceforth  any  office  of  trust,  civil  or 
military,  in  the  kingdom,  and  the  second  of  whom,  moreover,  was 
to  pay  to  the  king  "  one  full  year's  value  of  his  estate." 

VII.  Two  Non-Regicides  wholly  excepted  : — These  were 
Lambert  and  Sir  Henry  Vane.  The  agreement  of  the  two  Houses 
to  petition  for  their  lives  was  understood,  but  does  not  appear  in 
the  Act. 

VIII.  One  Non-Begicide  excepted,  but  not  capitally  : — 
This  was  Sir  Arthur  Hasilrig,  reserved  for  "  such  pains,  penalties, 
and  forfeitui'es,  not  extending  to  life,"  as  might  be  settled  by 
another  Act. 

IX.  Eighteen  Persons  to  be  under  perpetual  brand  op 
Incapacitation: — These  were: — among  the  Republicans  and  Oli- 
verians  of  military  note,  Charles  Fleetwood,  John  Desborough, 
William  Sydenham,  Ralph  Cobbet,  and  Richard  Creed ;  with  ex- 
Speaker  Lenthall,  Oliver  St.  John,  Christopher  Pack,  Alderman 
John  Ireton,  William  Burton,  John  Blackwell  of  Mortlake,  Eichard 
Keble,  John  Pyne,  and  Eichard  Dean,  among  civilians,  and  Thomas 
Lister  and  Sir  Gilbert  Pickering,  transferred  by  grace  from  the  list 
of  Eegicides ;  and  with  Philip  Nye  and  John  Goodwin  to  represent 
the  prime  offenders  among  the  Oliverian  and  Eepublican  clergy. 
If  any  of  them  should  accept  or  exercise  any  office  of  trust  in 
England,  Wales,  or  Berwick-on-Tweed,  he  was  to  forfeit  all  benefit 
of  the  Act,  and  might  suffer  capitally. 

X.  A  Definite  number  more  incapacitated  by  description, 
but  not  by  name:— These  were  all  persons  (Colonel  Eichard 
Ingoldsby  and  Colonel  Matthew  Tomlinson  honourably  excepted) 
by  whose  sentence  or  warrant  in  any  pretended  High  Court  of 
Justice  since  Dec.  5,  1648,  any  one  had  been  capitally  condemned 
or  executed.  They  were  to  be  excluded  for  ever  from  all  public 
offices  and  from  sitting  in  Parliament. 

XL  Miscellaneous  Exceptions  : — There  Avere  to  be  excepted, 
moreover,  all  who  had  committed  murders,  piracies,  or  other  great 
crimes,  distinctly  unconnected  with  the  civil  wars  or  politics;  also 
all  who  had  assisted  "  in  the  plotting,  contriving,  or  designing  of 
the  great  and  heinous  rebellion  of  Ireland  "  ;  also  all  offences  com- 
mitted "  by  any  Jesuit,  Seminary,  or  Bomish  priest  whatsoever," 
contrary  to  the  statute  of  Elizabeth  against  such  ;  also  all  menial 
servants  of  his  Majesty  who  had  sold  or  betrayed  his  secrets. 
Also,  though  there  was  to  be  the  most  general  confirmation  of  all 


56  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

rights  of  property  acquired  by  purchase,  gift,  or  conveyance,  through 
the  troubles,  this  was  not  to  apply  to  acquisition  of  lands  of  the 
king  or  queen,  or  of  the  lands  of  archbishops,  bishops,  deans,  and 
deans  and  chapters.  This  last  exception  was  in  accordance  with 
resolutions  to  which  the  Parliament  had  come  independently  while 
the  Indemnity  Bill  was  in  progress.  "  Because,  in  the  continued 
"  distractions  of  so  many  years  and  so  many  great  revolutions,"  the 
King  had  said  in  his  Breda  Declaration,  "  many  grants  and  pur- 
"  chases  of  estates  have  been  made  to  and  by  many  officers,  soldiers, 
"  and  others,  who  are  now  possessed  of  the  same,  and  who  may  be 
"  liable  to  actions  at  law  upon  several  titles,  we  are  likewise  willing 
"  that  all  such  differences,  and  all  things  relating  to  such  grants, 
"  sales,  and  purchases,  shall  be  determined  in  Parliament."  Accord- 
ingly, a  "Bill  of  Sales  "had  been  introduced  into  the  Commons, 
which  had  occasioned  stormy  discussion  (July  11),  and  was  not 
yet  perfected,  but  the  purport  of  the  proceedings  in  which,  so  far 
as  they  had  gone,  was  that,  while  all  Crown  lands  were  to  revert 
to  the  Crown  without  compensation,  and  arrangements  would  have 
to  be  made  by  the  possessors  of  Church  lands  before  they  could 
retain  them,  other  properties  were  to  remain  undisturbed  \ 

Along-  with  the  great  Indemnity  Bill,  his  Majesty  gave  his 
assent  to  five  other  Bills.  One  was  "  An  Act  for  a  perpetual 
Anniversary  Thanksgiving-  to  be  observed  and  kept  on  the  29th 
of  May,"  the  day  of  his  Majesty's  entry  into  London  ;  another 
was  "  An  Act  for  the  Confirmation  of  Judicial  Proceedings," 
intended  to  prevent  question  of  rights  depending  on  decisions 
of  law-courts  under  the  late  Governments  ;  a  third  was  "  An 
Act  for  the  restraining  the  taking  of  excessive  Usury," 
i.e.  for  limiting  interest  on  borrowed  money  to  six  per  cent.; 
a  fourth  was  a  private  Act  for  naturalising  two  foreigners  ; 
and  the  fifth  was  "  An  Act  for  the  speedy  provision  of  Money 
for  disbanding  and  paying  off  the  Forces  of  this  Kingdom 
both  by  Land  and  Sea."  This  last  represents  the  progress 
that  had  been  made  in  one  department  of  the  greatest  question, 
Text  to  the  Indemnity  Bill,  that  had  been  occupying  the 
Parliament  hitherto,  the  question  of  Supply  and  Revenue. 

1  Statutes    at    Large:    12  Caroli  II,  lists   is   accounted  for  in   the   present 

Cap.  XI.     If  tin'  render  will  refer  to  the  abstract  of  the  Bill,  except  John  Dove 

i  the  Regicide  Judges  already  in  the  second  list.    Though  his  case  was 

given   -thai   oi   the  Sentencers  at  p.  28,  kept  under  consideration  in  the  Com- 

aud  th.it  ol   those  who  had  taken  some  moiis  on  June  9  (ante  37),  he  has  now 

pari   in  the  Trial  at  pp.  35,  36—  vanished  altogether, 
it  will  be  found  that  every  one  in  both 


SUPPLY    AND   REVENUE.  57 

It  had  been  resolved  to  disband  the  Army  and  reduce  the 
Navy  to  a  few  ships,  so  as  to  save  a  vast  cost  monthly  ;  but 
that  could  not  be  done  without  providing'  for  payment  of 
arrears.  It  was  also  intended  that,  whereas  the  revenue  of 
the  Crown  in  the  time  of  Charles  I.  had  been  about  ^900,000 
a  year,  about  ^250,000  of  which  came  from  illegal  sources, 
or  sources  not  now  available,  the  present  king's  revenue 
should  be  j£l, 200,000  a  year,  and  all  valid;  but  how  to  carry 
this  intention  into  effect  was  no  easy  financial  problem,  and 
all  that  had  been  actually  voted  for  Charles  since  he  came 
in  was  a  subsidv  for  life  of  the  customs  of  tonnage  and 
poundage.  Meanwhile,  for  disbanding  the  Army  and  Navy, 
Parliament  had  reverted  to  the  rough  old  device  of  a  poll-tax, 
— every  Duke  to  pay  ^J100,  every  Marquis  ^80,  every  Earl 
M' 60,  and  so  down  to  Esquires  at  ^10  each,  and  thence  again 
downwards  to  a  shilling  from  every  labouring  person  over 
sixteen  years,  and  sixpence  from  every  one  under  that  age, 
not  a  pauper.  It  was  an  Act  embodying  that  proposal  that 
had  now  been  submitted  to  his  Majesty  along  with  the 
Indemnity  Bill  ;  and  the  spirit  in  which  his  Majesty,  or 
Hyde  for  him,  received  the  Act  appears  from  one  of  the  pas- 
sages in  his  speech.  "  For  your  Poll  Bill/'  he  said,  "  I  do 
"  thank  you  as  much  as  if  the  money  were  to  come  into  my 
"  own  coffers,  and  wish  with  all  my  heart  that  it  may  amount 
"  to  as  great  a  sum  as  you  reckon  upon.  If  the  work  be  well 
"  and  orderly  done  to  which  it  is  designed,  I  am  sure  I  shall 
"  be  the  richer  by  it  in  the  end  ;  and,  upon  my  word,  if  I  had 
"  wherewithal,  I  would  myself  help  you.  ...  I  am  so  con- 
"  fklent  of  your  affections  that  I  will  not  move  you  in  anything 
"  that  relates  immediately  to  myself;  and  yet  I  must  tell  you 
"  I  am  not  richer, — that  is,  I  have  not  so  much  money  in  my 
"  purse  as  when  I  came  to  you.  The  truth  is  I  have  lived 
'•  principally  ever  since  upon  what  I  brought  with  me  ;  which 
"  was  indeed  your  money,  for  you  sent  it  to  me,  and  I  thank 
"  you  for  it.  The  weekly  expense  of  the  Navy  eats  up  all 
"  you  have  given  me  by  the  Bill  of  tonnage  and  poundage. 
"  Nor  have  1  been  able  to  give  my  brothers  one  shilling  since 
"  I  came  into  England,  nor  to  keep  any  table  in  my  house, 


58  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

"  but  what  I  eat  at  myself.  And  that  which  troubles  me 
"  most  is  to  see  many  of  you  come  to  me  at  Whitehall  and 
•i  to  think  that  you  must  go  somewhere  else  to  seek  your 
"  dinner."  If  this  was  written  for  his  Majesty  by  Hyde,  it 
contrasts  oddly  with  Hyde's  own  account  of  the  same  subject 
written  for  posterity.  "  And  thus  the  King's  house,"  writes 
Hyde,  immediately  after  describing"  the  formation  of  the 
Ministry  of  which  he  was  the  head,  "  quickly  appeared  in  its 
"  full  lustre,  the  eating*  and  drinking  very  grateful  to  all 
'  men,  and  the  charge  and  expense  of  it  much  exceeding  the 
'  precedents  of  the  most  luxurious  times,  and  all  this  before 
"  there  was  any  provision  of  ready  money  or  any  assignation 
"  of  a  future  fund."  He  adds  that  tradesmen  were  ready  to 
deliver  their  goods  upon  trust,  and  that  Charles  was  plunging 
into  his  first  year  of  debt  most  recklessly.  The  speech,  how- 
ever, may  nut  have  been  written  by  Hyde  1. 

Next  to  the  Indemnity  question,  that  of  Supply  and 
Revenue,  we  have  said,  was  the  most  important  that  had  yet 
occupied  the  Parliament.  On  a  still  more  vast  and  momentous 
question  they  had  touched  once  or  twice,  but  with  little  or 
no  effect.     This  was  the  question  of  the  Church. 

The  most  enormous  blunder  of  the  Presbyterians  in  their 
Restoration  of  Charles  had  been  in  letting  him  in  absolutely 
without  conditions.  The  intention  at  first  had  been  to  neo-o- 
tiate  with  him  at  Breda  or  the  Hague  on  the  basis  of  some 
such  conditions  as  those  offered  to  his  father  in  the  Treaty  of 
Newport  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  in  1648,  preventing  a  return 
to  Prelacy  and  securing  the  permanence  of  a  Presbyterian 
Church-establishment.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  Charles, 
in  his  anxiety  to  recover  his  kingdoms,  would  then  have 
assented  to  almost  any  terms  whatsoever,  leaving  it  to  chance 
whether  be  should  feel  himself  bound  by  them  or  not  after- 
wards. But  the  hurricane  of  popular  impatience  at  home, 
and  Monk's  advice  at  last,  had  swept  aside  the  proposals  of 
definite  negotiation  made  by  Matthew  Hale  and  others ;  and, 

i  Lords  Journals  of  Aug.  29  and  Com-  719—720  (Poll  Bill)  ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV. 
mons   Journals   of  Sept.   3;    Phillips,       114—115;  Clarendon,  1005-1006. 


THE   CHURCH   QUESTION.  59 

when  Charles  was  in  England,  it  was  with  no  other  pledge  in 
Church-matters  than  was  contained  in  one  passage  of  his 
voluntary  Declaration  from  Breda.  "  And,  because  the  pas- 
"  sion  and  uncharitableness  of  the  times,"  said  that  document, 
"  have  produced  several  opinions  in  Religion,  by  which  men 
"  are  engaged  in  parties  and  animosities  against  each  other, — 
"  which,  when  they  shall  hereafter  unite  in  a  freedom  of  con- 
"  versation,  will  be  composed,  or  better  understood, — We  do 
"  declare  a  Liberty  to  Tender  Consciences,  and  that  no  man 
"  shall  be  disquieted  or  called  in  question  for  differences  of 
"  opinion  in  matter  of  Religion  which  do  not  disturb  the  peace 
"  of  the  Kingdom,  and  that  We  shall  be  ready  to  consent  to 
"  such  an  Act  of  Parliament  as,  upon  mature  deliberation, 
"  shall  be  offered  to  Us,  for  the  full  granting  that  In- 
"  dulgence."  It  must  have  been  a  delight  to  Hyde  to  have 
been  able  to  manage  this  difficulty  of  the  Restoration  in 
a  manner  so  vague.  Of  all  the  King's  counsellors,  the  exiled 
bishops  included,  not  one  had  so  firmly  settled  with  himself 
as  Hyde  had  done  that  the  restoration  of  the  King  should 
involve  the  restoration  also  of  Episcopacy  and  the  Old  Church 
of  England  in  its  fullest  form.  From  this  purpose  he  had 
never  swerved,  and  it  was  a  wonder  to  Lord  Colepepper  and 
others  that  he  was  so  tenacious  on  a  subject  about  which 
they  were  comparatively  indifferent.  As  for  Charles  himself, 
there  wei-e  reasons  why  he  should  view  the  matter  differently 
from  Hyde,  even  while  taking  Hyde's  advice.  Whether  the 
Protestantism  of  the  British  Islands  should  be  episcopal  or 
non-episcopal  can  have  been  a  question  of  small  concern  on 
its  own  intrinsic  account  to  one  who,  for  a  year  at  least 
already,  if  not  for  six  years,  had  been  secretly  a  Roman 
Catholic.  So  far  as  Hyde  was  aware  of  this  fact,  it  must 
have  added  to  his  difficulties  ;  but  it  was  a  consolation  that 
the  King  was  not  so  much  of  a  Papist  after  all,  or  of  a  reli- 
gionist of  any  kind,  as  to  go  out  of  his  senses  for  the  Papacy, 
or  for  anything  else  that  might  be  detrimental  to  his  own 
interests.  With  such  an  easy  crypto-Catholic  on  the  throne, 
one  might  succeed  in  restoring  that  system  of  Anglican  High 
Episcopacy,  resting  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Apostolical  Succes- 


60  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

sion  of  Bishops,  which  the  genuine  Roman  Catholics  thought 
a  worse  abortion  than  Presbyterianism  itself1. 

Charles  having-  come  in  without  conditions,  and  with  a 
positive  intimation  of  his  personal  preference  for  episcopal 
forms,  all  that  the  Presbyterians  could  expect  was  what  they 
now  called  a  Comprehension,  i.  e.  the  settlement  of  the 
Church  in  such  a  way  that  any  Episcopacy  to  be  set  up  in  it 
should  be  a  very  limited  Episcopacy  indeed,  like  that  sketched 
by  Usher  in  his  famous  "Model"  of  1641,  abandoning  the 
theory  of  Episcopacy  by  divine  right,  and  reducing  bishops 
to  mere  presidents  of  the  synods  of  presbyters  (Vol.  II. 
pp.  229,  230).  In  this  way  they  hoped  that  the  great  body 
of  the  Presbyterian  ministers  in  Cromwell's  Established 
Church  might  be  able  to  remain  within  the  Establishment, 
not  bound  to  use  the  Liturgy  or  other  ceremonies  contrary  to 
their  consciences,  while  room  for  the  readmission  of  such  of 
the  surviving  old  Anglican  and  Liturgical  clergy  as  it  might 
be  necessary  and  proper  to  restore  to  their  livings  would 
easily  be  obtained  by  the  ejection  of  the  most  troublesome 
of  those  Baptists  or  other  Independents  the  conjunction  of 
whom  with  the  Presbyterians  in  the  Church-Establishment 
had  been  only  by  Cromwell's  will.  About  such  sectaries 
there  was  not  much  concern  among  the  Presbyterians.  They 
had  been  accepted  into  the  Establishment  as  very  question- 
able brethren,  and  their  ejection  might  be  a  good  riddance 
now ;  or,  if  any  provision  was  to  be  made  for  their  future,  it 
was  to  come  in  the  form  of  a  Toleration  out  of  the  Establish- 
ment, whereas  the  present  question  was  Comprehension,  or 
the  amicable  blending  of  Episcopalians  and  Presbyterians 
within  the  Establishment.  Towards  this  end  there  had  been 
much  fresh  studying  of  Usher's  Model,  which  indeed  had 
been  again  a  good  deal  before  the  public  since  1658,  when 
there   was   some   notion  that   Cromwell   himself  might  give 

1  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  17  ;  Clarendon,  779 ;  of  Worcester  ;    and   as   early  as   June 

Burnet,  1.  126-127  and  158,  II.  449—  1653    Hyde    in    Paris    had   been    very 

451  and  471  ;  Neal,  I V.  231—236  ;  Hal-  anxious  to  contradict  the  rumours  that 

lain.  II.  314.     There  had  been  efforts  to  Charles  had  changed  his  religion  (see 

i-rt  Charles  to  Roman  Catholicism  Macray's  Calendar  of  Clarendon  Papers, 

from  the  time  of  his  first  residence  in  under  date  June  6,  1653). 
France  alter  his  escape  from  the  Battle 


THE    CHURCH   QUESTION.  61 

effect  to  it,  so  as  to  incorporate  some  of  the  most  reasonable 
of  the  old  Anglican  clergy  with  the  other  elements  of  the 
Church  of  his  Protectorate,  and  give  the  somewhat  chaotic 
aggregate  the  benefit  of  a  moderate  episcopal  organization. 
There  had  also  been  much   private  consultation  among  the 
leading  Presbyterians  as  to  the  possibility  of  reverting  to  the 
Thirty-Nine  Articles,  and  to  the  Liturgy  with  certain  amend- 
ments, and  as  to  the  ceremonies  that  might  be  left  optional 
in   worship.     All    was    uncertain,    however,   till    Charles,   or 
Hyde  and  the    Council   for  him,  or  the  Parliament,   should 
open  the  subject  practically.     Of  the  old  bishops  of  the  reign 
of    Charles    I.   there   were    still    alive    these    nine — William 
Roberts,  Bishop  of  Bangor ;  William  Pierce,  Bishop  of  Bath 
and  Wells;    Henry   King,   Bishop  of  Chichester;    Matthew 
Wren,  Bishop  of  Ely ;  Accepted  Frewen,  Bishop  of  Lichfield 
and  Coventry;  William  Juxon,  Bishop  of  London;    Robert 
Skinner,  Bishop  of  Oxford ;  John  Warner,  Bishop  of  Rochester ; 
and  Brian  Duppa,  Bishop  of  Salisbury.     These,  of  course,  had 
at  once  reassumed  their  titles,  with  claims  to  their  sees ;  and 
it  might  be  taken  for  granted  that,  if  these  claims  were  allowed, 
the  remaining  sixteen    bishoprics,  and  the  two    archbishop- 
rics, would  soon  be  filled  up,  and    that  for  these  and  other 
high  ecclesiastical  posts  there  would  be  a  preference  of  eminent 
Anglicans  who  had  been  with  the  King  abroad  or  had  suffered 
for  him  at  home.     Dr.  Henry  Hammond  had  died  April  25, 
1660,  the   very  day  of  the  meeting  of  the  Convention  Par- 
liament ;    but    Sheldon,    Sanderson,    Morley,    Earle,  Hacket, 
Gunning,  Brian  Walton,  and  many  others,  had  lived  to  see 
the  Restoration,  and  were  waiting  for  their  rewards.    It  would 
be  enough,  or  at  least  all  within  hope  in  the  circumstances,  if 
these  men,  taught  by  experience,  would  waive  now  any  notion 
of  Laudian  Episcopacy,  and  be  content  with  Usher's  Model 
and  a  comprehension  of  the  Presbyterians  \ 

On  the  part  of  the  King  himself  the  first  signs  had  been 
promising.  Within  a  few  weeks  after  his  return,  and  chiefly 
by  the  management  of  the  Presbyterian  Earl  of  Manchester 

1  Baxter's  Autobiography,  Book  I.  211 — 218. 


62  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

in  his  office  of  Lord  Chamberlain,  ten  Presbyterian  divines 
had  been  sworn  in  among-  his  Majesty's  chaplains  :  viz.  Dr. 
Reynolds,  Mr.  Calamy,  Mr.  Ashe,  Mr.  Richard  Baxter,  Dr. 
Spurstow,  Dr.  Wallis,  Dr.  Bates,  Dr.  Manton,  Mr.  Case,  and 
Mr.  Woodbridge.      Though  only  three    of  them  were    ever 
asked   to  preach   before   the  King,  and  that  only  once  each, 
their  access  to  his  Majesty  was  something.     Before  the  end 
of  June  they  had  had  an  interview  with  him  in  the  Earl  of 
Manchester's    lodgings,   Chancellor    Hyde    and    the   Earl   of 
St.  Alban's  being  also    present.     There   Baxter  had  spoken 
very  freely  to  his  Majesty.     "  I  presumed  to  tell  him,"  says 
Baxter,  "  that  the  late  usurpers  that  were  over  us   so  well 
"  understood  their  own  interest  that,  to  promote  it,  they  had 
"  found  the  way  of  doing  good  to  be  the  most  effectual  means, 
"  and    had   placed    and   encouraged    many   thousand  faithful 
"  ministers    in    the    Church,    even    such    as    detested    their 
"  usurpation  .  .  . ;  wherefore  I  humbly  craved  his  Majesty  .  .  . 
"  that  he  would  never  suffer  himself  to  be  tempted  to  undo 
"  the  good  which  Cromwell  or  any  other  had  done  because 
"  they  were  usurpers  that  did  it,  or  discountenance  a  faithful 
"  ministry  because  his  enemies  had   set  them  up."     Others 
spoke  to  the  like  effect ;  and  the  requests  made  to  his  Majesty 
were    specifically  these, — that    things    not    necessary   should 
not  be  made  terms  of  membership  of  the  Established  Church, 
that  sound  Church-discipline  should  be  maintained,  and  that 
neither  should   faithful  ministers  be  cast  out  nor  unworthy 
ministers  thrust  in.     The  King's  answer,  says  Baxter,  was  as 
gracious  as  possible.     He  was  glad  to  hear  of  the  inclination 
of  the  Presbyterians  to  an  agreement  with  the  Episcopalian 
clergy:  and  it  should  not  be  his  fault  if  the  two  parties  were 
not  brought    together,  for  he  was   resolved   to   draw  them 
together  himself, — which  "  must  not  be,"  he  said,  "  by  bring- 
"  ing  one  party  over  to  the  other,  but  by  abating  somewhat 
';  on  both  sides  and  meeting  in  the  midway."     On  hearing 
this  old  Mr.  Simeon  Ashe  was  so   much  overcome  with  joy 
that  he  burst  into  tears.     The  English  Presbyterian  chiefs, 
it  is  evident,  had  been  tamed  into  thankfulness  for  very  small 
mercies.     Actually  two  of  the  Presbyterian  agents   at   this 


THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  63 

conference,  Calamy  and  Spurstow,  were  old  Smectymnuans  of 
1641,  and  a  third  Smectymnuan,  Matthew  Newcomen,  was  in 
their  confidence.  Stephen  Marshall  and  Thomas  Young1,  the 
other  two  Smectymnuans,  were  both  dead  1. 

But  what  part  had  the  Parliament  taken  ?  That  the  House 
of  Lords,  with  but  a  minority  of  Presbyterians  in  it,  desired 
the  full  re-establishment  of  the  old  Episcopal  forms,  was  a 
matter  of  course,  and  had  been  made  evident  by  an  order,  on 
the  31st  of  May,  that  the  prayers  used  in  the  House  should 
thenceforward  be  those  of  the  Liturgy.  It  was  from  the 
Commons  House  that  measures  for  the  express  protection  of 
Presbyterianism  were  to  be  expected.  One  such  measure, 
brought  in  as  early  as  May  9,  and  committed  May  16,  had 
been  "  a  bill  for  continuing  of  ministers  in  their  parsonages 
and  ecclesiastical  livings."  That  Bill  seems  to  have  been 
smothered  by  the  King's  approach ;  for  on  the  26th  of  May 
we  read  of  an  order  reported  by  Prynne  "  touching  quieting 
possession  of  ministers,  schoolmasters,  and  other  ecclesiastical 
persons,  in  sequestered  livings,  until  they  are  legally  evicted," 
and  of  the  reference  even  of  this  order  to  a  committee  for 
farther  consideration.  Then,  on  the  27th  of  June,  there  was 
the  first  reading  of  a  bill  "  for  the  maintenance  of  the  true 
Reformed  Protestant  Religion;  "  and  on  this  bill,  after  it  had 
been  read  a  second  time  and  thrown  into  a  grand  committee 
of  the  whole  House,  there  were  two  most  eager  and  protracted 
debates  in  grand  committee  (July  9  and  16)  In  these 
debates  Presbyterianism  was  criticised  as  it  had  not  been  in 
that  House  for  many  a  day.  Prynne  and  others  spoke  for  it 
manfully,  and  even  the  Covenant  was  cited  as  an  oath  still 
obligatory;  but  a  moderate  Episcopacy  after  Usher's  Model 
was  substantially  the  utmost  prayer  even  of  the  Presbyterian 
speakers,  Prynne  included,  while  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles, 
the  Liturgy,  and  High  Episcopacy,  found  open  advocates, 
and  Finch  hoped  they  were  not  to  '•  cant  after  Cromwell "  in 
this  Bill,  but  to  assume  the  good  old  Church  of  England  as 
in  uninterrupted  legal  possession   at  that  moment.     On  the 

>  Baxter,  I.  229  -231. 


64  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS    TIME. 


suggestion  of  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  it  was  agreed  at 
last  to  recommend  to  the  House  to  abstain  from  the  difficult 
subject  altogether  in  the  meantime,  and  to  refer  it  to  his 
Majesty,  with  the  advice  of  such  a  Synod  of  Divines  as  he 
mi^ht  call.  Accordingly,  on  the  20th  of  July,  it  was  resolved 
bv  the  House — (1)  "  That  this  House  doth  agree  with  the 
"  Grand  Committee  that  the  King's  Majesty  be  humbly 
"  desired  to  call  such  a  number  of  Divines  as  his  Majesty 
'•  shall  think  fit,  to  advise  concerning  matters  of  Religion, 
"  and  that  the  Grand  Committee  do  forbear  to  sit  until  the 
«  23rd  of  October  next;  "  (2)  "  That  the  King's  Majesty  be 
"  humbly  moved  that  he  will  please,  by  his  proclamation,  to 
"  quicken  the  execution  of  all  laws  in  force  against  the  break- 
"  ing  of  the  Lord's  Day,  drunkenness,  swearing,  and  other 
"  profaneness.'"  Next  day  it  was  intimated  by  Mr.  Holies 
that  his  Majesty  had  received  the  two  votes,  "  liked  them 
both  very  well,"  and  wished  the  House  to  know,  respecting' 
the  first  especially,  that  'f  he  was  in  hand  with  it,  and  did 
hope  very  speedily  to  do  something"  therein  to  the  good 
satisfaction  of  the  kingdom."  As  Hyde  had  hoped  and 
schemed,  the  whole  question  of  the  Church  of  the  Restoration 
had  been  surrendered  to  his  Majesty1. 

One  part  of  the  question  was  rapidly  settling-  itself.  From 
abroad,  or  from  their  obscurities  at  home,  the  sequestered  old 
Anglican  clergy  were  reappeaiing  in  scores,  clamant  for 
redress,  and  taking"  possession  of  their  former  livings.  Thus, 
by  mere  act  of  law,  which  there  was  no  means  of  resisting, 
many  of  the  Puritan  ministers,  Presbyterian  or  Independent, 
who  had  been  for  years  in  the  Establishment,  were  already 
adrift  from  their  parsonages  and  parishes.  The  same  process 
was  in  operation  very  conspicuously  at  the  two  University 
seats.  Armed  by  an  order  of  the  House  of  Lords  of  June  4, 
and  backed  by  the  King*  and  Council,  the  Chancellors  of 
the  two  Universities  were  ejecting  heads  of  colleges  and 
fellows,    and    restoring    old    heads    and   fellows,    as    fast   as 

1  Lords  and  Commons  Journals  of  are  from  the  extracts  from  a  contem- 
days  named,  save  that  the  proceedings  porary  Diary  given  in  Pari.  Hist.  IV. 
in  Grand  Committee  of  the  Commons       79— Si. 


THE   CHURCH    QUESTION.  65 

they  could.  At  Oxford,  where  the  Marquis  of  Hertford  was 
Chancellor  in  succession  to  Richard  Cromwell,  nine  heads  and 
four  professors  were  turned  out  in  favour  of  the  former 
holders  of  the  posts ;  and  at  Cambridge  the  Presbyterian 
Earl  of  Manchester,  as  Chancellor,  had  the  singular  experience 
of  ejecting  seven  heads,  one  of  whom  he  had  himself  ap- 
pointed in  1643,  and  restoring  seven  instead,  of  whom  five 
had  been  turned  out  by  himself  at  that  date.  Of  the  numbers 
of  fellows  restored  and  ejected  in  the  colleges  of  the  two 
Universities  we  cannot  here  take  account.  A  remarkable 
accompanying  phenomenon  was  the  rush  of  new  men  at  both 
Universities  for  graduation  in  all  the  faculties,  and  especially 
in  Arts  and  Divinity.  Quite  a  host  of  persons,  one  can  see, 
were  qualifying  themselves  for  promotion  to  the  places  likely 
to  be  vacant  \ 

The  process  here  described,  including  appointments  of 
Anglican  divines  to  prebends  and  other  cathedral  posts,  had 
begun  in  June  1660,  had  continued  through  July  and  to 
the  passing  of  the  Act  of  Indemnity  on  August  29,  and  was 
not  even  then  at  an  end.  Petitions  from  the  ejected  and 
distressed  Puritan  clergy  had  been  sent  in  to  the  Commons ; 
and  that  House,  while  still  abstaining,  as  by  their  former  vote, 
from  the  general  question  of  the  future  constitution  of  the 
Church,  had  thought  it  right  to  bring  in  another  bill  on  the 
precise  subject  of  the  ejections  and  restorations  (July  27),  and 
to  refer  the  petitions  to  the  Committee  on  the  Bill.  This 
bill  was  still  in  progress  in  the  House  at  the  date  of  the 
King's  assent  to  the  Indemnity  Bill  -. 

What  meanwhile  of  the  King's  own  progress  in  the  more 
general  question  which  had  been  left  wholly  in  his  hands  ? 
His  promise  had  been  that  he  would  bring  the  Presbyterians 
and  the  Anglicans  together  by  mutual  concessions.  This 
promise,  the  handsomeness  of  which  had  moved  Mr.  Ashe  to 
tears,  he  had  proceeded  to  carry  out  in  a  peculiar  manner. 
He  had  asked  his  Presbyterian  chaplains  to  draw  out  on  paper 
a  list  of  the  concessions  they  would  make  on  their  side ;  and 

1  Lords  Journals  of  date ;  Neal,  IV.  2  Commons  Journals  of  July  27  and 

261—265  ;  Wood's  Fasti  for  1660.  thence  to  Aug.  14. 

VOL.  VI.  ¥ 


66  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

these  gentlemen,  after  consulting-  with  such  of  their  London 
brethren  and  country  brethren  as  were  at  hand,  and  holding" 
meeting-s  on  the  subject  at  Sion  College,  had  done  as  re- 
quested, and  sent  in  an  Address  and  Proposals  to  his  Majesty. 
While  disclaiming  Prelacy  as  it  had  been  repudiated  in  the 
Covenant,  they  were  willing  to  accept  "  the  true  ancient  and 
primitive  Presidency "  in  the  Church,  "  as  it  was  balanced 
and  managed  by  a  due  commixtion  of  presbyters  ;  "  and  they 
tendered  Usher's  Model,  exactly  as  it  stood,  as  one  that 
would  suit  the  circumstances,  venturing  at  the  same  time  on 
some  criticisms  on  the  old  Prelacy.  They  professed  them- 
selves satisfied  with  the  lawfulness  of  a  Liturgy,  if  not  too 
rigidly  imposed,  so  as  to  supersede  oral  prayer  entirely;  but 
they  took  exceptions  to  the  old  Liturgy,  and  desired  a 
new  one,  or  a  careful  revision  of  the  old.  They  pleaded 
for  moderation  in  ceremonies  generally,  for  respect  for  the 
scruples  of  those  who  might  object  to  kneeling  at  the  sacra- 
meut  of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  to  holidays  of  human  appoint- 
ment, and  for  prohibition  of  the  use  of  the  surplice,  the  cross 
in  baptism,  and  bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus.  Requests 
made  to  the  King  at  the  same  time  were  that  he  would 
not  meanwhile  impose  tests  or  subscriptions  on  holders  of 
benefices  as  conditions  of  their  remaining  in  the  Church,  that 
he  would  stay  the  putting  in  of  new  men  into  livings  the 
former  holders  of  which  were  dead,  and  which  might  now 
therefore  be  held  by  their  Puritan  possessors  without  injury 
to  old  rights,  and  that  he  would  provide  some  remedy 
against  the  return  to  livings  of  men  notoriously  insufficient 
or  scandalous.  Such  were  the  demands  of  the  Presbyterians, 
reduced  to  the  utmost.  Great  was  their  surprise  when,  in- 
stead of  receiving  in  return,  as  they  had  expected,  a  similar 
paper  drawn  up  by  the  Episcopal  divines  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple of  conceding  as  much  as  possible  on  that  side,  they 
received  only  a  paper  of  severe  criticisms  on  their  own, 
assuming  High  Episcopacy  as  indubitably  in  the  right,  and 
incapable  of  making  concessions,  unless  it  might  be  perhaps 
in  the  matter  of  some  revision  of  the  Liturgy,  and  some 
relaxation  of  ceremonies  to  tender  consciences  at  his  Majesty's 


VARIOUS   ACTS  OF  PARLIAMENT.  67 

pleasure.  A  defence  of  their  former  proposals  was  offered  by 
the  Presbyterian  ministers  in  reply ;  and  so,  about  the  time 
of  the  passing-  of  the  Act  of  Indemnity,  the  paper  controversy 
came  to  a  stop.  His  Majesty,  it  seems,  had  failed  so  far  in 
his  attempt  to  bring  the  two  parties  together l. 

From  the  date  of  the  passing  of  the  Indemnity  Bill 
(August  29)  Parliament  was  quickened  in  its  proceedings 
on  other  subjects  by  an  intimation  from  the  King  that,  for 
his  convenience  and  theirs,  the  two  Houses  would  have  to 
adjourn  themselves  for  a  recess  or  vacation  within  a  fortnight. 
Their  time  being  thus  limited,  they  confined  themselves  to 
the  business  deemed  most  essential. 

Due  note  had  been  taken  of  the  King's  hint,  in  his  speech 
on  passing  the  Indemnity  Bill,  that  some  more  money  at 
once  for  himself  and  his  brothers  would  be  very  welcome. 
The  Houses  had  already  been  considering  the  jointure  of  the 
Queen-mother,  and  had  made  her  a  present  of  ^20,000  ;  and 
now  they  voted  ^10,000  more  to  the  Duke  of  York,  j£7000 
more  to  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  ^5000  for  repairs  of  his 
Majesty's  houses.  The  vaster  business  of  providing  securely 
a  future  annual  revenue  of  j6j1, 200,000  for  the  King  occupied 
much  of  the  attention  of  the  Commons  ;  but,  as  it  involved 
some  difficult  questions,  and  especially  that  of  the  proper 
mode  of  raising  so  much  of  the  sum  as  had  hitherto  come 
from  unconstitutional  prerogatives  which  his  Majesty  was 
now  expected  to  resign,  it  was  found  impossible  to  perfect 
arrangements  before  the  recess,  and  the  Houses  had  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  a  Bill  providing  an  immediate  supply 
of  ^100,000  on  account.  The  provision  of  means  for  dis- 
banding the  army  and  reducing  the  navy  had,  however,  been 
thoroughly  managed.  The  poll-tax  formerly  imposed  for 
this  purpose  not  having  been  sufficiently  productive,  a  bill 
for  otherwise  raising  ^140,000  towards  the  sum  required 
was  pushed  through  the  two  Houses.  Another  Act  of  import- 
ance now  completed  was  "  An  Act  for  the  encouraging  and 

1  Baxter,  I.  231 — 259  (where  the  papers  are  given). 
F  2 


68  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

increasing  of  Shipping  and  Navigation  "  :  in  other  words,  a 
new  edition,  with  modifications,  of  the  famous  Navigation 
Act  of  the  Commonwealth  (see  Vol.  IV.  p.  305).  Finally, 
the  Houses  did  at  length  shape  "  An  Act  for  the  Confirming 
and  Restoring  of  Ministers."  It  enacted,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  every  holder  of  a  benefice  that  had  been  "  ordained  by 
any  ecclesiastical  persons "  before  Dec.  25,  1659,  and  had 
not  renounced  his  ordination,  should  remain  in  possession  of 
his  benefice,  provided  there  were  no  "  formerly  ejected  or 
sequestered"  minister  still  alive  with  a  legal  title  to  that  bene- 
fice; but  it  enacted,  on  the  other  hand,  that  all  such  "  formerly 
ejected  or  sequestered"  ministers  still  surviving,  unless  found 
scandalous  or  insufficient,  should  re-enter  in  the  possession  of 
their  benefices,  a  division  of  the  profits  of  the  last  year  of  each 
benefice  to  be  made  between  the  outgoing  minister  and  the 
restored  one.  There  were,  however,  some  important  excep- 
tions and  provisos.  One  was  that  any  presentations  to 
benefices  by  his  Majesty  himself  under  the  great  seal  between 
May  1  and  September  9,  1660,  should  hold  good  on  their 
own  account,  whoever  might  be  in  possession,  or  have  title 
otherwise ;  and  another  was  that  no  minister  should  be  con- 
firmed in  possession  or  restored  to  possession  who  had  sub- 
scribed any  petition  to  bring  the  late  King  to  trial,  or  had, 
by  writing,  preaehing,  printing,  or  otherwise,  advocated  or 
justified  his  trial,  or  who  had,  by  writing,  preaching,  or 
practice,  "  declared  his  judgment  to  be  against  Infant 
Baptism."  Though  made  applicable  nominally  on  both  sides, 
these  exceptions,  it  will  be  seen,  affected  really  only  one  side. 
Not  only  were  all  ministers  of  the  Establishment  standing  in 
the  places  of  old  incumbents  still  living  to  be  thrown  out  of 
their  benefices,  but  the  Establishment  was  to  be  cleared  of  all 
Anabaptists,  and  also  of  such  Independents  as  had  been  very 
prominently  Republican 1. 

With  these  and  one  or  two  smaller  bills  ready,  the  Lords 
and  Commons  again  met  his  Majesty  on  Thursday,  the 
13th  of  September.     He  then  gave  his  assent  to  the  bills, 

1  Commons  and  Lords  Journals  of  date  ;  Statutes  at  large  (for  the  Navigation 
Act  and  Ministers'  Act). 


hyde's  speech  befoke  the  recess.  69 

and,  after  addressing"  the  two  Houses  briefly  himself,  called 
upon  Chancellor  Hyde  to  address  them  more  at  large.  Hyde's 
speech  on  the  occasion  was  thought  one  of  his  masterpieces. — 
He  dwelt  first  on  that  approaching  disbandment  of  the  army 
which  one  of  the  money  bills  had  provided  for,  and  took  the 
opportunity  of  paying  the  most  splendid  compliments  to  the 
Army.  "  No  other  prince  in  Europe,"  he  said,  "  would  be 
"  willing  to  disband  such  an  army, — an  army  to  which  victory 
"  is  entailed,  and  which,  humanly  speaking,  could  hardly  fail 
"  of  conquest  wheresoever  he  should  lead  it ;  ...  an  army 
"  whose  order  and  discipline,  whose  sobriety  and  manners, 
"  whose  courage  and  success,  hath  made  it  famous  over  the 
"  world ;  an  army  of  which  the  King  and  his  two  royal 
"  brothers  may  say,  as  the  noble  Grecian  said  of  iEneas, — 

'  Stetimus  tela  aspera  contra, 
Contulimusque  manus  :    experto  credite  quantus 
In  clypeum  assurgat,  quo  turbine  torqueat  hastam.": 

Knowing  that  this  army,  whose  valour  his  Majesty  had 
observed  with  such  admiration,  even  when  it  was  exerted 
against  himself,  was  now  thoroughly  loyal,  and  thinking 
what  wonders  he  and  his  brothers  might  themselves  perform 
at  its  head,  how  could  his  Majesty  disband  it  without  re- 
luctance ?  How  could  he  part  with  such  soldiers  ?  "  No,  my 
"  lords  and  gentlemen,  he  will  never  part  with  them ;  and  the 
"  only  sure  way  never  to  part  with  them  is  to  disband  them." 
— After  this  rhetorical  audacity,  the  Chancellor  went  back 
upon  the  Indemnity  Bill,  as,  though  passed  a  fortnight  before, 
still  in  all  men's  minds.  He  reminded  them  of  the  clause  of 
that  Bill  making  it  penal  to  use  even  words  of  reproach  or 
mutual  invective  tending  to  revive  the  memory  of  the  late 
differences  ;  and  he  made  this  the  text  of  a  discourse  on  the 
moral  significance  of  the  Bill,  over  and  above  the  mere 
securities  it  decreed  for  life  and  property.  "  As  any  name  or 
"  names,  or  other  words  of  reproach,  are  expressly  against  the 
"  letter,  and  punishable  accordingly,  so  evil  and  envious  looks, 
"  murmuring  and  discontented  hearts,  are  as  directly  against 
"  the  equity  of  this  statute,  a  direct  breach  of  the  Act  of 
"  Indemnity,  and  ought  to  be  punished  too ;  and  I  believe 
"  they  may  be  so.     You  know  kings  are  in  some  sense  called 


70  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  gods,  and   so  they   may  in   some  degree  look  into  men's 
"  hearts ;  and  God  hath  given  us  a  King  who  can  look  as  far 
"  into  men's  hearts  as  any  prince  alive.     And  he  hath  great 
"  skill  in  physiognomy  too ;  you  would  wonder  what  calcula- 
"  tions  he  hath  made  from  thence ;  and,  no  doubt,  if  he  be 
"  provoked  by  evil  looks  to  make  a  further  inquiry  into  men's 
"  hearts,  he  will  never  choose  those  hearts  to  trust  and  rely 
"  upon.     He  hath  given  us  a  noble  and  princely  example,  by 
"  opening  and  stretching  his  arms  to  all  who  are  worthy  to  be 
"  his   subjects,  worthy  to  be   thought  Englishmen, — by  ex- 
"  tending  his  heart  with  a  pious  and  grateful  joy  to  find  all 
"  his  subjects  at  once  in  his  arms  and  himself  in  theirs ;  and 
"  shall  we  fold  our  arms  towards  one  another,  and  contract 
"  our  hearts  with  envy  and  malice  to  each  other,  by  any  sharp 
"  memory  of  what  hath  been  unneighbourly  or  unkindly  done 
"  heretofore  ?    What  is  this  but  to  rebel  against  the  person 
"  of  the  King,  against  the  excellent  example  and  virtue  of 
"  the  King,  against  the  known  law  of  the  land,  this  blessed 
"  Act  of  Oblivion?    My  lords  and  gentlemen,  the  King  is  a 
"  suitor  to  you,  makes  it  his  suit  very  heartily,  that  you  will 
"join  with  him  in  restoring  the  whole  nation  to  its  primi- 
"  tive  temper  and  integrity,  to  its  old  good  manners,  its  old 
"good  humour,  and  its  old  good  nature." — Having  dilated 
somewhat  further  on  this  theme,  and  expressed  his  hope  that 
in  the  merry  England  now  beginning  again  piety  would  no 
longer  consist  in  sour  looks,  morose  manners,  affected  gestures, 
or  sighs  and  sad  tones,  and  having  touched  on  some  of  the 
other  Bills  of  that   day,   Hyde  concluded  his  long  speech. 
The  two  Houses  then  adjourned  themselves,  by  kis  Majesty's 
desire,-  to  the   6th  of  November.      At   the  moment   of  the 
adjournment  the  young  Duke  of  Gloucester  was  lying  ill  of 
small-pox  in  Whitehall.    He  was  not  thought  to  be  in  danger, 
but  before  the  day  was  over  he  was  dead  \ 

Through  the  eight  weeks  of  the  recess  (Sept.  13 — Nov.  6) 
we  see  Charles  in  the  first  full  practice  and  enjoyment  of 
his  Royalty. 

1  Lords  and  Commons  Journals,  Sept.       King's  speech  and  Hyde's  given  in  full 
13,  and  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  122—130  (the       in  all  these  places)  ;  Pepys,  under  date. 


THE   ROYAL   FAMILY   OF   THE    RESTORATION.  71 

The  Duke  of  York  was  now  the  nearest  supporter  of  the 
throne  ;  but,  when  the  widowed  Princess  of  Orange  came  from 
the   Hague  to  live  with  her  two    brothers    (Sept.  25)    and 
Prince  Rupert  followed  (Sept.  29),  and  still  more  when  the 
queen-mother,  Henrietta  Maria,  arrived  from  Paris,  "  a  very 
little  plain  old  woman,"  on  her  first  visit  to  England  since 
she  had  left  her  husband  to  his  fate  there  in  Feb.  1 641-2, 
and  when  there  came  with  her  the  pretty   young  Princess 
Henrietta,  and  Prince  Edward,  the  younger  brother  of  Prince 
Rupert  (Nov.  2),  there  might  be  said  to  be  about  the  King 
something   of  a  Royal  Family.     In  domestic  respects,  it  is 
true,  it  was  not  a  Royal  Family  above  criticism,  if  one  were 
a   very'  severe    moralist.     The    King   had    already   had    five 
acknowledged  natural  children,  borne  to  him  abroad  by  three 
different  mothers  ;  and  the  eldest  of  these,  born  at  Rotterdam 
in  1649,  the  son  of  Lucy  Waters  or  Barlow,  was  now  at  home 
in  Whitehall,  a  handsome  and  spirited  boy  of  eleven,   much 
petted  by  his  father  and  all  the  rest,  and  bearing  for  the  pre- 
sent the  name  of  James  Crofts,  though  afterwards  to  shine  out 
as  James  Fitzroy,  Duke  of  Monmouth.     Then,  no  legitimate 
wife  having  yet  been  provided  for  Charles,  the  chief  substi- 
tute meanwhile  was  Mrs.  Palmer,  originally  Barbara  Villiers, 
daughter  of  William,  Viscount  Grandison,  of  the  Irish  peerage, 
but  married  to  a  Roger  Palmer,  Esq.,  an  Irish  gentleman,  who 
was,  conveniently    or   inconveniently,    still  alive  ;    and    this 
Mrs.  Palmer,   reputed    "  the   most    beautiful    woman    in    all 
England,"  was  openly  and  constantly  about  Charles  in  White- 
hall, amid  bishops  and  chaplains  there,  and  might  even  be 
seen  flirting  most  unbashfully  with  the  Duke  of  York  in  the 
royal  chapel  itself  through  the  hangings  that  separated  the 
royal  pew  from  that  of  the    ladies.     Nor  was  the  Duke  of 
York  immaculate.     Not  to  go  too  far  back  in  his  life,  he  was 
now,  by  secret  marriage  in  England,  the  husband  of  one  of 
Chancellor  Hyde's  daughters,  after  having  been  her  virtual 
husband  for  some  time  abroad  ;    and,  the  secret  having  just 
come  out,   the  question  everywhere  was  whether  he  would 
acknowledge    Miss    Hyde    or   prefer   novelty.     Farther,    the 
little  dark-faced  Queen-mother  herself  was    supposed  to  be 


72  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

not  without  a  secret  husband  either, — the  Henry  Jermyn, 
now  Earl  of  St.  Alban's,  who  constantly  accompanied  her, 
and  by  whom  it  was  said  ("  how  true,  God  knows !  "  adds 
Pepys  charitably)  she  had  had  a  daughter  in  France  at 
some  unknown  date.  Rumour  maintained,  moreover,  that 
a  younger  Henry  Jermyn,  the  nephew  of  this  Earl  of  St. 
Alban's,  and  master  of  horse  to  the  Duke  of  York,  was 
secretly  married  or  engaged  to  the  Princess  of  Orange,  the 
eldest  of  the  royal  sisters,  then  in  her  twenty-ninth  year,  and 
the  mother  already  of  the  Dutch  boy  who  was  to  be  famous 
as  William  III.  Positively,  the  only  one  of  the  Royal  Family 
about  whom  there  was  no  scandal  was  the  pretty  young 
Princess  Henrietta,  sixteen  years  old,  for  whom  her  mother 
was  providing  a  match  in  France.  Altogether,  the  surviving 
representatives  of  Charles  I.  could  not  be  called  models  of  the 
special  virtue  of  domestic  propriety.  But  wThat  then  ?  The 
age  of  Puritanism  was  past ;  if  all  were  known,  how  much  of 
the  vaunted  domestic  propriety  of  that  age,  and  that  even  in 
the  highest  quarters,  might  be  exposed  now  as  mere  hypo- 
crisy and  concealment ;  in  all  lands  and  times  there  had  been 
a  little  liberty,  more  than  the  strictly  canonical,  for  royal  per- 
sonages ;  and  what  was  a  little  indecorum  at  the  centre,  if 
such  there  must  be,  in  comparison  with  the  universal  bless- 
ings of  a  restored  monarchy  and  restored  Church  of  England, 
the  deliverance  of  the  whole  nation  from  a  reign  of  cant  and 
rigidity,  and  the  chance  of  that  free  flow  once  more,  which 
Hyde  had  so  eloquently  invoked,  of  all  the  native  old  English 
humours,  all  the  old  English  joviality  ? 

So  reasoning  or  not,  Charles  and  those  about  him  were 
setting  the  example.  What  an  easy  and  mirthful  Court,  with 
all  its  state  and  magnificence !  What  banqueting  and 
abundance  of  wine,  what  dancing,  what  delightful  mixing  of 
the  sexes,  what  flashing  of  wit  and  jest  between  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  or  among  the  gentlemen  by  themselves  on  stronger 
topics  ;  what  visiting  and  receiving  of  visits  ;  what  walks  in 
the  parks  and  suburban  parties  of  pleasure;  what  fine  re- 
gularity of  alternation  from  chapel  and  sermon  on  Sundays, 
properly  conducted  and  with  good  music,  to  one  or  other  of 


THE  COURT    OF   THE    RESTORATION.  73 

the  re-opened  theatres  on  week-day  afternoons  !  These  were 
managed  in  a  style  far  excelling  anything  Davenant  had  ven- 
tured on  in  Cromwell's  time ;  for  they  were  re-producing 
regular  old  plays,  by  Shakespeare,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
and  Ben  Jonson,  and  were  actually  beginning  to  bring  women 
on  the  stage,  instead  of  boys,  for  the  female  parts  *. 

Besides  the  stationary  courtiers  of  the  household,  always 
round  Charles,  there  was  the  whole  restored  peerage  of 
England,  to  be  at  his  beck  when  he  held  full  Court  or  would 
make  a  choice  of  guests  for  his  greater  entertainments.  That 
body  had  been  counted  on  the  31st  of  July  and  had  been 
found  then  to  consist  of  139  persons,  spiritual  peers  not  yet 
included.  Six  of  them  were  Dukes,  one  a  minor ;  six  were 
Marquises ;  fifty-nine  were  Earls,  five  of  them  minors ;  seven 
were  Viscounts  ;  and  the  rest  were  Barons.  Then,  of  the 
existing  House  of  Commons  as  originally  returned,  all  that 
were  still  members  on  the  11th  of  June,  to  the  number  of  no 
fewer  than  454,  had  taken  the  oaths  of  supremacy  and  alle- 
giance, and  were  available  for  attendance  at  Court,  so  far  as 
his  Majesty  might  countenance  commoners.  Add  the 
baronets  and  knights  of  England,  whether  in  the  House 
of  Commons  or  not,  forming  a  large  class  intermediate 
between  the  peers  and  the  mere  commons ;  and  remember 
how  many  of  these  knights  and  baronets,  as  of  recent  creation 
by  Charles  himself,  were  bound  in  an  especial  manner  to  be 
courtiers.  Monk's  brother-in-law  Clarges,  knighted  at  Breda, 
had  been  but  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  Restoration  knights. 
A  large  number  of  knighthoods  had  been  conferred  at  the 
Hague  among  those  that  had  gone  thither  to  salute  Charles 

1  Peerage  Books  ;  Pepys,  passim  from  "brown,   beautiful,    bold,   but    insipid 

May  to  December  1660,  with  some  sub-  "creature."     Under   the   second  date, 

sequent  passages  ;  Note  of  Lord  Dart-  speaking  of  Monmouth,  he  says,  "  His 

mouth  to  Burnet,  I.  292 — 293  ;  Evelyn's  "  mother,    whose    name    was    Barlow, 

Diary,  at  contemporary  dates,  and  also  "  daughter  of  some  very  mean  creatures, 

under  Aug.  18,  1649  and  July  15,  1685.  "  was  a  beautiful  strumpet,  whom  I  had 

Under  the  former  date  Evelyn,  record-  "  often  seen   at  Paris  ;   she  died  miser- 

ing  one  of  the  incidents  of  his  stay  in  "ably,  without  anything  to  bury  her." 

France  after  the  execution  of  Charles  I,  Charles,  we  are  elsewhere  told,  found, 

writes,  "I  went  to  St.  Germains  to  kiss  after  his  return  to  the  continent  on  his 

"his    Majesty's    hand:    in    the    coach,  escape  from  Worcester,  that   she    had 

"which   was  my  Lord  Wilmot's,  went  been  "  behaving  loosely  "  in  his  absence, 

"  Mrs.  Barlow,  the  King's  mistress  and  and  threw  her  off. 
"  mother  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth,  a 


74  LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  be  of  his  convoy  back  in  Montague's  fleet ;  and  two 
of  these  Hague  knighthoods  had  fallen  to  the  two  meanest 
of  the  recreant  Oliverians,  Morland  and  Downing,  in  reward 
for  their  perfidy.  Of  the  baronetcies  and  knighthoods  that 
had  been  conferred  by  Charles  since  his  arrival  in  England 
a  reckoning  is  hardly  possible.  At  Canterbury,  besides  Secre- 
tary Morrice,  there  had  been  knighted  Major-General  Massey, 
Alderman  Robinson,  and  five  others ;  and  in  London  hardly 
a  week  had  passed  without  additions.  Naturally,  among 
those  thought  worthy  of  knighthood  or  baronetcy  were  the 
lawyers  that  had  been  put  into  the  chief  judicial  or  ministerial 
offices  at  the  beginning  of  the  new  reign ;  and  so  such  of 
these  as  had  not  been  titled  already  now  wore  titles.  The 
Chief  Baron  of  the  Exchequer  was  Sir  Orlando  Bridgman  ;  the 
Judges  of  the  Common  Pleas  were  Sir  Robert  Foster  and  Sir 
Henry  Hyde ;  a  Judge  of  the  King's  Bench  was  Sir  Thomas 
Mallet  ;  the  Attorney  General  was  Sir  Geoffrey  Palmer, 
and  the  Solicitor  General  Sir  Heneage  Finch.  Beyond  the 
circle  of  these  official  persons,  and  of  the  courtiers  of  all 
other  ranks  and  denominations,  was  the  great  commu- 
nity of  London  and  Westminster,  related  to  the  Court  more 
distantly,  but  still  sufficiently,  by  the  honour  of  being 
butchers,  bakers,  tailors,  and  what  not,  to  his  Majesty  or 
others  of  the  Royal  Family,  or  to  the  household  and  courtiers, 
or  merely  by  the  pride  of  having  real  Royalty  and  a  real 
Royal  Court  once  more  in  the  midst  of  them,  and  the  privi- 
lege of  watching  in  the  streets  or  in  the  parks  for  a  sight  of 
the  royal  faces,  the  dresses,  and  the  equipages. 

A  selected  portion  of  the  general  community  did  have 
closer  access  to  his  Majesty.  One  of  the  unspeakable  bless- 
ings of  the  Restoration  was  the  re-introduction  into  England 
of  the  sovereign  cure  for  scrofula  or  the  king's  evil.  Hun- 
dreds and  thousands,  it  seems,  not  only  in  London,  but  all 
over  the  country,  were  deeply  interested  in  the  fact ;  for  on 
Monday  the  2nd  of  July  there  had  been  the  solemnity  at 
Whitehall  of  the  first  of  those  touchings  for  the  king's  evil 
which  were  thenceforth  to  be  one  of  the  institutions  of  the 
reign.      '  The  kingdom  having  for  a  long  time,  by  reason  of 


TOUCHING   FOR   THE   KING'S   EVIL.  75 

"  his  Majesty's  absence,"  says  a  London  newspaper  of  that 
week,   "  been    troubled  with  the   evil,    great   numbers    have 
"  lately   nocked  for  cure.     His   Sacred  Majesty   on  Monday 
"  last  touched  250  in  the  Banqueting  House  ;  amongst  whom, 
"  when  his  Majesty  was  delivering  the  gold,  one  shuffled  him- 
"  self  in,  out  of  an  hope  of  profit,  which  was  not  stroked, — but 
"  his  Majesty  presently  discovered  him,  saying  '  This  man  hath 
"  not  yet  been  touched.'     His   Majesty  hath,  for   the   future, 
"  appointed  every  Friday  for  the  cure  ;  at  which  time  200  and 
"  no  more  are  to  be  presented  to  him  :  who  are  first  to  repair 
"  to  Mr.  Knight,  his  Majesty's  chirurgeon  (living  at  the  Cross 
;4  Guns  in  Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden,  over  against  the 
"  Rose  Garden),  for  their  tickets."     Evelyn,  who  was  present 
at  the  second  touching,  on  Friday  the  6th  of  July,  describes 
the   ceremony  in   detail.     "  His    Majesty  sitting    under  the 
"  state  in  the  Banqueting  House,"  says  Evelyn,  "  the  chirur- 
''  geons  cause  the  sick  to  be  brought  or  led  up  to  the  throne, 
"  where,  they  kneeling,  the  King  strokes  their  faces  or  cheeks 
"  with  both  his  hands  at  once  ;  at  which  instant  a  chaplain 
"in  his  formalities  says  '  He  put  his  hands  upon  them,  and  he 
"  healed  them.''   This  is  said  to  every  one  in  particular.    When 
"  they  have  been  all  touched,  they  come  up  again  in  the  same 
"  order ;    and  the  other  chaplain,  kneeling  and  having  gold 
"  angels  strung  on   white  ribbon  on  his  arm,  delivers  them 
"  one  by  one  to  his  Majesty,  who  puts  them  about  the  necks 
"  of  the  touched  as  they  pass,  whilst  the  first  chaplain  repeats, 
"  '  This  is  the  true  Light   who  came   into    the   world.'      Then 
"  follows  an   epistle   (as  at  first  a  gospel),  with  the  liturgy 
"  prayers  for  the  sick  with  some  alteration,  lastly  the  bless- 
"  ing ;  and  the  Lord   Chamberlain   and    Comptroller  of  the 
"  Household  bring  a  basin,  ewer,  and  towel,  for  his  Majesty 
"  to  wash."    Friday  after  Friday,  unless  there  had  been  notice 
to  the  contrary,  his  Majesty  had  undergone  this  trouble  for 
the  good  of  his  subjects,  the  chaplains  assisting  ;  and  the  prac- 
tice was  continued  during  the  recess  of  the  Parliament  K 

1  Lords  Journals  of  July  31  (where  six  absent  peers  are  noted)  ;  Commons 
ninety-three  peers  are  entered  as  pre-  Journals  of  June  11  (when  there  was  g 
sent  that  day  and  the  names  of  forty-       report  from  Prynne  of  the  number  that 


76  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

One  important  business  of  the  recess  was  the  disbanding 
of  the  Army.  The  business,  which  was  managed  by  commis- 
sioners of  the  two  Houses,  was  necessarily  a  gradual  one  ;  but 
on  the  8th  of  October  Secretary  Nicholas  could  write,  "  The 
Army  is  almost  wholly  disbanded,  everywhere  expressing 
much  affection  for  the  King."  We  learn  independently  that 
fifteen  regiments  of  foot  and  four  regiments  of  horse  in 
England,  with  one  horse-regiment  and  two  foot-regiments 
in  Scotland,  besides  garrisons  in  both  countries,  and  six  ships 
of  war,  were  paid  off  about  this  time,  leaving  only  a  remnant 
of  regiments  and  garrisons,  but  as  many  as  nineteen  ships,  to 
be  similarly  treated  when  more  money  should  be  in  hand. 
Actually,  we  may  say,  it  was  during  this  recess  of  the  Con- 
vention Parliament  that  the  great  Puritan  Army  of  the 
English  Revolution,  about  40,000  strong  to  the  last,  was  dis- 
solved and  disappeared.  With  all  the  changes  in  its  substance 
in  the  course  of  eighteen  years,  including  Monk's  recent  dis- 
charges from  it  of  discontented  Anabaptists  and  Republicans 
by  scores  and  hundreds,  there  must  have  still  been  in  it  not 
a  few  veterans  of  Marston  Moor,  Naseby,  Preston,  Dunbar, 
and  Worcester,  with  grim  thoughts  and  recollections  in  their 
hearts  as  they  now  left  their  colours  finally,  and  carrying 
these  thoughts  and  recollections,  with  their  old  swords,  to 
many  families  and  firesides  over  England.  Their  quiet  and 
gradual  dispersion  was  a  relief.  Thenceforth  the  only  autho- 
rized nucleus  of  a  standing  army  to  be  left  in  England  was 
to  consist  of  three  regiments  of  horse — Monk's  own  Cold- 
stream regiment  and  two  others — kept  up,  out  of  the  King's 
own  revenue,  under  the  name  of  Guards l. 

While  the  disbanding  of  the  Army  was  in  progress,  London 
was  in  commotion  with  the  Trials  of  the  Regicides.  The 
Court  for  the  purpose  consisted  of  thirty-four  Commissioners 

had  taken  the  oaths)  ;  Pepys's  Diary,  Hallam  (II.  314—315)  ;  but  details  will 

May  13  and  22,  1660  (knighthoods  of  be  found  in  the  Commons  Journals— 

Mnrland  and  Downing)  ;  Phillips,  711  ;  especially  under  dates  Sept.  13,  Nov.  6, 

Public  Intelligencer  for  July  2—9, 1660 ;  and  Nov.  23.     The  process,  though  far 

Evelyn's  Diary  under  date.  advanced  in  the  recess,  was  not  coni- 

1  A   summary   account    of  the    dis-  plete  till  Feb.  1660—1. 
banding  is  given  by  Phillips  (728)  and 


TRIALS   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  77 

under  the  great  seal.  Among"  these  were  Lord  Chancellor 
Hyde,  the  Dukes  of  Albemarle  and  Somerset,  the  Marquis 
of  Ormond,  the  Earls  of  Southampton,  Lindsey,  Manchester, 
Dorset,  Berkshire,  and  Sandwich,  Viscount  Say  and  Sele, 
Lord  Koberts,  Lord  Finch,  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  Sir 
Harbottle  Grimstone,  Mr.  Denzil  Holies,  Mr.  Arthur  Annesley, 
Secretaries  Nicholas  and  Morrice,  and  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
London  ;  but  the  managing  portion  of  the  Court  consisted  of 
Chief  Baron  Sir  Orlando  Bridgman,  and  ten  other  judges 
and  lawyers,  among  whom  was  Mr.  Sergeant  Hale.  Attorney 
General  Sir  Geoffrey  Palmer,  Solicitor  General  Sir  Heneage 
Finch,  and  Sir  Edward  Turner,  Attorney  to  the  Duke  of 
York,  were  the  chief  prosecuting  counsel.  The  mode  of  pro- 
cedure had  been  carefully  arranged,  and  rules  made  for  every 
emergency.  Especially  it  had  been  agreed  that  the  proceed- 
ings should  be  founded  on  a  famous  Statute  of  Edward  III, 
defining  treasons,  and  making  one  of  them  to  consist  in 
"  compassing  or  imagining  the  death  of  our  Lord  the  King  " 
("  quant  homme  fait  comjiasser  ou  imaginer  la  mort  no-sire  Seignur 
le  Boi "). 

First,  on  Tuesday,  October  9,  came  The  Indictment.  The 
place  was  Hick's  Hall,  Clerkenwell,  the  sessions  house  of 
the  County  of  Middlesex.  There  Chief  Baron  Bridgman 
delivered  his  charge  to  a  grand  jury  of  twenty-one  persons, 
expounding  to  them  the  Law  of  Treason.  "  By  the  statute 
"  of  the  25th  of  Edward  III/'  he  said,  "  it  is  made  high 
"  treason  to  compass  and  imagine  the  death  of  the  King.  It 
u  was  the  ancient  law  of  the  nation.  In  no  case  else  was 
"  imagination  or  compassing,  without  an  actual  effect  of 
"  it,  punishable  by  our  law;  .  .  .  but,  in  the  case  of  the  King, 
"  his  life  was  so  precious  that  the  intent  was  treason  by  the 
"  common  law,  and  declared  treason  by  this  statute.  .  .  . 
"  This  compassing  and  imagining  the  cutting  off  the  head  of 
"  the  King  is  known  by  some  overt  act.  Treason  is  in  the 
"  wicked  imagination,  though  not  treason  apparent ;  but, 
"  when  this  poison  swells  out  of  the  heart,  and  breaks  forth 
"  into  action,  in  that  case  it  is  High  Treason.  Then  what  is 
"  an  overt  act  of  an  imagination  or  compassing  of  the  King's 


78  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  death  ?  Truly,  it  is  anything-  which  shows  what  the  imagina- 
"  tion  is.  Words,  in  many  cases,  are  evidences  of  this  imagina- 
"  tion ;  they  are  evidences  of  the  heart.  .  .  .  So,  if  a  man, 
"  if  two  men,  do  conspire  to  levy  war  against  the  King,  .  .  . 
"  then,  I  say,  in  case  not  only  of  words,  but  if  they  conspire 
"  to  levy  war  against  the  King,  there  is  another  branch  of 
"  this  statute  :  the  levying  of  war  is  Treason.  But,  if  men 
"  shall  go  and  consult  together,  and  this  to  kill  the  King, 
"  to  put  him  to  death,  this  consultation  is  clearly  an  overt  act 
"  to  prove  imagination  or  compassing  of  the  King's  death. 
"  But  what  will  you  say  then  if  men  do  not  only  go  about  to 
"  conspire  and  consult,  but  take  upon  them  to  judge,  condemn, 
"  nay  put  to  death,  the  King  ?  Certainly,  this  is  so  much 
"  beyond  the  imagination  and  compassing,  as  it  is  not  only 
"  laying  the  cockatrice's  egg,  but  brooding  upon  it  till  it  hath 
"  brought  forth  a  serpent.  I  must  deliver  to  you,  for  plain 
"  and  true  law,  that  no  authority,  no  single  person,  no  com- 
"  munity  of  persons,  not  the  people  collectively  or  representa- 
"  tively,  have  any  coercive  power  over  the  King  of  England." 
Whether  this  was  law  or  not,  some  of  Chief  Baron  Bridgman's 
colleagues  on  the  bench  must  have  felt  that  he  was  going 
unnecessarily  far  for  the  occasion  and  uncomfortably  far  for 
them :  e.  g.  Monk,  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  Holies,  and 
Annesley,  all  of  whom  might  deny  having  ever  "  compassed  or 
imagined  the  death  of  the  King,"  but  none  of  whom  could 
deny  having  been  engaged,  as  Parliamentarians,  in  "  coercing" 
him  and  "levying  war"  against  him.  But  Bridgman  had 
now  the  opportunity  of  laying  down  his  own  notion  of  the 
law,  and  he  would  not  miss  it.  He  went  on,  by  citations  of 
cases  and  statutes,  to  argue  that  the  absolute  authority  of 
kings  and  the  passive  obedience  of  subjects  in  all  cases  was 
the  ultimate  doctrine  of  the  Law  of  England.  "  God  forbid," 
he  exclaimed  at  the  end  of  this  part  of  his  charge,  "  I  should 
"  intend  any  Absolute  Government  by  this.  It  is  one  thing 
"  to  have  an  Absolute  Monarchy  :  another  thing  to  have 
"  government  absolutely  without  laws  as  to  any  coercive 
"  power  over  the  person  of  the  King/'  The  distinction  is 
not  very  obvious  ;  but  the  phrase  "  God  forbid  !"  was  charac- 


TRIALS   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  79 

teristic  of  Bridgman  whenever  he  was  in  the  difficulty  of 
having-  to  make  an  admission  and  nullify  it  at  the  same  time. 
It  was  to  come  from  his  lips  often  enough  in  the  course  of 
the  trials.  Meanwhile  his  charge  was  convincing  in  the  main. 
The  grand  jury  found  the  Bill  of  Indictment  to  be  a  true 
bill  against  the  twenty-eight  persons  named  in  it. 

The  next  day,  Wednesday,  Oct.  10,  came  The  Arraignment. 
It  was  in  the  sessions  house  in  the  Old  Bailey  at  Newgate. 
The  prisoners  had  been  conveyed  thither  from  the  Tower  that 
morning  in  coaches,  with  a  strong  guard  of  horse  and  foot. 
The  whole  day  was  spent  in  bringing  the  prisoners  into  Court 
in  successive  batches,  and  compelling  them  individually  to 
plead  Guilty  or  Not  Guilty.  Compelling,  we  say ;  for,  natu- 
rally, the  prisoners,  having  no  counsel,  and  having  various 
pleas  in  bar  of  judgment,  wished  to  state  their  pleas  at  the 
outset,  whereas  the  Court  insisted  peremptorily  that  all  such 
pleas  should  be  postponed  and  that  every  one  of  the  prisoners 
should  begin  with  a  simple  Guilty  or  Not  Guilty. — The  diffi- 
culty was  greatest  with  the  first  batch  brought  in,  consisting 
of  Sir  Hardress  Waller,  Thomas  Harrison,  and  William 
Heveningham.  It  had  been  arranged  to  take  Sir  Hardress 
Waller  first,  as  the  likeliest  to  yield.  Being  one  of  those, 
however,  who  had  come  in  on  the  Proclamation,  he  tried  hard 
for  some  time  to  obtain  a  hearing  on  that  and  other  points ; 
but,  being  constantly  interrupted  by  the  Court  and  held  to  the 
inevitable  alternative,  he  sank  gradually,  through  a  kind  of 
experimental  Not  Guilty,  and  then  an  intermediate  "  I  dare  not 
say  Not  Guilty,"  into  "  I  must  say  Guilty."  He  was  there- 
fore registered  as  confessing.  Next  came  Harrison,  magna- 
nimous Harrison,  for  whom  there  was  no  hope  whatever. 
"  My  lords,  have  I  liberty  to  speak  ?"  he  said  at  once  ;  and 
then,  against  the  interruption  of  the  Court,  repeated  and 
repeated  as  he  tried  to  go  on,  he  battled  bravely.  He  had  been 
in  prison  nearly  three  months,  he  said,  seeing  nobody  ;  he  had 
not  known  that  his  trial  was  coming  on  till  nine  o'clock  last 
night,  and  had  been  brought  from  the  Tower  at  six  o'clock 
in  the  morning ;  he  had  various  things  to  urge,  such  as 
counsel  might  have  urged  for  him  ;  would  not  the  Court  itself 


80  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS  TIME. 

advise  him  in  the  circumstances  ?  Told  at  last  that,  if  he  did 
not  plead,  he  would  be  entered  as  standing-  mute,  which  was 
the  same  thing-  as  judgment  against  him,  "  Then  I  do  plead 
Not  Guilty"  he  said  with  some  passion.  According-  to  the 
formality  then  in  use,  the  next  question  to  him  was  "  How 
will  you  be  tried  ?"  On  this  Harrison  fought  again.  Instead 
of  answering  "By  God  and  my  Country,"  which  alone  could 
be  accepted,  he  answered  first,  "  I  will  be  tried  according 
to  the  laws  of  the  Lord."  Informed  that  the  phrase  would 
not  do,  he'  altered  it  to  "  I  put  myself  upon  what  you 
please  to  put  me  upon."  Then,  on  being  told  that  he  would 
still  be  entered  as  standing  mute  unless  he  followed  up  his 
plea  of  Not  Guilty  with  the  exact  phrase  prescribed,  he  offered 
the  modification  "  I  -will  be  tried  according  to  the  ordinary 
course."  The  Clerk  then  said  decisively  "  Whether  by  God 
and  the  Country  ?  :  you  must  speak  the  words."  "  They  are 
vain  words,"  said  Harrison,  and  was  going  on  to  explain  why; 
but,  the  Court  being  resolute,  and  the  question  "  How  will 
you  be  tried?"  having  been  put  for  the  fourth  time  by  the 
Clerk,  there  came  for  final  answer  "  I  do  offer  myself  to  be 
tried  in  your  own  way,  by  God  and  my  Country."  That  was 
sufficient;  and,  the  Clerk  having  pronounced  the  customary 
"  God  send  you  a  good  deliverance! ",  Harrison's  turn  was  over. 
Heveningham,  who  had  seen  what  had  happened  with  Waller 
and  Harrison,  gave  no  trouble.  He  pleaded  Not  Guilty  at 
once,  added  the  proper  formula,  and  had  the  usual  ':  God  send 
you  a  good  deliverance  !"  from  the  mouth  of  the  Clerk. — The 
next  batch  arraigned  consisted  of  Isaac  Pennington,  Henry 
Marten,  Gilbert  Millington,  Robert  Tichbourne,  Owen  Rowe, 
and  Robert  Lilburne ;  the  next  of  Adrian  Scroope,  John 
Carew,  John  Jones,  Thomas  Scott,  Gregory  Clements,  and 
John  Cook  ;  the  next  of  Edmund  Harvey,  Henry  Smith, 
John  Downes,  Vincent  Potter,  and  Augustine  Garland ;  and 
the  last  and  fifth  of  George  Fleetwood,  Simon  Mayne,  James 
Temple,  Peter  Temple,  Thomas  Wayte,  Hugh  Peters,  Francis 
Hacker,  and  Daniel  Axtell.  Some  of  these  tried  to  speak  and 
made  delays,  as  Waller  and  Harrison  had  done  ;  but  the 
majority  obeyed  the  Court  at  once,  or  after  a  mere  word  or 


TRIALS   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  81 

two.  The  only  incidents  of  peculiar  note  were  when  Henry 
Marten  and  Hugh  Peters  were  severally  arraigned.  "  I  desire 
the  benefit  of  the  Act  of  Oblivion/'  said  Marten,  to  the  sur- 
prise of  the  Court.  When  told  he  was  totally  excepted  out 
of  that  Act,  he  declared  that  his  name  was  not  in  the  Act  at 
all.  The  Act  was  produced,  and  he  was  shown  his  name  in 
it  among  the  rest.  He  acknowledged  that  he  saw  a  "  Henry 
Martyn  "  named  there,  but  said  he  was  not  that  person,  for 
his  name  was  "  Harry  Marten,"  spelt  with  an  e.  The  objec- 
tion was  overruled,  and  the  wittiest  of  the  Regicides  had  to 
trust  to  his  other  chance,  in  being  one  of  those  that  had  come 
in  on  the  Proclamation.  There  was  no  such  chance  for  Hugh 
Peters,  who  had  avoided  capture  till  about  a  month  before  ; 
and  his  appearance  seems  to  have  been  a  signal  for  mirth. 
When  asked  to  plead  Guilty  or  Not  Guilty,  his  answer  was, 
"  I  would  not  for  ten  thousand  worlds  say  I  am  guilty :  I  am 
Not  Guilty  ; "  and  then,  when  he  was  asked  the  next  question, 
"  How  will  you  be  tried  ?"  and  answered  "  By  the  Word,  of 
God,"  the  people  laughed.  But  he  rectified  his  answer  sub- 
missively when  the  legal  formula  was  given  him. — Altogether, 
of  the  twenty-eight  who  had  been  arraigned,  twenty-six  had 
pleaded  Not  Guilty.  Only  George  Fleetwood,  in  addition  to 
Waller,  had  pleaded  Guilty.  In  both  these  cases  the  plea  had 
been  first  entered  as  Not  Guilty,  but  that  plea  had  been  with- 
drawn by  permission  of  the  Court. 

So  far,  therefore,  there  were  twenty-six  Regicides  to  be 
tried.  The  number,  however,  was  raised  to  twenty-seven  by 
the  addition  of  William  Hewlet,  the  man  supposed  to  have 
been  one  of  the  two  executioners.  He  was  separately  indicted 
on  the  12th,  and  was  arraigned  on  the  15th,  when  he  pleaded 
Not  Guilty.  The  trials  had  then  already  begun.  They  ex- 
tended over  five  days  in  all, — Thursday,  Oct.  11,  Friday, 
Oct.  12,  Saturday,  Oct.  13,  Monday,  Oct.  15,  and  Tuesday, 
Oct.  16,  1660. 

On  the  first  of  these  days,  Harrison,  Scroope,  Carew,  Jones, 
Clements,  and  Scott,  were  brought  to  the  bar  together,  but 
only  Harrison  was  tried.  After  he  had  challenged  jurymen 
to  the  full  number  allowed  him,  a  jury  of  twelve  was  formed. 

VOL.  VI.  g 


82  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

The  charge    was   propounded    more    especially   by    Solicitor 
General  Sir  Heneage  Finch.     In  his  speech,  after  due  exposi- 
tion of  the  hideousness  of  the  crime  of  regicide,  especially  in 
the  case  of  so  "  blessed  and  beloved  a  prince  "  as  Charles  I.,  he 
proceeded  to    say  that,    of  the    actors  in  this  crime,  many 
were  dead,  a  few  were  penitent  and  had  been  guaranteed  their 
lives,  about  eighteen  or  nineteen  had  fled,  "  with  the  mark  of 
Cain  upon  them,"  and  twenty-nine  remained  to  abide  justice. 
Among  these,   Harrison,   he   said,   on  all  accounts,  deserved 
pre-eminence  ;  for,  if  any  one  still  alive  might  be  "  styled  the 
conductor,  leader,   and  captain,   of  all  this  work,"  Harrison 
was  the  man.     Witnesses  were  then  called.     There  was  no 
difficulty  whatever  in  the  proof.    It  was  proved  that  Harrison 
had  commanded  the  party  that  brought  the  King  from  Hurst 
Castle  to  Windsor,  that  he  had  brought  him  from  Windsor 
to  Westminster  for  his  trial,  that  he  had  been  one  of  the  most 
constant  at  the  trial  and  one  of  the  sentencing  judges,  and 
that  he  had  signed  the  death-warrant.    The  only  interest  lies 
in  Harrison's    own   demeanour  after  the  evidence  had  been 
given.      "My  lords,"  he    said,   "the  matter  that  hath  been 
"  offered  to  you,  as  it  was  touched,  was  not  a  thing  done  in 
"  a   corner.     I   believe  the  sound  of  it  hath   been  in  most 
"  nations.     I  believe  the  hearts  of  some  have  felt  the  terrors 
"  of  that  presence  of  God  that  was  with  His  servants  in  those 
"  days,  howsoever  it  seemeth  good  to  Him  to  suffer  this  turn 
"  to  come  on  us.  ...  I  have  desired,  as  in  the  sight  of  Him 
"  that  searcheth  all  hearts,  whilst   this   hath  been  done,  to 
"  wait,  and  receive  from  Him  convictions  upon  my  own  con- 
"  science ;   and,  though  I  have    sought  it  with  tears  many 
"  a?  time,  and  prayers  over  and  above  to  that  God  to  whom 
"  you  and  all  nations  are  less  than  a  drop  of  water,  to  this 
"  moment  I  have  received  rather  assurance  of  it,  and  that  in 
"  the  things  that  have  been  done,  as  astonishing  on  the  one 
"  hand,   I  do  believe  ere  long  it  will   be  made  known  from 
"  Heaven  there  was  more    from   God  than    men   are    aware 
"  of.     I  do  profess  that  I  would  not  offer  of  myself  the  least 
;'  mJury  to  the  poorest  man  or  woman  that  goes  upon  earth. 
'  That  I  have  humbly  to  offer  is  this  to  your  lordships :  — 


TRIALS    OF   THE   REGICIDES.  83 

"  You  know  what  a  contest  hath  been  in  these  nations  for 
"  many  years.  Divers  of  those  that  sit  upon  the  bench  were 
"  formerly  as  active ."  Here  the  Court  interrupted,  for- 
bidding that  vein  of  remark.  Harrison,  not  insisting  on  it, 
resumed.  "  I  followed  not  my  own  judgment,"  he  said ; 
"  I  did  what  I  did  as  out  of  conscience  to  the  Lord.  For, 
"  when  I  found  those  that  were  as  the  apple  of  mine  eye  to 
"  turn  aside,  I  did  loathe  them,  and  suffered  imprisonment 
"  many  years,  rather  than  to  turn  as  many  did  that  did  put 
"  their  hands  to  this  plough.  I  chose  rather  to  be  separated 
"  from  wife  and  family  than  to  have  compliance  with  them, 
"  though  it  was  said,  '  Sit  at  my  right  hand,'  and  such-kind 
"  expressions.  Thus  I  have  given  a  little  poor  testimony  that 
"  I  have  not  been  doing  things  in  a  corner,  or  from  myself. 
"  May  be  I  might  be  a  little  mistaken ;  but  I  did  it  all  according 
"  to  the  best  of  my  understanding,  desiring  to  make  the  re- 
"  vealed  will  of  God  in  His  holy  scriptures  as  a  guide  to  me. 
"  I  humbly  conceive  that  what  was  done  was  done  in  the  name 
u  of  the  Parliament  of  England,  that  what  was  done  was  done 
"  by  their  power  and  authority  ;  and  I  do  humbly  conceive 
"  it  is  my  duty  to  offer  unto  you  in  the  beginning  that  this 
"  court,  or  any  court  below  the  High  Court  of  Parliament, 
"  hath  no  jurisdiction  of  their  actions.  Here  are  many  learned 
"  in  the  law ;  and,  to  shorten  the  work,  I  desire  I  may  have 
"  the  help  of  counsel  learned  in  the  laws,  that  may  in  this 
"  matter  give  me  a  little  assistance  to  offer  those  grounds 
"  that  the  law  of  the  land  doth  offer."  He  reiterated  this 
demand  in  a  sentence  or  two,  and  was  proceeding,  "  Whereas 
"  it  hath  been  said  we  did  assume  and  usurp  authority,  I  say 
"  this  was  done  rather  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord,"  when  Chief 
Baron  Bridgman  broke  in,  "AwTay  with  him!  Know  where 
"you  are,  Sir:  you  are  in  the  assembly  of  Christians;  will 
"  you  make  God  the  author  of  your  treasons  and  murders  ?  " 
Then  ensued  a  conversation  on  the  prisoner's  demand  for  counsel, 
Harrison  repeating  it,  but  judges  and  counsel  unanimously 
agreeing  that  it  could  not  be  granted,  and  Annesley  and  Holies 
in  particular  reminding  the  Court  at  some  length  that  the 
Parliament  whose  authority  Harrison  pleaded  had  not  been  a 

G  2 


84  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

complete  Parliament,  but  only  one  House,  and  that  reduced 
to  a  fragment  of  itself  by  the  violent  exclusion  of  many  of  the 
members.  It  having-  been  intimated  to  Harrison  that  his 
demand  for  counsel  was  overruled,  the  scene  was  as  follows : 
— "  Harrison.  Notwithstanding  the  judgment  of  so  many 
"  learned  ones  that  the  kings  of  England  are  noways  ac- 
"  countable  to  the  Parliament,  the  Lords  and  Commons  in  the 
"  beginning  of  this  War  having  declared  the  King's  beginning 

"  war  upon   them,   the   God    of  Gods .     Court.  Do  you 

"  render  yourself  so  desperate  that  you  care  not  what  language 

"  you  let  fall  ?  It  must  not  be  suffered. Harrison.  I  would 

"  not  speak  willingly  to  offend  any  man  ;  but  God  is  no  re- 
"  specter  of  persons.    His  setting  up  his  standard  against  the 

"  people .     Court.  Truly,  Mr.  Harrison,  this  must  not  be 

"  suffered  :  this  doth  not  at  all  belong  to  you. Harrison. 

"  Under  favour,  this  doth  belong  to  me.  I  would  have  ab- 
"  horred  to  have  brought  him  to  account,  had  not  the  blood  of 

"  Englishmen  that  had  been  shed  ■ .     Counsel.  Methinks 

"  he  should  be  sent  to  Bedlam,  till  he  come  to  the  gallows  to 

"  render   an   account    of  this  ". There  was  a   farther 

struggle,  Harrison  anxious  especially  to  repudiate  a  charge 
of  one  of  the  witnesses  that  he  had  said  in  the  committee 
where  they  were  preparing  the  indictment  against  the  King, 
"  Let  us  blacken  him,"  and  also  the  accusation  of  having  been 
harsh  to  the  King  when  he  was  in  his  custody.  Neither  was 
true,  he  said  ;  such  things  he  abhorred.  With  evident  hurry 
at  last,  the  Chief  Baron  wound  up  the  trial  by  addressing 
the  jury.  Without  withdrawing,  and  with  hardly  an  instant 
of  delay,  they  returned  a  unanimous  verdict  of  Guilty.  The 
Chief  Baron  then  pronounced  sentence  as  follows : — "  The 
"  judgment  of  this  Court  is,  and  the  Court  doth  award,  That 
"  you  be  led  back  to  the  place  from  whence  you  came,  and 
"  from  thence  be  drawn  upon  an  hurdle  to  the  place  of  execu- 
;'  tion  ;  and  there  you  shall  be  hanged  by  the  neck,  and,  being 
"  alive,  shall  be  cut  down,  and  .  .  .  [here  a  portion  of  the 
"  sentence  which  cannot  be  printed]  :  your  entrails  to  be 
''  taken  out  of  your  body,  and,  you  living,  the  same  to  be 
;<  burnt  before  your  eyes,  and  your  head  to  be  cut  off,  your 


TKIALS   OF   THE   KEGICIDES.  85 

"  body  to  be  divided  into  four  quarters,  and  head  and  quarters 
"  to  be  disposed  of  at  the  pleasure  of  the  King's  Majesty;  and 
"  the  Lord  have  mercy  upon  your  soul ! " 

Harrison  having  been  thus  disposed  of  on  the  11th,  the 
next  day,  Friday  the  12th,  sufficed  for  the  five  that  had 
been  brought  to  the  bar  along  with  him, — Scroope,  Carew, 
Clements,  Jones,  and  Scott.  With  the  exception  of  Clements, 
who  tried  the  vain  chance  of  succumbing  at  once  and  acknow- 
ledging himself  guilty,  all  stood  very  firm,  wrestling  with  the 
Court  respectfully,  and  defending  themselves  as  well  as  they 
could.  Next  to  Harrison,  the  one  most  exulting  in  the  style 
of  his  courage  was  Carew.  When  asked,  at  the  end,  why 
sentence  should  not  be  pronounced,  he  would  only  say,  "  I 
commit  my  cause  unto  the  Lord,"  while  the  others  did  avail 
themselves  then  of  the  humbler  verbal  form  of  "  submitting- 
to  his  Majesty's  mercy."  Sentence  was  pronounced  on  all 
the  five  that  day,  the  same  sentence  as  on  Harrison.  It  was 
thought  by  many  at  the  time,  and  has  been  generally 
acknowledged  since,  that  the  condemnation  of  Scroope  in 
particular  was  an  "  inexcusable  breach  of  faith."  He  had 
surrendered  on  the  Proclamation ;  it  had  been  arranged  that 
his  punishment  should  be  only  the  forfeit  of  one  year's  value 
of  his  lands ;  and  the  Commons  had  let  him  be  transferred  to 
the  list  of  the  unpardonable  at  the  last  moment  only  because 
the  Government  wanted  another  victim  of  his  social  rank,  and 
made  the  most  of  some  evidence  to  his  damage  since  the 
Restoration  itself.  That  evidence  was  produced  on  his  trial, 
when  Major-General  Browne,  the  Lord  Mayor  elect  of 
London,  stepped  into  the  witness-box,  and  swore  to  some 
conversation  he  had  had  with  Scroope  in  the  Speaker's 
chamber,  in  which,  in  reply  to  a  remark  of  his  own  about  the 
King's  murder,  Scroope  had  said  there  were  different  opinions 
on  that  subject,  and  declined  to  express  his  own.  Altogether, 
Scroope  did  not  make  any  special  complaint  of  the  injustice 
done  him,  but  accepted  his  fate  very  bravely. 

Saturday  the  13th  was  entirely  occupied  with  the  trials  of 
Cook  and  Hugh  Peters.  That  of  Cook  was  protracted  to 
greater  length  than  any  that  had  preceded,  by  the  exertions 


86  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  Cook  himself  in  arguing  with  the  Court,  with  all  his 
lawyerly  subtlety,  whether  it  was  not  a  sufficient  exoneration 
that  his  part  in  the  King's  business  had  been  that  of  a  person 
employed  as  professional  counsel  merely.  The  trial  of  Peters, 
though  not  so  long,  was  more  interesting.  The  points  against 
him  were  that  he  had  conspired  with  Cromwell  and  others  at 
various  times  and  places  to  bring  the  King  to  trial,  that  he 
had  been  a  most  conspicuous  figure  in  the  active  crowd  round 
the  trial,  that  he  had  preached  several  sermons  rousing  the 
soldiers  and  others  to  the  final  act  of  regicide,  and  that  he  had 
himself  been  present  on  the  scaffold.  Peters,  who  spoke  in  a 
low  voice  and  in  a  dispirited  manner,  but  with  no  meanness  or 
abjectness,  could  not  set  aside  the  evidence  of  his  having  been 
seen  about  the  trial,  and  having  preached  rousing  sermons 
in  connexion  with  it,  though  he  challenged  the  veracity  of  the 
witnesses  in  some  particulars.  He  declared  solemnly  that  he 
had  "  never  had  any  near  converse  with  Oliver  Cromwell 
about  such  things."  On  the  point  of  his  alleged  presence  on 
the  scaffold  he  positively  broke  down  the  adverse  testimony. 
A  certain  Richard  Nunnelly,  once  door-keeper  to  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  Army,  had  sworn  that,  on  the  morning  of  the 
King's  execution,  he  had  met  Peters  in  the  gallery  of  White- 
hall, had  gone  with  him  from  the  gallery  into  the  Banqueting 
Room,  had  there  heard  him  give  some  indistinct  directions  to 
one  Tench,  a  joiner  of  Houndsditch,  who  was  employed  about 
the  scaffold,  had  afterwards  seen  him  go  out  himself  on  the 
scaffold  about  an  hour  before  the  execution,  as  if  to  observe 
that  his  directions  had  been  attended  to,  and  finally,  when 
the  execution  was  over,  had  encountered  him  again,  coming 
"  in  his  black  cloak  and  broad  hat,"  and  in  the  hangman's 
company,  out  of  the  chamber  into  which  the  two  men  in 
vizards  had  retired.  In  contradiction  of  this  witness,  Peters 
called  a  Cornelius  Glover,  who  had  been  his  servant  at  the 
fatal  date,  and  who  now  testified,  as  circumstantially,  that  on 
the  day  of  the  execution  his  master  was  "  melancholy  sick,  as 
he  used  to  be,"  and  had  not  left  his  chamber  either  before 
the  execution  or  during  the  execution.  This  evidence  seems 
to  have  had  some  effect  upon  the  Court ;  for,  after  Peters  had 


TEIALS    OF    THE    REGICIDES.  87 

given  a  short  sketch  of  his  life  from  his  arrival  from  America 
in  the  beginning  of  the  troubles,  admitting-  that  he  had  been 
"  active  "  in  the  midst  of  the  "  strange  and  several  kinds  of 
providence  "  in  which  he  had  found  himself,  "  but  not  to  stir 
in  a  way  that  was  not  honourable/'  the  Chief  Baron  in  his 
summing  up,  while  mentioning  Nunnelly's  evidence,  said  the 
Court  would  lay  no  great  stress  on  that.  The  jury  returned 
a  verdict  of  guilty  on  Peters,  as  well  as  on  Cook ;  and  the 
same  sentence  as  on  Harrison  was  pronounced  on  both. 

Axtell,  Hacker,  and  Hewlet,  were  tried  on  Monday  the 
15th.  Axtell  made  a  very  able  defence,  reasoning  more 
energetically  on  some  parts  of  the  main  subject  than  any 
other  of  the  Regicides,  maintaining  that  his  action  through- 
out had  been  but  that  of  a  soldier  under  Parliamentary  orders, 
and  contending  boldly  that  he  was  no  more  guilty  than  the 
Earl  of  Essex,  Lord  Fairfax,  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  Monk 
himself,  or  any  other  military  Parliamentarian.  Hacker  was 
no  speaker  and  had  little  to  say  for  himself,  but  adopted 
Axtell's  plea  of  having  been  a  soldier  merely  and  under 
command.  In  the  case  of  Hewlet,  the  specific  inquiry  was 
whether  he  had  been  one  of  the  two  masked  executioners. 
On  this  subject  the  Court  had  already  been  thrown  into  great 
ambiguity  by  certain  portions  of  the  evidence  during  the 
trials  of  Axtell  and  Hacker. — One  of  the  witnesses  there  had 
been  Mr.  Hercules  Huncks,  the  "  Colonel  Huncks"  of  Jan. 
1648-9  to  whom,  in  conjunction  with  Colonels  Hacker  and 
Phayre,  the  death-warrant,  signed  by  Bradshaw,  Cromwell, 
and  fifty-seven  others  of  the  judges,  had  been  addressed. 
Having  been  imprisoned  in  the  Tower,  and  not  yet  feeling 
himself  safe,  Huncks  was  willing  to  purchase  security  by 
telling  all  he  could  to  convict  Hacker  and  Axtell ;  and  there 
had  been  some  sensation  in  Court  when  Huncks  and  Axtell 
were  confronted,  Huncks  as  the  dogged  renegade  and  in- 
former, and  Axtell  as  the  prisoner  eyeing  his  former  comrade 
with  scorn.  Huncks's  story  was  that  there  had  been  some 
difficulty  on  the  execution  day,  from  the  fact  that,  in  addition 
to  the  death-warrant  from  the  judges,  addressed  to  Hacker, 
Phayre,  and    himself,    it   was    deemed    necessary  that   there 


88  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

should  be  a  sub-warrant,  or  order  to  the  executioner.  Natu- 
rally it  was  for  Hacker,  Phayre,  and  Huncks,  or  one  or  other 
of  them,  on  the  faith  of  the  main  warrant,  to  write  this  sub- 
warrant.  Accordingly,  in  Ireton's  room  in  Whitehall,  where 
Cromwell,  Ireton,  Harrison,  Hacker,  Phayre,  and  Huncks 
were  met,  just  before  the  execution,  with  Axtell  standing  at 
the  door,  Cromwell  had  turned  to  Huncks  (so  Huncks  now 
said)  and  asked  him  to  write  or  sign  the  document.  Huncks 
had  positively  refused,  he  said ;  whereupon  Cromwell  had 
called  him  "  a  froward,  peevish  fellow/''  and  Axtell  from  the 
door  had  exclaimed :  "  Colonel  Huncks,  I  am  ashamed  of 
"  you  ;  the  ship  is  now  coming  into  the  harbour,  and  will  you 
"strike  sail  before  we  come  to  anchor?"  Not  to  lose  time, 
continued  Huncks,  Cromwell  had  gone  to  a  little  table  that 
stood  by  the  door,  with  paper,  pens,  and  ink  on  it,  and, 
having  written  the  order  himself,  had  handed  the  pen  to 
Hacker,  who  stooped  and  wrote — Huncks  would  not  swear 
what  or  how  much,  but  had  little  doubt  it  was  his  name  and 
that  only.  If  this  story  were  true,  the  inference  was  that  the 
executioner-in-chief  was  already  provided,  and  was  waiting 
for  the  warrant  for  himself  and  his  assistant,  and  that  the 
name  of  the  chief,  or  the  names  of  both,  must  have  been 
known  to  all  the  seven  persons  in  the  room,  or  at  all  events 
to  Hacker,  the  signer  of  the  warrant  after  Cromwell  had 
drawn  it  up.  But  Axtell,  who  treated  Huricks's  story 
as  pure  invention,  protested  he  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  choice  of  the  executioners,  and  even  now  did  not  know 
their  names ;  and,  later  in  the  trial,  when  another  witness, 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Nelson,  stated  that,  about  live  or  six  years 
ago,  he  had  been  told  by  Axtell  in  Dublin  that,  though 
"  several  persons  came  and  offered  themselves  out  of  a  kind  of 
zeal,"  all  such  had  been  set  aside,  and  Hewlet  and  Walker, 
two  soldiers  known  for  their  stoutness,  had  been  chosen, 
Axtell  still  adhered  to  his  denial,  declaring  particularly  that 
it  was  impossible  he  should  have  ever  named  Hewlet,  because 
he  could  have  spoken  by  guess  only,  and  "  by  common  fame  up 
and  down  the  city  it  was  said  to  be  another  person."  Hacker 
also,  though  admitting  that  he  had  signed  the  warrant  to  the 


TRIALS   OF   THE    REGICIDES.  89 

executioner,  and  that  he  might  have  heard  the  name  at  the 
time,  could  not  or  would  not  now  reveal  it.     This  was  attested 
by  Secretary  Morrice  and  Mr.  Annesley,  who  had  examined 
Hacker   in   the  Tower.— Such    was   the  uncertainty   of  the 
Court  on  the  question    on   which   they  were  to  try  Hewlet 
when  Hewlet  himself  was  brought  to  the  bar.     He  was  an 
oldish  grey-haired  man  ;    and,  though  he  had  recently  held 
captain's  rank  in  Ireland,  and  was  styled  in  the  indictment 
"  William  Hewlet,  alias  Houlet,  late  of  Westminster,  in  the 
county  of  Middlesex,  gent.,"  he  seems  to  have  been  a  rough, 
uneducated  person,  though  not  unsagacious,  and  with  much 
presence  of  mind  in  his  terrible  situation.     Seven  witnesses, 
examined  in  succession,  seemed,  with  more  or  less  of  precision, 
to  fasten  the  guilt  on  him,  though  with  a  difference  among 
them  as  to   whether   he    had    been   the    man   who    cut   the 
head  off,   or  only  the  man  who  had  held  it  up  afterwards. 
The  first,  Richard   Gittens,  swore  that  he  and  Hewlet  had 
been    sergeants    in    the    same    regiment ;    that,    a    day    or 
two  before  the  execution,  a  number  of   picked  men  of  that 
regiment  had    been    brought   before    Colonel    Hewson,  who 
offered  any  of  them  that  would   undertake  the  work  i£°100 
down   and  preferment  in  the    army ;    that  all   had  refused, 
Hewlet  included;    but  that   he  was    confident    Hewlet    had 
afterwards  consented,  for  he  had  seen  the  executioner  on  the 
scaffold,  and  recognised  him  to  be  Hewlet  by  his  voice  and 
his  grey  beard, — more  by  token  that  Hewlet  had  ever  since 
been  known  in  the  army  as  "  Father  Greybeard."     Then  one 
Stammers,  a  Captain  Toogood,  and  a  Walter  Davis,  swore 
that,  in   conversations  with   Hewlet   in  Ireland,  he  had  ad- 
mitted,  or   all  but    admitted,   the   fact.      Then  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Nelson  repeated  the  evidence  he  had  given  on  Axtell's 
trial,  but  more  circumstantially,  to  the  effect  that  Axtell  had 
told  him  in  Dublin  that  Walker  and  Hewlet,  both  sergeants, 
were  the  men,  and  that   "  poor  Walker "  (now  dead   appa- 
rently) struck  the  blow,  leaving  the  rest  to  Hewlet.     Then 
Colonel  Tomlinson  testified  that,  to  the  best  of  his  remem- 
brance,  one    of  the    executioners   was   grey-haired   and   the 
other  flaxen-haired,  and  that  the  grey-haired  one  struck  the 


90  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

blow,  adding"  that  he  had  some  recollection  now  of  having1 
been  told  since,  by  Colonel  Pretty  in  Ireland,  that  this  grey- 
haired  one  was  Hewlet.  Finally,  a  Benjamin  Francis  remem- 
bered the  two  executioners,  both  dressed  alike,  "  in  butchers' 
habits  of  woollen,"  but  one  with  a  black  hat  and  a  black 
beard,  and  the  other  with  "  a  grey  grizzled  periwig-  hung 
down  very  low,"  and  swore  that  the  prisoner  at  the  bar 
resembled  this  latter  in  stature  and  in  the  colour  of  his 
beard.  Through  these  examinations,  Hewlet  had  sat  gravely, 
now  and  then  putting  a  brief  but  effective  question,  discon- 
certing to  the  chief  witnesses,  but  on  the  whole  seeming  to 
reserve  himself.  At  last,  nearly  all  the  witnesses  for  the 
prosecution  having  been  examined,  he  did  bring  out  his 
reserve,  and  rather  startlingly.  He  should  be  able  to  prove, 
he  said,  that  he  and  about  nine  other  sergeants  of  different 
regiments  had  been  in  confinement  at  Whitehall  all  the  day 
of  the  execution  precisely  because  they  had  refused  to  go  on 
the  scaffold ;  nay,  though  he  had  known  this  only  recently 
himself,  he  should  be  able  to  settle  for  the  Court  the  question 
which  was  so  perplexing  them,  by  proving,  by  "  forty  and 
forty  witnesses  "  if  necessary,  who  the  man  was  that  did  cut  off 
the  King's  head.  The  Court  must  have  stared  at  this,  though 
the  old  report  does  not  mention  that  or  any  other  exhibition 
of  surprise.  And  Hewlet  made  good  his  word,  or  almost  so. 
Though,  like  all  the  other  prisoners,  he  had  hardly  known 
with  precision  the  nature  of  the  charge  to  be  made  against 
him,  and  had  in  his  durance  had  no  time  or  means  allowed 
him  of  seeking  out  evidence  for  his  defence,  he  had  managed 
to  do  something,  or  people  in  London,  believing  him  innocent, 
had  been  stirring  in  his  behalf  independently.  And  so, 
though  he  would  have  liked  more  time,  as  he  said,  to  get 
together  the  "  forty  and  forty  witnesses  "  he  believed  might 
be  forthcoming,  yet,  as  the  Court  ruled  that  he  had  had  time 
enough,  he  did  avail  himself  of  evidence  then  fortunately  at 
hand.  This  was  not  any  evidence  in  support  of  his  own 
alleged  alibi  on  the  execution  day ;  it  was  all  for  the  identi- 
fication of  the  chief  executioner.  First,  there  were  certain 
examinations  that  had  been  taken  before  the  Lord  Mayor ;  of 


TRIALS   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  91 

which  examinations  Hewlet  tendered  to  the  Court  a  written 
copy,  signed  by  "  Mary  Brandon  and  divers  others."  The 
Court  seem  to  have  paid  small  attention  to  this  paper ;  but 
they  allowed  some  volunteer  witnesses  present  (seemingly 
some  of  those  who  had  been  already  before  the  Lord  Mayor) 
to  be  examined  viva  voce,  though  without  being  sworn, — the 
law  being,  as  the  Court  explained,  that  there  could  be  no 
oath  against  the  King  in  such  a  trial.  The  first  of  these 
witnesses,  a  sheriff's  officer,  stated  that  "  one  of  our  fellows," 
John  Rooten  by  name,  had  told  him  that  he  had  been  in 
Rosemary  Lane,  Whitechapel,  a  little  after  the  execution  of 
the  King,  "drinking  with  the  hangman"", — i.e.  with  Richard 
Brandon,  the  common  executioner  of  that  time,  and  that,  on 
being  urged  on  the  subject,  the  hangman  had  owned  that  he 
cut  off  the  King's  head.  Another,  an  Abraham  Smith,  who 
had  been  a  waterman  on  the  Thames,  remembered  that  the 
hangman  had  been  brought  to  his  boat  just  after  the  execution 
by  a  file  of  musketeers,  that  he  had  put  off  with  him  very 
unwillingly  by  order  of  the  musketeers,  but  that,  when  a 
little  way  out  in  the  river,  he  had  said,  "  Who  the  devil  have 
I  got  in  my  boat  ?  ",  and  had  made  such  an  uproar  that  the 
hangman  "  shook  every  joint  of  him,"  and  protested  he  had 
not  done  the  deed,  though  sent  for  to  do  it,  and  that  his 
"  instruments  "  had  been  used  by  others.  Apparently  this 
witness  meant  to  intimate  that  he  believed  at  the  time,  and 
now  believed,  that  the  hangman  had  lied  in  this  denial.  The 
next  witness,  at  all  events,  put  that  complexion  on  the  affair 
immediately  and  decidedly.  His  name  was  William  Cox  ; 
and  his  evidence  is  reported  thus :  "  When  my  lord  Capel, 
"  Duke  of  Hamilton,  and  the  Earl  of  Holland,  were  beheaded 
"  in  Palace  Yard,  Westminster  [i.  e.  on  March  9,  1648-9, 
"  little  more  than  a  month  after  the  execution  of  Charles], 
"  my  lord  Capel  asked  the  common  hangman :  said  he,  '  Did 
"  l  you  cut  off  my  master's  head  ?  '  '  Yes,'  saith  he.  '  Where  is 
"  '  the  instrument  that  did  it  ? '  He  then  brought  the  axe. 
"  '  This  is  the  same  axe,  are  you  sure  ?  '  said  my  lord.  '  Yes, 
"  '  my  lord/  saith  the  hangman,  '  I  am  very  sure  it  is  the 
same.'     My  lord  Capel  took  the  axe,  and  kissed  it,  and 


a   ■ 


92  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  gave  him  five  pieces  of  gold.  I  heard  him  say  '  Sirrah, 
"  '  wert  thou  not  afraid?'  Saith  the  hangman,  'They  made 
"  'me  cut  it  off,  and  I  had  thirty  pounds  for  my  pains.'  : 
After  this  supremely  interesting  witness,  came  a  Richard 
Abell,  who  testified  that,  in  the  house  of  one  Bramston,  he 
had  heard  "Gregory  himself"  (i.e.  the  hangman)  confess 
that  he  had  done  the  deed.  Yet  one  more  witness  stepped 
out,  named  "a  stranger "  in  the  report,  as  if  he  had  been 
moved  by  charity  at  the  moment,  and  they  did  not  take  the 
trouble  to  inquire  who  he  was.  He  said,  "  My  lord,  I  was 
"  with  my  master  in  the  company  of  Brandon  the  hangman, 
"  and  my  master  asked  Brandon  whether  he  cut  off  the  King's 
"  head  or  no.  He  confessed  in  my  presence  that  he  was  the 
"  man  that  did  cut  off  the  King's  head."  So  stood  the  case 
for  Hewlet  when  Chief  Baron  Bridgman  summed  up.  He 
recapitulated  the  evidence,  saying  in  one  place  "  God  forbid 
I  should  omit  anything  that  may  be  as  well  for  advantage  as 
against  the  prisoner,"  but  on  the  whole  putting  most  stress  on 
the  evidence  against  Hewlet,  and  also  reminding  the  jury  that  the 
witnesses  for  him  had  not  been  on  oath,  and  that,  if  he  had 
been  only  the  assistant  executioner,  he  must  be  brought  in 
guilty.  The  jury,  "after  a  more  than  ordinary  time  of  consulta- 
tion," returned  to  their  places  ;  and  their  verdict  was  Guilty. 

It  remained  now  to  try  those  of  the  Regicides,  not  entered 
as  guilty  by  their  own  confession  on  their  arraignment,  for 
whom  there  was  the  saving  clause  in  the  Bill  of  Indemnity, 
providing  that,  if  they  should  be  found  guilty  and  condemned, 
the  execution  of  the  sentence  in  each  case  should  be  suspended 
till  ordered  by  the  King  after  Act  of  Parliament.  These, 
sixteen  in  all,  were  brought  to  the  bar  on  Tuesday,  Oct.  16. 
In  the  predicament  in  which  they  were,  the  benefit  of  the 
saving  clause  depending  much  on  their  behaviour  or  on 
the  opinion  the  Court  might  form  of  them,  anything  like 
contumacy  was  obviously  unadvisable.  Accordingly,  they 
were  all  studious  to  save  the  Court  trouble  by  withdrawing 
their  previous  pleas  of  Not  Guilty  and  thus  practicably  sub- 
mitting, though  one  or  two  did  urge  some  point  which  required 
the  production  of  a  witness  or  an  argument  by  the  prosecuting 


TKTALS    OF   THE   EEGICIDES.  93 

counsel.  Still  there  were  degrees  in  their  submissiveness. 
Harvey  professed  himself  penitent,  said  he  had  exerted  him- 
self to  stop  the  trial  of  the  King-,  and  reminded  the  Court  of 
his  wife  and  thirteen  children.  Pennington  avowed  that  he 
had  acted  in  ignorance.  Henry  Marten  had  recourse  to  some 
subtle  pleading,  not  declining  confession  as  to  the  matter 
of  fact,  but  desiring  to  set  aside  the  words  "  maliciously, 
murderously,  and  traitorously  "  in  the  indictment.  Making 
nothing  of  that,  and  perceiving,  on  the  contrary,  that  the 
plea  was  only  eliciting  evidence  of  his  activity  and  levity  of 
behaviour  at  the  King's  trial,  he  ended  thus : — "  I  had  then, 
"  and  have  now,  a  peaceable  inclination,  a  resolution  to  submit 
"  to  the  government  that  God  hath  placed  over  me.  I  think 
"  his  Majesty  that  now  is  is  king  upon  the  best  title  under 
"  Heaven,  for  he  was  called  in  by  the  representative  body  of 
"  England.  I  shall,  during  my  life,  long  or  short,  pay 
"  obedience  to  him :  besides,  my  lords,  I  do  owe  my  life  to 
"  him,  if  I  am  acquitted  of  this.  I  do  confess  I  did  adhere 
"  to  the  Parliament's  party  heartily:  my  life  is  at  his  mercy; 
"  if  his  grace  be  pleased  to  grant  it,  I  have  a  double  obliga- 
"  tion  to  him."  After  Marten  came  Millington,  who  sub- 
mitted, pleaded  guilty,  and  petitioned  for  mercy.  Tichbourne 
also  professed  penitence.  Owen  Rowe  did  the  same,  and  said 
he  was  a  man  of  no  ability,  who  ought  to  have  kept  to  his 
proper  business  as  a  tradesman.  Lilburne  said  he  had  acted 
ignorantly,  and  submitted.  Smith  said  the  same,  and  that 
he  could  now  pray  for  the  King.  Downes  was  penitent,  and 
explained  that,  though  he  had  been  among  the  sentencing 
judges  and  had  signed  the  death-warrant,  he  had  strained  his 
conscience  in  th^ese  very  acts,  having  made  strong  exertions 
for  the  King  at  the  time.  Potter,  a  large  man,  with  "a  fit 
of  the  stone  upon  him  "  as  he  stood  in  court,  said,  "  I  will 
deny  nothing ;  I  confess  the  fact,  but  did  not  contrive  it ;  I 
am  full  of  pain."  Garland  submitted,  only  denying  a  charge 
that  he  had  insulted  the  King  in  a  special  manner.  Mayne 
confessed,  but  said  he  had  acted  under  compulsion.  The  two 
Temples  confessed  and  craved  mercy.  Wayte  did  the  same, 
and  said  he  had    been  "  trepanned "   into   his  share  in  the 


94  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

regicide.  Heveningham,  who  was  brought  up  last,  could 
not  deny  the  fact  that  he  had  been  one  of  the  sentencing 
judges,  but  referred  to  some  "  after  actions  "  in  extenuation, 
which  the  Court  said  would  be  "  considered."  And  so,  the 
formality  of  a  verdict  of  Guilty  against  each  of  the  sixteen 
having  been  gone  through,  and  Sir  Hardress  Waller  and 
George  Fleetwood,  the  two  who  had  pleaded  guilty  on  their 
arraignment,  having  been  brought  into  Court,  and  Axtell, 
Hacker,  and  Hewlet,  who  had  been  found  guilty  on  the  pre- 
vious day,  having  also  been  brought  in,  the  Chief  Baron 
made  his  closing  speech,  and  pronounced  sentence  upon  all 
the  twenty-six,  save  Heveningham,  whose  sentence  for  some 
reason  was  reserved  to  the  19th.  The  sentence  on  all  was  the 
same  sentence  of  hanging,  drawing,  quartering,  &c,  that  had 
already  been  pronounced  on  the  eight  regicides  first  tried. 
For  the  sixteen  who  could  plead  the  saving  clause  there  was 
to  be  a  respite  of  the  execution  till  farther  order ;  and  the 
Chief  Baron  was  also  pleased  to  intimate  to  Hewlet  his  belief, 
though  not  positive  certainty,  that,  in  consideration  of  the 
conflict  of  evidence  in  his  case,  there  would  be  a  respite  for 
him  too  till  his  Majesty's  pleasure  should  be  farther  known. 
Axtell  and  Hacker  knew  their  doom  \ 


1  My  account  of  the  Indictment,  Ar-  another  woman  being  in  a  chandler's 
raignment,  and  Trials  of  the  Regicides  shop  two  or  three  hours  after  the  execu- 
is  derived  from  Vol.  IV.  of  Howell's  tion,  "  both  weeping,"  Payne  came  in 
State-  Trials,  pp.  947 — 1230. — One  of  the  "rejoicingly,  said  his  hands  had  done 
nineteen  Regicides  named  in  the  Bill  of  "the  work,  and  asked  a  countrywoman 
Indemnity  for  the  benefit  of  the  saving  "  to  drink  a  quart  of  sack  with  him  in  a 
clause  as  having  surrendered  on  the  pro-  "tavern"  (Mrs.  Green's  Calendar  of 
clamation  (ante  p.  54)  remains  unac-  State-Papers  under  date  June  26,  1660). 
counted  for.  He  is  Thomas  Wogan.  Payne,  if  he  had  made  the  boast,  bad 
Having  had  an  opportunity  of  escaping  already  cleared  himself  of  the  fact  before 
abroad  since  the  passing  of  the  Bill,  he  the  Council,  and  explained  that  he  "  was 
had  preferred  exile  at  all  risks  to  trial  not  on  the  scaffold  till  an  hour  and  a 
with  the  benefit  of  the  saving  clause. —  half  after  the  execution,  when  most  of 
In  addition  to  the  six  persons  hitherto  the  boards  were  removed  "  {Ibid.  June 
named  in  these  pages  as  having  been  25).  A  Christopher  Alured  of  York- 
suspected  or  accused  in  one  way  or  shire  had  been  informed  against  as 
another  of  the  actual  decapitation  of  having  "declared  himself  to  be  the 
Charles — viz.  one  Matthew,  Colonel  man"  and  boasted  of  it  (Ibid.  July 
George  Joyce,  Hugh  Peters,  Hewlet,  19).  There  seems,  indeed,  to  have 
Walkei-,  and  the  common  executioner  been  a  competition  among  bragging  and 
Brandon— one  hears  of  others  and  still  crazed  people  for  the  reputation  of  the 
others.  Thus  a  Phineas  Payne,  who  was  tremendous  deed.  After  all,  despite 
"one  of  the  three  doorkeepers  of  the  Lilly's  very  circumstantial  statement 
court "  during  the  King's  trial,  had  been  about  Joyce  (which  seems  to  have  been 
accuse.  1  1  it-lore  the  Council  by  an  Eliza-  entirely  disregarded  before  the  trials), 
beth  Parsons,  to  the  effect  that,  she  and  and  despite  any  worth  that  may  seem  to 


EXECUTIONS   OF   THE   EEGICIDES. 


95 


Before  the  trials  were  ended,  the  hanging's  and  quartering's 
had  begum.  Harrison  was  the  first  example.  On  Saturday, 
October  13,  he  was  brought  from  Newgate,  where  he  had 
taken  his  last  leave  of  his  wife,  and  of  other  friends,  all  in 
a  state  of  marvel  at  the  ecstasy  or  heroic  rapture  of  his  de- 
meanour. Conveyed  on  a  hurdle  or  sledge,  tied  and  with  the 
rope  about  his  neck,  through  the  crowded  streets,  "  his  counte- 
nance never  changing  all  the  way,"  but  appearing  "  mighty 
cheerful  to  the  astonishment  of  many,"  he  came  in  sight  of 
the  gallows  at  Charing  Cross.  Before  he  left  the  hurdle,  the 
hangman,  in  the  customary  way,  solicited  a  fee  by  the  pre- 
tence of  asking  forgiveness.  Harrison  gave  him  the  forgive- 
ness, and  "  all  the  money  he  had."  Then,  mounting  the 
ladder,  still  "  with  an  undaunted  countenance,"  he  addressed 
the  people  in  the   strain  of  a  fervid  fifth-monarchy  Puritan 


linger  even  yet  in  the  evidence  respect- 
ing the  dead  Walker,  or  even  respecting 
Hewlet,  the  decided  preponderance  of 
the  evidence  is  in  favour  of  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  real  executioner  was  the 
common  hangman,  Brandon.  On  such 
an  occasion  an  expert  would  he  in  re- 
quest ;  and  the  fact  seems  to  have  been, 
as  brought  out  by  Hewlet's  witnesses, 
that  Brandon  made  no  secret  of  the 
matter  so  long  as  he  lived,  but  told  any 
of  his  neighbours  in  Rosemary  Lane  who 
chose  to  inquire,  and  always  with  the 
addition  that  he  got  £30  for  the  work. 
He  died  June  20, 1649,  not  five  months 
after  the  beheading  of  the  King,  and 
less  than  four  after  the  beheading  of 
Lord  Capel,  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  and 
the  Earl  of  Holland  ;  and  opposite  to 
the  entry  of  his  burial  in  the  register  of 
St.  Mary's  parish,  Whitechapel, — "June 
21,  Bich.  Brandon,  a  man  out  of  Bose- 
mary  Lane,"  —  some  one  afterwards 
wrote,  "  This  R.  Brandon  is  supposed 
to  have  cut  off  the  head  of  Charles  the 
First"  (Cunningham's  Hand-Book  of 
London,  p.  427).  In  a  tract  of  the 
time,  called  The  Confession  of  the 
Hangman,  besides  details  of  the  story 
of  the  King's  execution,  as  told  by 
Brandon  himself, — e.  g.  an  account  of 
what  he  did  with  "an  orange  stuck  full 
of  cloves  and  a  handkerchief"  which  he 
took  from  the  King's  pocket. — there  is 
a  description  of  the  proceedings  at  the 
burial  of  Brandon.  Whitechapel  was  in 
riot,  and  it  was  with  difficulty  that  the 
body  escaped  being  torn  to  pieces  by  the 


mob.  See  Chambers's  Book  of  Days,  I. 
798 — 799  ;  where  there  is  also  a  quota- 
tion from  a  broadside  called  .4  Dialogue 
between  the  Hangman  and  Death.  In 
reply  to  Death,  who  comes  exultingly 
to  carry  off  Brandon  at  last,  and  calls 
him  "  the  bloodiest  actor  in  this  present 
age,"  Brandon  is  made  to  say,  among 
other  things, 

"  I  gave  the  blow   caused  thousands' 
hearts  to  ache  ; 
Nay,  more  than  that,  it  made  three 
kingdoms  quake." 

Brandon  had  succeeded  his  father 
Gregory  Brandon  in  his  dreadful  busi- 
ness ;  and  the  name  of  this  "  Gregory," 
remembered  as  the  executioner  of  Straf- 
ford and  others,  seems  to  have  been  used 
for  "  Richard  "  by  one  of  Hewlet's  wit- 
nesses. It  seems  strange  that,  with  all 
the  publicity  of  the  tradition  respecting 
Brandon,  and  with  his  wife  or  daughter, 
"Mary  Brandon,"  apparently  still  alive 
to  add  her  testimony  to  that  of  so  many 
others,  the  government  should  have 
ignored  Brandon  for  the  chance  of  find- 
ing some  one  living  to  convict.  How 
perse veringly  they  tracked  out  every 
one  connected  in  any  way  with  the 
Regicide  appears  from  the  fact  that  the 
carpenter,  Tench  of  Houndsditch,  who 
had  erected  the  scaffold,  was  still  sought 
for.  He  was  arrested  some  weeks  after 
our  present  date  (Public  Intelligencer  of 
Nov.  26 — Dec.  3).  Whatever  he  had 
done,  he  ought  to  have  been  safe  then 
by  the  Bill  of  Indemnity. 


96  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  man  of  the  Commonwealth.  "  Take  notice,"  he  said, 
"  that,  for  being"  instrumental  in  that  cause  and  interest  of 
"  the  Son  of  God  which  hath  been  pleaded  amongst  us,  and 
"  which  God  hath  witnessed  to  by  appeals  and  wonderful 
"  victories,  I  am  brought  to  this  place  to  suifer  death  this  day; 
"  and,  if  I  had  ten  thousand  lives,  I  could  freely  and  cheerfully 
"  lay  down  them  all  to  witness  to  this  matter."  Again : — 
"  I  do  not  lay  down  my  life  by  constraint,  but  willingly ;  for, 
"  if  I  had  been  minded  to  have  run  away,  I  might  have  had 
"  many  opportunities  ;  but,  being  so  clear  in  the  thing, 
"  I  durst  not  turn  my  back  nor  step  a  foot  out  of  the  way, 
"  by  reason  I  had  been  engaged  in  the  service  of  so  glorious 
"  and  great  a  God.  However  men  presume  to  call  it  by  hard 
"  names,  yet  I  believe,  ere  it  be  long,  the  Lord  will  make  it 
"  known  from  Heaven  that  there  was  more  of  God  in  it  than 
"  men  are  now  aware  of."  There  was  more  to  the  like  effect, 
his  demeanour  continuing  to  astonish  the  spectators,  and, 
among  them,  Pepys,  who,  having  seen  the  execution  of 
Charles  and  approved  of  it,  had  come  to  witness  this  first 
expiation  for  it.  Though  there  were  requests  from  the 
sheriff  to  be  short,  and  the  executioner  was  bustling  to  begin 
his  work,  Harrison  went  on  till  he  had  said  all  he  meant 
to  say.  His  last  words  were :  "  He  hath  covered  my  head 
"  many  times  in  the  day  of  battle.  By  God  I  have  leaped 
"  over  a  wall ;  by  God  I  have  run  through  a  troop ;  and  by 
"  my  God  I  will  go  through  this  death,  and  He  will  make  it 
"  easy  to  me.  Now  into  Thy  hands,  O  Lord  Jesus,  I  commit 
"  my  spirit."  The  sentence  was  then  executed  to  the  letter. 
He  was  flung  off,  hanged  a  moment  or  two,  but  cut  down 
still  alive,  for  the  opening  of  his  body.  As  the  hangman  was 
at  this  savagery,  nerve  and  muscle  worked  strongly  in  the 
half-dead  man,  and  he  struck  the  hangman  a  blow  in  the  face. 
The  head  and  heart  were  shown  to  the  people,  and  there  were 
great  shouts  of  joy. — At  the  same  place,  on  Monday  the  15th, 
Carew  was  executed  in  the  same  manner.  He  also  went  out  of 
the  world  dauntlessly,  a  dull,  pious  man,  with  prayers  and  words 
of  triumph. — Cook,  Hugh  Peters,  Scott,  Clements,  Scroope, 
and   Jones,  were   executed,  all    at   Charing    Cross   likewise, 


EXECUTIONS   OF   THE   REGICIDES.  97 

the  two  first  on  the  16th,  the  others  on  the  17th.  All  died 
bravely, — even  Peters,  who  had  had  depressing-  doubts  in  prison 
whether  he  should  be  able  to  "go  through  his  sufferings  with 
courage,"  and  whom  the  hangman  tried  to  break  down,  when 
his  turn  came,  by  ostentatiously  rubbing  his  hands  before 
him,  bloody  from  the  disembowelling"  of  Cook,  and  saying, 
"  How  do  you  like  this  work,  Mr.  Peters  ?"  None  of  the  con- 
demned went  out  of  the  world  with  less  pity.  The  execution 
of  Peters,  said  the  newspapers  of  the  day,  "  was  the  delight 
"  of  the  people,  which  they  expressed  by  several  shouts  and 
"  acclamations  when  they  saw  him  go  up  the  ladder,  and  also 
"  when  the  halter  was  putting  about  his  neck." — One  does  not 
know  whether  his  Majesty  had  been  present  at  the  executions 
of  Harrison,  Carew,  Cook,  and  Peters  ;  but  Evelyn  tells  us 
that  he  was  present  at  that  of  Scott,  Clements,  Scroope,  and 
Jones.  The  amiable  Evelyn  missed  the  main  sight  himself,  but 
remarks  on  the  fact  that  the  place  was  Charing  Cross,  close  to 
Whitehall,  where  Charles  had  been  beheaded.  "  I  saw  not 
"  their  execution/'  he  says,  "  but  met  their  quarters,  mangled 
"  and  cut  and  reeking,  as  they  were  brought  from  the  gallows 
"  in  baskets  on  the  hurdle.  O  the  marvellous  providence  of 
"  God !"  Axtell  and  Hacker  were  executed  too-ether  on  the 
19th,  not  at  Charing  Cross,  but  at  Tyburn,  near  the  present 
Marble  Arch.  Axtell,  being  a  man  of  speech,  could  show  his 
courage  in  that  way  as  well  as  by  his  demeanour.  In 
Newgate,  since  his  condemnation,  he  had  been  speaking  with 
some  soreness  of  "  that  poor  wretch  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Huncks,"  and  also  of  Colonel  Tomlinson ;  but  at  the  gibbet 
he  made  all  the  proper  professions  of  a  Puritan  and  Repub- 
lican Christian.  Hacker,  a  man  of  no  words,  had  prepared 
a  little  paper,  beginning  "  Friends  and  Countrymen,  all  that 
have  known  me  in  my  best  estate  have  not  known  me  to  be 
a  man  of  oratory,"  and  containing  two  or  three  plain  sentences 
more,  soldierly  and  pious x. 


1  Accounts  of  the  Executions  and  the  Howell's  State-Trials,  IV.  1280—1302 

Last  Speeches  and  Prayers  of  the  Regi-  Pepys's  Diary  and   Evelyn's  of  dati  3 

cides,   published    iu    1663    from    notes  Mtrcuriv.s  Fublicus,  Oct,  11~-18, 1660, 
taken   at   the   time,   and   reprinted   in 

VOL.  VI.  H 


98  LIFE   OF  MILTON    AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS   TIME. 

Ten  had  been  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered  ;  and  the 
prison-walls  closed  round  the  remaining"  nineteen  that  had 
been  condemned,  as  also  round  the  six  Regicides  of  less  criminal 
orade  that  were  in  custody,  but  had  not  been  tried  for  their 
lives.  Little  more  was  to  be  heard  of  any  of  the  twenty-five 
in  this  world,  save  when  it  was  thought  proper  to  cart  one  or 
two  of  them  for  exhibition  through  the  streets  of  London 
with  halters  round  their  necks.  After  the  twenty  yet  living 
Regicides  who  had  escaped  out  of  England,  and  were  still 
fugitive,  there  was  to  be  a  hue  and  cry  to  the  last.  Lambert 
and  Vane,  not  classed  with  the  Regicides,  were  in  prison,  as 
capital  exceptions  from  the  Indemnity  on  other  grounds,  and 
with  only  a  petition  of  the  two  Houses  to  his  Majesty  between 
them  and  the  scaffold.  Hasilrig,  not  excepted  for  life,  but  for 
everything  else,  was  also  in  prison  for  general  guilt,  as  a  man 
never  to  see  the  sun  again.  For  one  of  the  two  Regicides, 
Lassels  and  Hutchinson,  who  had  been  sentenced  to  civil 
incapacitation  only,  the  escape  was  to  be  but  nominal. 
For  some  of- the  eighteen  more  severely  incapacitated  culprits, 
two  of  them  ranked  as  minor  Regicides,  disgrace  was  not  to 
be  the  sole  punishment  after  all.  The  absolutely  condoned 
Matthew  Tomlinson  was  to  disappear  into  obscurity;  and  only 
Dick  Ingoldsby,  of  all  the  Regicides,  could  hold  up  his  head. 
The  four-and-twenty  Regicides  that  were  dead  before  the  Act 
of  Indemnity  lay  in  their  graves,  coffined  corpses,  and 
undisturbed  as  yet  \ 


1  In  the   enumeration  in  this  para-  (April  1661, 'retat.  49),  Pennington  (Dec. 

graph  the  reader  will  find  all  the  102  17,    1661),  Eowe  (Dec.  1661).     Trans- 

persons  excepted  by  name  from  the  Bill  ferred  to  other  prisons  with  some  in- 

of    Indemnity   (ante   pp.    54 — 56)    ac-  dulgence,  and  died  there — Lilburne  (in 

counted  for  in  a  general  way.    I  have  Jersey,   Aug.  1665,   setat.  52) ;    Henry 

made   no   special   investigation  of  the  Marten  (at  Chepstow  Castle,  as  late  as 

fates    of  the  nineteen   Regicides    con-  1681,setat.  77).   Ultimately  released,  and 

demned  capitally  in  Oct.  1660  but  not  died  in  America — George    Fleetwood, 

executed  ;    aud   the  following  is    only  I  know  nothing  of  Hewlet :  but  even  he 

roughly  from  Noble  and  other  authorities  may  have  been  traced  to  his  end  by 

at  hand  : — Died  in  prison,  mostly  in  the  some  one. — Of  the  six  minor  Regicides 

Tower,    time    unascertained — Downes,  in  custody,  James  Challoner,  Sir  James 

Garland  (presumably),  Harvey,  Heven-  Harrington,  and  Phelps,  appear  to  have 

ingham  (presumably),  Millington,  Pot-  died  in  prison  soon.   Hutchinson,  though 

ter,  Smith,  James  Temple,  Peter  Temple,  nominally  condoned,  was  to  die  a  pri- 

Tichboume  (presumably),  Wayte  (pre-  soner  in  Deal  Castle,  Sept.    11,  1664. 

sumably),  Sir  Hardress  Waller,     hied  Hasilrig  died  in  the  Tower,  of  a  fever, 

in  the  Tower  at  known  dates — Mayne  within  the  year.    Lambert,  after  several 


KING  S   ECCLESIASTICAL  DECLARATION.  99 

Just  after  the  hanging  and  quartering  of  the  ten  Regicides 
there  came  forth  a  Declaration  of  his  Majesty  concerning  Eccle- 
siastical Affairs  (Oct.  25,  1660).  It  was  his  Majesty's  attempt 
in  that  business  of  a  reconstitution  of  the  Church  of  England 
which  had  been  referred  to  him  by  Parliament. 

The  first  draft  of  the  document,  which  seems  to  have  been 
substantially  Hyde's,  had  been  ready  for  more  than  a  month, 
and  had  been  put  into  the  hands  of  Reynolds,  Calamy,  Baxter, 
and  the  rest  of  the  small  committee  of  representative  Pres- 
byterian divines  for  the  benefit  of  their  private  criticisms. 
Such  criticisms  had  been  freely  tendered,  both  in  conferences 
with  Hyde  and  in  papers  sent  in  to  him.  Baxter  had  been 
the  boldest  in  his  censures  of  the  document,  but  had  been 
tempered  down  by  Reynolds,  Calamy,  and  the  rest.  At 
length,  some  alterations  having  been  made  in  the  document, 
there  had  been  a  special  conference  over  it  in  the  King's  pre- 
sence, Oct.  22.  The  conference  was  held  in  Worcester  House, 
in  the  Strand,  then  Chancellor  Hyde's  residence ;  and  besides 
the  King  and  Hyde,  the  laymen  present  were  the  Duke  of 
Albemarle,  Ormond,  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  Mr.  Annesley, 
and  Mr.  Holies.  Hyde  read  over  the  document,  paragraph 
by  paragraph,  and  it  was  commented  on  by  Sheldon,  Morley, 
Henchman,  Hacket,  Gunning,  Dr.  Barwick,  and  others  on 
the  Episcopal  side,  while  Baxter,  Reynolds,  Calamy,  Spurstow, 
Manton,  and  others  argued  on  what  was  still  called  the  Pres- 
byterian side.  Baxter  is  most  emphatic,  however,  in  explain- 
ing that  this  phrase  was  now  a  misnomer,  purposely  kept  up 
among  the  courtiers  to  discredit  himself  and  his  friends. 
None  of  them  now,  he  says,  spoke  for  Presbytery,  or  thought 
of  bringing  any  of  the  essential  differences  between  the  Pres- 
byterian system  and  the  Episcopal  into  the  discussion.  They 
had,  all  of  them,  practically  ceased  to  be  Presbyterians,  and  had 
consented  to  accept  Episcopacy  and  a  Liturgy  ;  what  they 
now  spoke  for  was  simply  an  abatement  of  the  excesses  of  Epis- 
copacy and  the  excesses  of  Ritual.     It  was  a  strange  pass  for 

removes,  died  in  Guernsey,  as  late  as  continent  or  in  America,  about  twenty 
1691,  astat.  about  74. — Of  the  fates  of  in  all,  a  perfect  account  is,  I  believe, 
the  Regicides  that  were  fugitive  on  the       still  a  desideratum. 

H  2 


100         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  great  body  of  the  English  Presbyterians  to  have  come  to 
in  the  persons  of  their  chief  representatives.  But  the  fact 
was  as  Baxter  states  it.  Those  who  had  been  Presbyterians 
hitherto,  in  a  stricter  sense  than  Baxter  himself  had  ever  been, 
were  now  at  one  with  him  in  thinking  Usher's  Model  of 
Episcopacy  satisfactory,  and  in  the  resolution  to  confine  them- 
selves to  such  negotiation  with  the  King  and  Hyde  in  behalf 
of  that  model,  or  of  something  like  it,  as  should  effect  the 
great  end  of  a  comprehension  of  the  Old  Anglicans  and  the 
ci-devant  Presbyterians  in  the  established  National  Church, 
achieving  at  the  same  time  the  other  desirable  end  of  turning 
out  the  Independents,  the  Baptists,  et  hoc  genus  omne.  This 
intention  as  regards  the  Independents  and  Sectaries  was  im- 
plied in  the  present  conference  and  in  the  whole  treaty,  and 
was  indeed  one  of  the  operating  forces  on  both  sides.  At  the 
end  of  the  conference,  however,  it  seemed  as  if  Baxter  and 
his  friends  must  give  up  all  hope  of  seeing  his  Majesty's 
Declaration  issue  in  such  a  shape  as  they  desired.  Some 
important  modifications  which  they  wanted  were  declined, 
or  set  aside  by  the  Anglican  reasoners ;  and,  when  his  Majesty 
gave  his  decision  how  the  Declaration  should  finally  stand, 
and  intrusted  it  to  Morley  and  Henchman  on  the  one  side, 
and  Reynolds  and  Calamy  on  the  other,  for  verbal  perfection 
in  that  form,  with  Annesley  and  Holies  as  umpires  in  case  of 
difference,  Baxter  was  much  dejected.  He  attributed  a  good 
deal  of  his  disappointment  to  Annesley,  who,  though  called 
a  Presbyterian,  and  acting  on  that  side,  had  "  spoken  more 
for  prelacy  "  in  the  conference  than  had  been  expected ;  and 
he  could  not  refrain  from  saying  to  Annesley,  as  he  left  the 
room,  that  he  would  not  have  done  what  Annesley  had  done 
that  day  against  the  peace  and  welfare  of  the  Church  for 
much  more  than  Annesley  was  ever  likely  to  get  by  it.  Mr. 
Baxter  could  be  thus  sharp  even  to  a  Privy  Councillor  l. 

What  was  Baxter's  surprise,  what  his  joy,  when,  on  buying 
a  copy  of  the  Printed  Declaration,  as  it  was  cried  about  the 
streets  on  the  25th,  he  found  that  his  rebuke  to  Annesley  had 

1  Baxter,  I.  259 — 278  ;  where  there       with  details  of  the  discussion  and  con- 
is  the  first   draft  of  the   Declaration,       ference. 


king's  ecclesiastical  declabation.  101 

had  excellent  effect !  The  wording  of  the  Declaration,  as  thus 
authoritatively  issued,  promised  a  constitution  of  the  Church, 
he  says,  "  though  not  such  as  we  desired,  yet  such  as  any 
"  sober  honest  ministers  might  submit  to ;  and  I  was  pre- 
"  sently  resolved  to  do  my  best  to  persuade  all,  according  to 
"  my  interest  and  opportunity,  to  conform."  What  was  the 
purport  of  the  document  which  thus  convinced  Baxter  and 
so  many  others  that  they  need  not  leave  the  Establishment 
after  all,  but  might  remain  in  it  with  a  good  conscience? 
"We  must  turn  to  the  document  itself: — In  the  preamble  his 
Majesty  expresses  his  belief  that  his  long  residence  abroad, 
his  acquaintance  with  the  forms  of  all  the  different  Reformed 
Churches  there,  and  his  frequent  conversations  in  particular 
with  eminent  divines  in  Holland,  "  looked  upon  as  the  most 
able  and  principal  asserters  of  the  Presbyterian  opinions,"  had 
qualified  him  peculiarly  for  the  task  of  framing  such  a  con- 
stitution for  the  Church  of  England  as  was  now  sorely  needed. 
His  intention  at  first  had  been  to  call  a  Synod  of  Divines  to 
aid  him  ;  and,  with  that  intention,  he  had  meanwhile  con- 
tented himself  with  using  the  Liturgy  in  his  own  chapel 
and  seeing  the  voluntary  use  of  it  by  many  others.  He  had 
not  pressed  it  upon  his  subjects  generally,  or  done  anything 
against  that  general  liberty  of  conscience  which  he  had  pro- 
mised from  Breda.  But  men  of  restless  and  malicious  spirits 
had  been  at  work.  They  had  "  very  unseasonably  caused  to 
"  be  printed,  published,  and  dispersed  throughout  the  king- 
"  dom,  a  Declaration  heretofore  pi*inted  in  Our  name  during 
"  the  time  of  Our  being  in  Scotland,  of  which  We  shall  say 
"  no  more  than  that  the  circumstances  by  which  We  were 
"  enforced  to  sign  that  Declaration  are  enough  known  to  the 
"  world."  No  wonder  that  his  Majesty,  or  Hyde  for  him, 
thought  the  resuscitation  of  that  document  unseasonable.  It 
embodied  the  oaths  which  Charles,  as  a  Covenanted  King, 
had  sworn  again  and  again  in  Scotland  in  1650  and  1651,  to 
maintain  Presbyterial  Government,  with  the  two  Covenants, 
and  the  Westminster  Assembly's  directory,  confession,  and 
catechisms,  in  Scotland  for  ever,  to  observe  them  in  his  own 
practice  and  family,  and  to  promote  their  establishment  in 


102  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  rest  of  his  dominions.      But  other  pamphlets,  his  Majesty 
added,  were  equally  inopportune  and  perturbing-.     Hence  his 
Majesty  had  seen  fit  "  to  invert  the  method  "  he  had  first  pro- 
posed, and,  instead  of  calling  a  Synod  at  once,  to  make  a  good 
beginning  himself,   which    Parliament  and    a    Synod    might 
perfect  in  due  time.     He  was  encouraged  in  this  by  the  pre- 
sent harmonious  temper  of  those  leading  representatives  both 
of  English  Episcopalianism   and  of  English  Presbyterianism 
with  whom   he    had  been  conferring.     "  "We  must,  for  the 
"  honour  of  all  those  of  either  persuasion  with  whom  we  have 
"  conferred,  declare  that  the  professions  and  desires  of  all  for  the 
"  advancement  of  piety  and  true  godliness  are  the  same  ;  their 
"  professions  of  zeal  for  the  peace  of  the  Church  the  same,  of 
"  affection  and  duty  to  us  the  same :  they  all  approve  Epis- 
"  copacy  ;  they  all  approve  a  set  form  of  Liturgy ;  and  they 
"  all  disapprove  and  dislike  the  sin  of  sacrilege,  and  the  alien- 
"  ation  of  the  revenue  of  the  Church.     And,   if  upon  these 
"  excellent  foundations,  in  submission  to  which  there  is  such 
"  a  harmony  of  affections,  any  superstructure  should  be  raised 
"  to  the  shaking  of  these  foundations/' — then  truly  his  Majesty 
would  be  most  unfortunate.     He  hoped,   however,   that  the 
superstructure  he  had  devised  would  suit  the  foundations.     It 
was  this  : — (1)  Studious  promotion  of  Religion  and  Godliness, 
and  of  the  observation  of  the  Lord's  Day  "  without  unneces- 
sary divertisement,"  and  this  more  immediately  by  a  retention 
of  the  surviving    old  bishops,   the    appointment   of   suitable 
colleagues  for   them,  and   care   that  all  bishops    henceforth 
should   be    working   and    preaching   bishops ;    (2)  Suffragan 
bishops  in  every  diocese,  and  especially  in  the  large  ones,  to 
assist  the  bishops;  (3)  No  bishop  in  any  diocese  to  ordain, 
or   exercise  jurisdiction    involving    church-censure,    without 
"  the  advice  and  assistance  of  the  presbyters  ;"  no  chancellor, 
commissary,    or    other   lay-official    in   a   diocese   to   exercise 
spiritual  jurisdiction;  and  no  archdeacon  to  exercise  jurisdic- 
tion without  the  advice  and  assistance  of  six  ministers  of  his 
archdeaconry,  three  to  be  nominated  by  the  bishop  and  three 
by  vote  among  the  presbyters  in  the  archdeaconry.     (4)  Pre- 
ferments to  deaneries  and  other  cathedral  offices  to  be  from 


king's  ecclesiastical  declaration.  103 

among  "the  most  pious  and  learned  ministers  of  the  diocese;" 
and  the  dean  and  chapter  of  each  cathedral  to  have  associated 
with  them  in  all  their  spiritual  functions  an  equal  number  of 
presbyters  elected  by  the  presbyters  of  the  diocese,  the  junior 
presbyters  so  elected  always  to  withdraw  at  any  meeting-  of 
the  Dean  and  Chapter  where  the  presbyters  present  out-num- 
bered those  present  of  the  Dean  and  Chapter.  (5)  Church- 
discipline  to  be  efficiently  maintained  in  every  diocese  ;  and, 
for  this  purpose,  every  rural  dean  to  have  three  or  four 
ministers,  elected  by  the  ministers  of  the  deanery,  associated 
with  him  in  a  monthly  church-court  for  admonishing 
offenders,  composing  differences,  making  representations  to 
the  bishop,  &c.  (6)  No  bishop  to  exercise  arbitrary  power. 
(7)  The  old  Liturgy,  though  his  Majesty  himself  prefers  it  to 
anything  else  of  the  kind  he  has  seen,  to  be  revised  by  a  com- 
mittee of  an  equal  number  of  divines  of  both  persuasions  to 
be  appointed  by  his  Majesty,  but  meanwhile  to  be  optional 
in  whole  or  in  part.  (8)  The  ritual  of  the  Church  to  be 
determined  by  a  future  National  Synod ;  and  meanwhile 
kneeling  at  the  sacrament,  the  sign  of  the  cross  at  baptism, 
bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus,  and  the  use  of  the  surplice 
(save  in  the  Royal  Chapel,  Cathedrals  and  Collegiate  Churches, 
and  the  Universities)  not  to  be  imperative.  Indeed  cere- 
monies generally  to  be  as  little  compulsory  as  possible; 
liberality  and  comprehensiveness  to  be  studied  in  all  ways ; 
and  ministers  to  be  admitted  to  ordination  and  benefices  with- 
out oaths  or  subscriptions  other  than  the  ordinary  oaths  of 
allegiance  and  supremacy  1. 

Such  was  the  King's  Declaration  of  October  25,  1660, 
reconstituting  the  Church  of  England.  It  sent  a  glow  of 
pleasure  through  thousands  of  hearts.  For  such  of  the 
Independents  and  Baptists,  indeed,  as  had  been  retained 
within  Cromwell's  Church-Establishment,  and  had  no  ob- 
jection of  principle  against  remaining  within  a  State-Church 
still,  if  only  it  were  a  State-Church  to  suit,  the  document 
meant  absolute  exclusion  from  the  State-Church  as  actually 

1  Baxter,  I.  278—279  ;  and  the  Declaration,  as  given  in  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  131—141. 


104         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

reconstituted.  The}'  had  expected  nothing  else ;  and  most  of 
them,  if  not  all,  were  already  out  of  the  Establishment, 
huddled  in  the  same  mass  with  that  miscellany  of  Independent 
and  Baptist  Voluntaries,  Quakers  and  other  Sectaries,  and 
Roman  Catholics,  whose  interest  personally  was  not  in  the 
constitution  of  the  State-Church,  but  in  the  postponed 
question  of  the  amount  of  Toleration  to  be  allowed  out  of  the 
State-Church.  There  were  still  also  rigid  Presbyterians  to 
whom  an  Episcopal  State-Church  in  any  form,  with  a  Liturgy 
and  other  such  accompaniments,  was  as  repugnant  as  it  had 
been  in  the  days  of  the  Westminster  Assembly  and  the  adop- 
tion of  the  strict  Scottish  model.  But  the  majority  of  the 
ci-devant  Presbyterians  and  Covenanters  were  satisfied.  The 
Episcopacy  to  be  set  up  by  the  King's  Declaration  was  a 
limited  Episcopacy,  an  Episcopacy  of  expediency  only,  a 
Presbyterianized  Episcopacy,  very  nearly,  if  not  quite,  after 
Usher's  scheme  of  reduction  back  to  the  Episcopacy  of  the 
Primitive  Church  just  after  the  age  of  the  Apostles.  There 
were  addresses  of  thanks  to  the  King  by  Presbyterian 
ministers ;  the  King  or  Hyde  seemed  to  have  performed  a 
feat  of  real  statesmanship  ;  and  England  lay  in  repose  \ 

No  time  like  that  for  filling  up  the  Episcopate,  and  so 
lettinsr  the  nation  behold  in  distinct  vision  the  actual  fabric  of 
the  restored  Church  of  England.  With  this  view,  Hyde  and 
the  King  had  been  making  arrangements.  Several  of  the 
nine  surviving  pre -Restoration  Bishops  had  been  promoted 
already  to  higher  sees;  on  the  26th  of  October,  the  very 
day  after  the  King's  Declaration  appeared,  a  number  of  new 
bishops  were  consecrated ;  and  before  the  6th  of  November, 
when  the  Parliament  was  to  re-assemble  after  the  recess,  this 
was  the  state  of  the  Episcopate  : — 

Province  of  Canterbury. 

Archbishopric  :  William  Juxon,  translated  from  his  former  see  of 
London,  Sept.  13. 

B.  of  St.  Asaph  :  George  Griffith,  consecrated  Oct.  28. 

B.  of  Bangor  :  William  Roberts,  holding  since  1637. 

B.  of  Bath  and  Wells  :  W7illiam  Pierce,  holding  since  1632. 

i  Baxter,  I.  281—788  ;  Neal,  IV.  3C4-309. 


THE   ENGLISH   EPISCOPATE   IN   NOV.    1660.  105 

B.  of  Bristol :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Chichester  :  Henry  King,  holding  since  1642. 

B.  of  St.  David's  :  William  Lucy,  elected  Oct.  11. 

B.  of  Ely  :  Matthew  Wren,  holding  since  1638. 

B.  of  Exeter  :  John  Gauden,  elected  Nov.  3. 

B.  of  Gloucester  :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Hereford  :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry  :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Lincoln  :  Robert  Sanderson,  elected  Oct.  17. 

B.  of  Llandaff :  Hugh  Lloyd,  elected  Oct.  17. 

B.  of  London  :  Gilbert  Sheldon,  elected  Oct.  23. 

B.  of  Norwich  :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Oxford  :  Robert  Skinner,  holding  since  1641. 

B.  of  Peterborough  :  left  vacant. 

B.  of  Rochester  :  John  Warner,  holding  since  1637. 

B.  of  Salisbury  :   Humphrey  Henchman,  elected  Oct.  4. 

B.  of  Winchester  :  Brian  Duppa,  transferred  from  the  Bishopric 

of  Salisbury  Sept.  10. 
B.  of  Worcester  :   George  Morley,  elected  Oct.  9. 

Province  of  York. 

Archbishopric  :  Accepted  Frewen,  transferred  from  his  former  see 
of  Lichfield  and  Coventry  Sept.  22. 
B.  of  Carlisle  :  left  vacant. 
B.  of  Chester  ;  left  vacant. 
B.  of  Durham  :   left  vacant. 
B.  of  Sodor  and  Man  :  left  vacant. 

There  was  a  meaning'  in  the  ten  bishoprics  left  vacant  for  the 
present.  For  most  of  these  Hyde  and  the  King-  had  meri- 
torious old  Anglicans  in  readiness ;  but  it  was  thought  highly 
desirable  that  three  or  four  of  them  should  be  given  to  the 
most  eminent  among  the  ci-devant  Presbyterians,  and  the 
Bishopric  of  Coventry  and  Lichfield  had  been  offered  to 
Calamy,  that  of  Hereford  to  Baxter,  and  that  of  Norwich  to 
Reynolds.  It  was  a  subtle  temptation,  and  there  was  a  Babel 
of  remark.  For  Baxter  and  Reynolds  to  take  bishoprics 
might  not  be  so  shocking,  as  both  of  them  had  in  past  years 
inclined  to  moderate  Episcopacy;  but,  if  Mr.  Calamy,  the 
old  Smectymnuan,  were  seen  in  a  bishopric,  what  faith  could 
there  be  in  man  any  more  ?  Baxter,  on  the  whole,  thought  it 
best  to  decline ;  for  the  other  two,  and  for  some  Presbyterian 
divines  who  had  been  offered  deaneries,  the  policy  was  to  wait 
to  see  whether,  when  the  Parliament  met  after  the  recess,  the 


106         "LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

King's  Declaration  would  be  confirmed  by  an  Act.  Then 
they  might  all  accept 1. 

One  other  incident  of  the  recess  deserves  to  be  noted. 
It  concerned  Hyde  himself,  the  prime  minister  and  bishop- 
maker,  and  it  made  him  reel  in  his  place. 

It  seems  to  have  been  about  the  beginning-  of  October,  just 
when  the  trials  of  the  Regicides  were  coming  on,  that  there 
was  first  divulged  the  scandal  of  the  strange  relations  between 
the  Chancellor's  eldest  daughter,  Anne  Hyde,  and  the  Duke  of 
York.  The  facts,  not  then  fully  known,  were  these : — While 
the  girl  was  in  the  household  of  the  Princess  of  Orange 
at  Breda,  the  duke  had  made  love  to  her.  There  had  been  a 
secret  contract  of  marriage,  it  is  believed,  on  the  24th  of 
November  1659 ;  and,  on  the  faith  of  this  contract,  they  had 
been  living  as  if  married  for  about  six  months,  when  the 
Restoration  brought  them  both  to  London.  As  she  was  then 
with  child,  concealment  was  impossible  much  longer ;  and  on 
the  3rd  of  September  1660,  late  at  night,  there  had  been 
contrived  her  hurried  marriage  to  the  duke  in  her  father's 
house,  before  witnesses,  and  according  to  the  rites  of  the 
English  Church.  The  Chancellor's  own  account  conveys  the 
idea  that  not  even  then  was  lie  cognisant  of  the  affair.  It 
was  first  broken  to  him,  he  says,  by  his  friends  Ormond  and 
Southampton,  considerately  deputed  to  clo  so  by  the  King, 
to  whom  the  Duke  of  York  had  confessed  it,  with  urgent 
entreaties  that  he  would  recognise  the  marriage.  His 
Majesty,  acquitting  the  Chancellor  of  all  connivance,  was 
anxious  to  know  how  the  news  might  affect  him.  The 
Chancellor,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  behaved  at  first  like  a 
madman.  He  swore  at  his  daughter  before  his  friends,  called 
her  by  the  most  opprobrious  of  names,  said  he  would  turn  her 
out  of  his  house.  When,  to  pacify  him,  they  suggested  that 
his  daughter  was  perhaps  legally  married  to  the  duke,  he 
declared  that  the  case  was  then  much  worse.  He  would 
rather  that  she  should  have  dishonoured  herself  without 
marriage ;  there  was  no  course,  in  such  a  high  state-offence 

1  Baxter,  I.  281—284. 


THE   DUKE    OF   YOKE    AND   ANNE   HYDE.  107 

in  the  beginning  of  the  King's  reign,  but  to  move  his  Majesty 
to  "  cause  the  woman  to  be  sent  to  the  Tower,  and  to  be  cast 
"  into  a  dungeon,  under  so  strict  a  guard  that  no  person  living 
"  should  be  admitted  to  come  to  her,  and  then  that  an  Act 
"  of  Parliament  should  be  immediately  passed  for  the  cutting 
"  off  her  head."     If  their  lordships  would  concur,  he  would 
move  this  himself.     The  King  coming  in  at  this  point,  and 
the    Chancellor  again    exploding,   and    repeating   his    advice 
for  imprisonment  and  decapitation,  all  his  Majesty  could  do 
was  to  adjourn  the  matter  till  the  Chancellor  should  recover 
his  reason. — As  days  passed  he  did  grow  calmer.     He  had 
taken  pains  to  ascertain  that  his  daughter  really  was  married  ; 
and,  though  he  did  not  then  know,  he  says,  that  his  servants 
were   all  the  while  admitting  the  duke  to  Worcester  House 
whenever  he  liked,  he  knew  that  the  duke  was  passionately 
fond  of  her  and    very   importunate   with  the   King  for  the 
recognition  of  the  marriage.     And  so,  though  the  Chancellor 
still  resisted  and  argued  that  the  marriage  must  be  disallowed, 
this  would  have  been  the  speedy  conclusion  of  the  affair,  but 
for  the  interference  of  the  ladies  of  the  Royal  Family. — It 
had  been  this  affair  of  the  Duke  of  York's  marriage,  among 
others,  that  had  brought  the  Princess  of  Orange  from  Holland 
on  the  25th  of  September ;  messages  on  the  subject  had  been 
dispatched  to  the   Queen-mother   at  Paris,  leading  to  com- 
munications from  that    lady;    and,    when  she  herself  should 
arrive   in    London,    everybody    knew    what    she    would    do. 
She  had  all  along  been  the  Chancellor's  greatest  enemy ;  to 
have   Hyde's  daughter  thrust  into  the  Royal  Family  was  a 
degradation  to   which  she   would   never   submit ;    she  would 
turn  this  incident  in  the  Chancellor's  domestic  life  into  his 
public  ruin. — Nor  were  methods  wanting.     For,  meanwhile, 
on  the  22nd  of  October,  the  very  day  of  the  great  conference 
of  divines  in  Worcester  House  over  his  Majesty's  Declaration 
concerning  Ecclesiastical  Affairs,  the    poor   girl  about  whom 
there  was  all  the  excitement  had  given  birth  in  that  house  to 
a  son, — his  Majesty  manfully  using  his  good  fortune  in  being 
then  on  the  spot  to  cause  the  Marchioness  of  Ormond  and 
other  great  court-ladies  to  be  sent  for  to  attend  the  accouche- 


108  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ment.  The  act  appeared  the  more  manful  to  Hyde  because 
there  was  already  a  vile  conspiracy  among-  the  courtiers  of  the 
Queen-mother's  party,  though  she  herself  had  not  yet  arrived, 
to  break  off  the  marriage  by  inducing  the  Duke  of  York  to 
think  the  child  not  his.  Sir  Charles  Berkeley,  the  Comptroller 
of  the  Household,  was  at  the  centre  of  the  conspiracy,  and  had 
given  the  duke  such  assurances  of  the  possibility  of  another 
paternity  that  the  duke  was  now  as  anxious  to  repudiate  the 
marriage  as  he  had  been  to  have  it  acknowledged. 

Through  all  the  multifarious  business  of  the  recess,  in- 
cluding the  trials  of  the  Regicides  and  the  reconstitution  of 
the  Church  of  England,  Hyde  had  been  carrying  this  private 
trouble  in  his  mind.  More  than  once,  he  says,  he  had  offered 
to  resign  his  posts  and  retire  from  public  life.  And  now,  the 
accouchement  over,  and  the  recess  at  an  end,  and  the  Duke  of 
York  still  giving  credence  to  Berkeley's  calumny  and  refusing 
to  see  his  wife  and  the  baby,  and  the  Queen-mother  being 
herself  on  the  spot  to  manage  matters  farther,  what  was  he  to 
do  ?  His  sole  comfort,  he  says,  was  in  the  generous  steadiness 
of  the  King.  His  Majesty  had  called  Berkeley  a  blackguard, 
whose  word  was  not  to  be  trusted ;  through  his  Majesty's 
influence,  the  court-ladies  who  had  attended  the  accouchement 
were  doing  all  they  could  to  contradict  Berkeley's  story  ;  and, 
though  his  Majesty  did  not  see  how  the  affair  might  end  for 
Anne  Hyde,  and  cared  little  about  that,  he  was  resolved  that 
nothing  should  separate  him  from  his  Chancellor.  He  took 
the  opportunity,  indeed,  to  insist  that  Hyde  should  at  last 
allow  himself  to  be  made  a  peer.  Another  honour  which 
came  to  Hyde  at  the  same  time  was  his  election,  October  27, 
to  be  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  in  succession  to 
the  Duke  of  Somerset,  who  had  just  died.  And  so,  whatever 
might  betide  Anne  Hyde  and  her  child,  it  was  as  Baron 
Hindon,  still  Lord  Chancellor  and  Prime  Minister,  and  with 
other  added  honours,  that  Hyde,  on  the  6th  of  November 
1660,  faced  the  reassembled  Parliament1. 

1  Clarendon,   1008 — 1012    (Gontinua-  London,  Art.  Worcester  House  ;  Wood's 

Hon   of  Life)  ;    Burnet,    I.   286—287 ;  Ath.  III.  1022  ;  Hallam,  II.  361—363, 

Pepys  and  Evelyn,  both  under  date  Oct.  footnote.      Hallam    characterises   Clar- 

7,  1660 ;  Cumiirrgliain's    Handbook   of  endon's   account   of  the    affair   of   his 


REASSEMBLING    OF   THE   PARLIAMENT. 


109 


Among-  the  first  acts  of  the  two  Houses  on  the  day  of  their 
reassembling  were  a  vote  to  congratulate  the  Queen -mother 
on  her  arrival,  a  vote  of  a  gift  of  i^lO.OOO  to  the  Princess 
Henrietta,  and  a  unanimous  vote  in  the  Commons  of  their 
hearty  thanks  to  the  King  for  his  gracious  Declaration  con- 
cerning Ecclesiastical  Affairs.  In  this  last  vote  it  was  implied 
that  a  Bill  would  be  brought  in  for  adopting  his  Majesty's 
reconstitution  of  the  Church  of  England  and  making  it 
effectual. 

On  the  7th  of  November  there  was  introduced  into  the 
Commons  by  Solicitor-General  Sir  Heneage  Finch,  and  read 
the  first  and  second  times,  a  Bill  for  Attainting  Oliver  Crom- 
well and  other  dead  or  living  Regicides,  and  the  Bill  was 
referred  to  a  large  committee,  including  Mr.  Prynne.  A 
Lord's  Day  Bill,  a  Militia  Bill,  debates  on  the  public  debt 
and  on  the  best  means  of  raising  the  revenue  of  <s€l, 200,000 
a  year  that  had  been  promised  to  his  Majesty,  and  debates 
respecting  a  dangerous  political  pamphlet  by  a  Mr.  William 
Drake,  occupied  the  House  pretty  closely  to  Nov.  22.  On 
that  day  the  Commons,  meeting  the  Lords  by  request,  were 
informed  that  the  Lord  Chancellor  had  brought  an  intimation 
from  the  King  that  he  intended  to  dissolve  the  present 
Parliament  in  about  a  month.  This  may  have  been  a  surprise 
to  the  Commons ;  but  it  was  very  natural  in  the  circum- 
stances. The  Convention  Parliament  had  effected  the  Re- 
storation, had  disposed  of  the  Regicides,  had  disbanded  the 
old  Republican  Army,  had  decreed  a  splendid  revenue  for  the 
King,  and  made  his  path  easy.     But  there  were  reasons  why 


daughter's  marriage  as  "overacted  hy- 
pocrisy," a  deliberate  attempt  "to  mis- 
lead," and  thinks  that,  as  his  conduct 
must  be  called  atrocious  if  the  account 
is  taken  as  true,  "  the  most  favourable 
hypothesis')  for  him  is  to  give  up  his 
veracity."  I  should  be  loth  to  adopt 
such  a  hypothesis  in  the  case  of  such  a 
man  as  Clarendon  ;  and  it  is  a  hypothesis 
always  to  be  used  sparingly.  But  1  have 
never  read,  even  in  Clarendon  himself, 
whose  regardlessness  of  dates  is  always 
a  torture,  a  passage  in  which  dates  are 
so  ingeniously  jumbled,  by  being  half- 
suggested  and  then  retracted  or  sup- 


pressed, as  in  this  account  of  the  divulg- 
ing of  his  daughter's  secret  and  of  his 
own  behaviour  on  the  occasion.  You 
cannot  tell  when  he  first  knew  the  fact 
himself,  whether  before  the  private  mar- 
riage in  his  own  house  or  after  ;  you  see 
the  Queen-mother  there  before  she  is 
there,  and  you  see  her  come  after  that ; 
you  have  no  idea  of  the  extent  of  time 
with  which  you  are  dealing.  And  yet 
the  story  is  most  flowing  and  graphic, 
and  you  cannot  positively  convict  the 
writer  of  false  dating  at  any  one  point. 
Hallam,  in  reconsidering  his  note,  reluct- 
antly admits  this. 


110         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

it  should  sit  no  longer.  For  one  thing,  it  had  not  come  into 
being  in  the  regular  way  and  under  the  King's  own  authority, 
but  bv  powers  acting  while  he  was  in  exile;  and,  though 
everything  possible  had  been  done  to  amend  the  defect,  there 
were  still  whispers  among  the  more  violent  courtiers  that  it 
was  not  a  legitimate  Parliament,  and  that  its  acts  might  be 
challenged.  But,  farther,  the  material  of  the  present  House 
of  Commons  was  not  in  accordance  with  his  Majesty's  notions. 
He  and  his  brother,  and  the  majority  of  the  courtiers,  wanted 
to  see  England  turned  into  an  absolute  monarchy,  like  that 
of  France ;  and,  though  there  was  a  remnant  in  Hyde's  mind 
of  old  English  constitutionalism,  and  there  had  been  serious 
conversations  between  him  and  the  Earl  of  Southampton 
respecting  the  tendency  to  Absolutism  among  the  courtiers, 
yet  Hyde  too  was  tired  of  the  present  House  of  Commons. 
There  was  too  much  of  the  Puritan  tradition  in  it  for  his 
ecclesiastical  tastes  ;  and  he  looked  forward,  with  the  King, 
to  such  a  thoroughly  Cavalier  Parliament  as  the  country  was 
sure  to  return  when  the  present  should  be  dissolved  \ 

To  make  the  most  of  the  time  remaining,  the  two  Houses 
confined  themselves  chiefly  to  the  bill  for  giving  effect  to  his 
Majesty's  Ecclesiastical  Declaration,  the  bill  of  Attainder  on 
the  Regicides,  and  the  question  of  methods  for  providing  his 
Majesty's  revenue. 

The  Bill  for  confirming  his  Majesty's  Ecclesiastical  Declara- 
tion came  to  a  sudden  and  mysterious  collapse  in  the  Commons. 
It  was  read  the  first  time  on  the  27th  of  November  ;  and, 
though  the  House  had  unanimously  and  enthusiastically 
thanked  the  King  for  the  Declaration  only  three  weeks  before, 
there  was  the  strangest  conflict  of  opinion  now.  Some 
speakers,  among  whom  was  Prynne,  were  earnest  for  pro- 
ceeding with  the  bill ;  but  others,  including  Secretary  Morrice 
and  his  ministerial  associate  Finch,  were  significantly  cool 
on  the  subject.  In  substance,  they  were  for  throwing  out 
the  bill,  and  leaving  his  Majesty  to  manage  the  Church  as 
he  pleased,  whether  in  accordance  with  his  excellent  Decla- 

1  Commons  Journals  and  Pari.  Hist.       quoted  in   a  note   to  Pari.    Hist.   IV. 
of  dates ;  Hallam,  II.  323  ;  Echard,  as       177—178  ;  Clarendon,  103L 


COLLAPSE  OF  THE  KING'S  DECLARATION.      Ill 

ration  or  not.  The  debate  was  brought  to  a  point  by  Sergeant 
Maynard,  who  moved  the  question  whether  the  Bill  should 
be  read  a  second  time.  On  a  division  there  were  183  Noes 
to  157  Yeas,  so  that  the  Bill  was  thrown  out,  and  the  nation 
and  his  Majesty  were  left,  on  the  ecclesiastical  question,  with 
only  a  bit  of  paper  signed  "  Charles  R."  between  them.  There 
can  be  no  doubt,  in  fact,  that  the  King's  Declaration  concerning 
Ecclesiastical  Affairs  had  been,  on  the  part  of  Hyde  and  others, 
a  mere  concoction  to  answer  the  purposes  of  the  moment, 
and  never  meant  to  be  binding,  and  that  the  hint  had  been 
given  to  the  Ministerialists  in  the  Commons  to  stop  the  con- 
firming Bill.  "When  the  Parliament  came  together  again 
"  after  the  adjournment,"  writes  Hyde  himself,  "  they  gave 
"  the  King  public  thanks  for  his  Declaration,  and  never 
1 '  proceeded  further  in  the  matter  of  Religion  ;  of  which 
"  the  King  was  very  glad."  One  gets  accustomed  to  the  pros- 
titutions in  this  reign,  as  in  the  last,  of  the  formula  "  On  the 
word  of  a  King,  C.  B,. ;"  but  the  present  instance  passes  ordi- 
nary bounds.  That  Charles,  the  Scottish  Covenanter,  sworn 
in  Scotland  in  1650  to  strict  and  life-long  Presbytery,  should 
now,  in  the  year  1660  and  in  England,  be  restoring  Prelacy 
and  suppressing  Presbytery,  is  nothing  astonishing.  He  had 
sworn  in  1650  by  compulsion,  and  ten  whole  years,  and 
a  mass  of  events  incalculable  beforehand,  lay  between  the 
oath  and  the  abjuration  in  that  case.  But  to  have  voluntarily 
issued  a  Declaration  for  Limited  or  Presbyterianized  Episco- 
pacy throughout  England  on  the  25th  of  October,  1660,  to 
have  let  himself  be  thanked  for  that  Declaration  by  the  Com- 
mons within  less  than  a  fortnight,  and  then,  within  another 
three  weeks,  to  have  taken  steps  for  invalidating  the  Declara- 
tion and  reducing  it  to  a  dead  letter,  is  a  too  startling  example 
of  swiftness  between  promise  and  preparation  to  falsify  promise. 
Eew  now  but  will  feel  some  sympathy  with  Baxter's  indigna- 
tion on  the  theme.  Not  a  single  promise  of  the  Declaration, 
Baxter  explains,  was  ever  redeemed,  not  one  atom  of  any 
clause  of  it  put  into  effect ;  and,  foreseeing  that  this  would 
be  the  case  from  the  moment  that  the  Confirming  Bill  was 
dropped  in  Parliament,  he  could  then  sum  up  the  gains  of  the 


112  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

treaty  in  which  he  and  others  had  been  so  much  exercised. 
They  consisted  (1)  in  the  fact  that  the  Declaration,  though 
abortive,  was  actually  in  print  and  might  be  referred  to  by 
posterity,  (2)  in  the  fact  that  there  must  be  a  short  breathing- 
time  for  the  Presbyterians  within  the  Establishment,  till  there 
should  be  new  laws  to  their  injury,  and  (3)  in  the  fact  that 
there  had  been  an  opportunity  for  argumentation1. 

The  Bill  of  Attainder  on  the  Regicides  fared  better  than 
the  Ecclesiastical  Bill.  When  it  was  reported  from  the  Com- 
mittee with  amendments  on  the  4th  of  December  there  was 
no  difference  of  opinion  on  the  main  proposition,  but  only 
some  difference  on  the  question  whether  there  should  be  some 
allowance  for  the  families  and  creditors  of  the  Attainted. 
Prynne,  of  course,  was  for  no  such  proviso ;  but  Prynne  was 
outgone  in  ferocity  on  this  occasion  by  a  gentleman  who  de- 
serves to  be  now  specially  introduced. — He  was  a  Captain 
Silas  Titus,  or  more  properly  Silius  Titus,  born  about  1622 
at  Bushy  in  Herts,  the  son  of  a  person  of  the  same  name, 
who  traced  his  descent  from  Italy,  where  the  family-name 
had  been  Tito.  Educated  at  Oxford,  the  young  Hertfordshire 
native,  with  Italian  blood  in  him,  had  become  a  Parlia- 
mentarian captain  and  "  a  forward  man  "  in  the  beginning  of 
the  Civil  War,  but  had  tended  to  the  King.  After  the  King's 
execution  he  had  attached  himself  to  Charles  II.  abroad,  and, 
as  groom  of  the  bedchamber,  had  accompanied  Charles  into 
Scotland  and  been  with  him  at  the  Battle  of  Worcester.  And 
now,  back  in  England  as  groom  of  the  bedchamber  still,  but 
with  the  reputation  also  of  being  the  author  of  the  famous 
tract  Killing  no  Murder,  which  had  appeared  in  1657,  recom- 
mending the  assassination  of  Cromwell,  Captain  Titus  was 
reaping  his  rewards.  He  had  a  grant  of  the  Keepership  of 
Bushy  Park,  and  he  had  been  returned  to  the  Convention  Par- 
liament in  place  of  some  original  member  whose  seat  had  been 
vacated. — At  the  close  of  this  day's  debate  on  the  Attainder 
Bill  up  stood  Captain  Silas  Titus.  He  observed  "that  execution 
"  did  not  leave  traitors  at  their  graves,  but  followed  them  beyond 

1  Commons   Journals   and  Pari.   Hist,  of  date  ;  Clarendon,  1035 ;  Baxter,  I. 
286—287  ;  Neal,  IV.  309—310. 


THE    "  DISINTERRING  "  ORDER.  113 

"  it,  and  that,  since  the  heads  and  limbs  of  some  were  already 
"  put  upon  the  gates,  he  hoped  the  House  would  order  that 
"  the  carcases  of  those  devils  who  were  buried  at  Westminster, 
"  — Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  Ireton,  and  Pride, — might  be  torn 
"  out  of  their  graves,  dragged  to  Tyburn,  there  to  hang  for 
"  some  time,  and  afterwards  be  buried  under  the  gallows." 
Whether  Titus    made    the  suggestion    entirely  on    his    own 
responsibility,   or  whether   he  spoke  for  the  Court,    it   was 
instantly    aud    unanimously    adopted.      "  Resolved"    say  the 
Journals,    "  that   the    carcases    of  Oliver    Cromwell,    Henry 
"  Ireton,  John  Bradshaw,  and  Thomas  Pride,  whether  buried 
"  in  Westminster  Abbey  or  elsewhere,  be,  with  all  expedition, 
"  taken  up,  and  drawn  upon  a  hurdle  to  Tyburn,  and  there 
"  hanged  up  in  their  coffins  for  some   time,  and  after  that 
"  buried  under  the  said  gallows,  and  that  James  Norfolke,  Esq., 
"  sergeant-at-arms  attending    the    House    of  Commons,    do 
"  take  care   that  this  order  be  put  in  effectual  execution ; " 
also  "  Ordered,  That  the  Lords'  concurrence  herein  be  desired, 
"  and  Mr.  Titus  is  to  carry  it  to  the  Lords."     The  Lords,  we 
may  add,  concurred  at  once  on  the  7th,  only  making  the  order 
more  full  by  a  clause  or  two,  which  the  Commons  adopted, 
requiring  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  the  Sheriff  of  Middlesex, 
and  the  common  executioner,  to  assist  in  their  several  capa- 
cities.— Viscount  Falconbridge,  Cromwell's  son-in-law,  I  note, 
was  not  in  his  place  in  the  Lords  that  day.     Having,  at  the 
Restoration,  obtained  a  special  certificate  of  pardon,  signed  by 
HjTde,  he  had  resumed  his  place  among  the  old  nobility,  and 
had  been  attending    in    the    Lords  very  regularly  hitherto. 
He  was  present  in  the  Lords  on  the  4th  of  December,  when 
the  Commons   passed  their    order  about   his    father-in-law's 
corpse  ;  but  from  that  day  I  do  not  find  him  again  in  the 
Lords  till  the  17th.     At  that  very  moment  there  was  lying 
in  the  Council  Office  a  paper,  still  to  be  seen,  with  the  endorse- 
ment in  the  hand  of  Secretary  Nicholas,  "  Old  Mrs.  Cromwell, 
Noll's  wife's,  Petition  ;"  of  which  this  is  an  abstract :  "  Among 
"  her  many  sorrows,  she  is  deeply  sensible  of  the  unjust  im- 
"  putation  of  detaining  jewels,   &c,  belonging  to  the  King, 
"  which,  besides  the  disrepute,  exposes  her  to  loss  and  violence, 

VOL.  VI.  I 


114  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  on  pretence  of  searching-  for  them  ;  is  willing*  to  swear  that 
"  she  knows  of  none  such,  and  can  prove  that  she  never  inter- 
"  meddled  with  any  of  those  public  transactions  which  have 
"  been  prejudicial  to  his  late  or  present  Majesty,  and  is  ready 
"  to  yield  humble  and  faithful  obedience  to  his  government ; 
"  prays  therefore  for  a  protection,  without  which  she  cannot 
"  expect,  in  her  old  age,  a  safe  retirement  in  any  place  of  his 
"  Majesty's  dominions."  The  petition  had  been  sent  in  just 
before  the  hideous  disinterring  order  of  the  Houses 1. 

The  disinterring  order  was  an  accompaniment  of  the 
Attainder  Bill,  not  a  formal  part  of  it.  The  Bill  itself 
passed  the  Commons  on  the  7th  of  December,  Prynne  moving 
"  that  some  others  of  the  regicides  who  had  surrendered 
"  themselves  should  be  put  into  this  bill  and  now  executed." 
He  named  more  particularly  the  lawyers  among  them,  and 
most  particularly  Garland  ;  and  Captain  Titus,  seconding  the 
motion,  named  Sir  Hardress  Waller.  But  the  bill  went  up 
to  the  Lords  without  any  such  call  in  it  for  more  blood.  The 
Lords  returned  it  on  the  14th,  with  some  small  amendments, 
which  were  then  adopted  by  the  Commons.  As  thus  ready 
for  the  royal  assent,  it  was  entitled  "An  Act  for  the  Attainder 
of  several  persons  guilty  of  the  horrid  Murder  of  his  late  Sacred 
Majesty  King  Charles  7."  It  enacted,  first  of  all,  that  the 
30th  of  January,  the  anniversary  of  the  day  of  the  King's 
death,  or  the  31st  if  that  day  should  be  a  Sunday,  should  be 
observed  for  ever  in  all  his  Majesty's  dominions  as  a  day  of 
solemn  fast  and  humiliation,  with  prayers  in  all  the  churches 
that  the  guilt  might  not  be  visited  on  posterity ;  and  then  it 
enumerated  the  persons  attainted,  all  whose  goods  and  pos- 
sessions, legally  their  property  at  the  date  of  March  25, 
1646,  were  to  be  absolutely  forfeited  to  the  King.  Oliver 
Cromwell,  Ireton,  Bradshaw,  and  Pride,  were  named  first,  in 
that  order ;  the  twenty  other  regicides  dead  before  the  pass- 
ing of  the  Indemnity  Bill  were  omitted  as  not  worth  attainting 

1  Commons   and   Lords  Journals   of  IV.  623— 625  (about  Titus) ;  Mrs.  Green's 

dates  and  of  Dec.  8 ;  Pari.  Hist.   IV.  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  1660—1,  pp. 

155 — 156,  where  there  is  an  account  of  137,  174,  598  (about  Titus),  pp.  34,  500 

the  debate  in  the  Commons  on  the  4th  (about  Falconbridge),  and  p.  392  (Eliza- 

from  a  contemporary  MS ;  Wood's  Ath.  beth  Cromwell's  Petition). 


REVENUE   ARRANGEMENTS.  115 

now  ;  but  all  the  remaining"  unpardoned  regicides,  recently 
executed  or  left  alive,  in  custody  or  fugitive,  to  the  number 
of  forty-eight,  were  attainted  individually.  Distributed  into 
groups,  they  were  as  follows : — The  ten  recently  executed, 
viz.  Harrison,  Carew,  Cook,  Peters,  Scott,  Clements,  Scroope, 
Jones,  Axtell,  and  Hacker;  The  nineteen  condemned  to  death, 
but  under  respite,  viz.  Downes,  Fleetwood,  Garland,  Harvey, 
Heveningham,  Hewlet,  Lilburne,  Marten,  Mayne,  Millington, 
Pennington,  Potter,  Rowe,  Smith,  James  Temple,  Peter 
Temple,  Tichbourne,  Waller,  and  Wayte  ;  Nineteen  fugitive, 
viz.  Barkstead,  Blagrave,  Broughton,  Cawley,  Thomas  Chal- 
loner,  Corbet,  Dendy,  Dixwell,  Goffe,  Hewson,  Holland,  Lisle, 
Livesey,  Love,  Ludlow,  Okey,  Say,  Walton,  and  Whalley. 
There  were  some  provisos  in  the  Act  respecting  property  of 
the  attainted  that  had  passed  into  other  hands  by  legal  con- 
veyance \ 

In  the  matter  of  a  settlement  of  ways  for  raising  the 
King's  annual  revenue  of  <j€1, 200,000,  and  other  moneys 
needed,  the  Convention  Parliament  wound  up  as  well  as  it 
could.  The  poll-bill  and  the  assessments  previously  voted 
not  having  sufficed  for  the  expense  of  disbanding  the  army 
and  paying  off  the  navy,  estimated  now  at  a  total  of 
^670,868,  other  bills  had  been  framed  for  supplying  the 
deficiency.  There  were  bills  also  for  raising  sums  for  minor 
purposes.  In  the  main  business  of  the  King's  revenue  the 
chief  difficulty  was  in  providing  a  substitute  for  that  part  of 

1  Lords  and  Commons  Journals  of  Walton  had  escaped  to  Holland  or  other 
dates  ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  158  ;  and  Act  of  parts  of  the  north  of  the  Continent,  and 
Attainder  itself  in  Statutes  at  Large.  little  more  seems  to  be  known  of  them 
It  is  curious  that,  though  Thomas  Wogan  than  that  Challoner  died  at  Middlehurg 
is  named  in  the  general  enumeration  of  in  1661,  Hewson  at  Amsterdam  in  1662, 
fifty-three  regicides  promiscuously  with  and  Walton  in  Flanders  in  1661.  Dix- 
which  the  Act  sets  out,  he  is  not  repeated  well,  Goffe,  and  Whalley  ended  their 
in  any  of  the  subsequent  groups.  He  days  in  America.  The  most  fortunate 
had  been  among  those  who  had  sur-  of  the  fugitives  were  those  who  found 
rendered  (ante,  p.  44  and  p.  49),  and  he  an  asylum  in  Switzerland.  Lisle,  it  is 
had  been  among  the  nineteen  excepted  true,  was  assassinated  at  Lausanne,  by 
in  the  bill  with  the  benefit  of  the  saving  instigation,  it  was  believed,  of  the  Queen- 
clause  (p.  54). — This  may  be  the  place  for  mother ;  but  Ludlow,  Love,  Broughton, 
such  vague  information  as  is  at  hand,  in  Cawley,  and  Holland  were  protected  by 
Ncble  and  elsewhere,  about  the  subse-  the  Swiss,  and  the  first  three  of  them 
quent  fates  of  the  nineteen  fugitives.  treated  with  much  respect,  more  particu- 
Barkstead,  Corbet,  and  Okey,  who  had  larly  by  the  Council  of  Bern.  Ludlow, 
fled  to  Germany  at  first,  were  to  be  after  writing  his  memoirs,  died  at  Vevai 
captured  in  Holland  ere  long.  Blagrave,  in  1693,  aetat.  73,  and  his  monument  is 
Challoner,  Hewson,  Livesey,  Say,  and  there  to  be  seen. 

I  2 


116         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  former  royal  revenue  which  had  been  derived,  by  what 
was  now  considered  unconstitutional  or  undesirable  prero- 
gative, from  "  the  court  of  wards  and  liveries,  tenures  in 
capite"  &c.  The  King  had  consented  to  resort  no  more  to 
those  old  feudal  sources,  if  an  equivalent  could  be  provided 
otherwise.  Two  schemes  had  been  suggested  in  the  Com- 
mons :  "  one  a  permanent  tax  on  lands  held  in  chivalry 
"  (which,  as  distinguished  from  those  in  soccage,  were  alone 
"  liable  to  the  feudal  burthens) ;  the  other,  an  excise  on  beer 
"  and  some  other  liquors/'  The  description  is  Hallam's, 
who  adds,  "  It  is  evident  that  the  former  was  founded  on  a 
"just  principle,  while  the  latter  transferred  a  particular 
"  burthen  to  the  community.  But  the  self-interest  which 
"  so  unhappily  predominates  even  in  representative  assemblies, 
"  with  the  aid  of  the  courtiers,  who  knew  that  an  excise  in- 
"  creasing  with  the  riches  of  the  country  was  far  more  desir- 
"  able  for  the  Crown  than  a  fixed  land-tax,  caused  the  former 
"  to  be  carried,  though  by  the  very  small  majority  of  two 
"  voices."  This  had  been  on  the  21st  of  November,  save  that 
Mr.  Hallam's  account  of  what  passed  then  is  not  quite  correct. 
The  question  then  propounded  to  the  House  consisted  of  two 
parts,  (1)  "  That  the  moiety  of  the  excise  of  beer,  ale,  cider, 
"  perry,  and  strong  waters,  at  the  rates  it  is  now  levied, 
"  shall  be  settled  on  the  King's  Majesty,  his  heirs  and  suc- 
"  cessors,  in  full  recompense  and  satisfaction  of  all  tenures 
"  in  capite  and  by  knight's  service,  and  of  the  court  of 
"  wards  and  liveries  and  all  emoluments  and  profits  thereby 
"  accruing,  and  in  full  satisfaction  of  all  purveyance ;" 
(2)  "  That  the  other  moiety  of  the  revenue  of  the  excise 
"  of  beer,  &c,  be  settled  upon  the  King's  Majesty  in 
"  further  part  of  the  ^1,200,000  per  annum  resolved  to  be 
"  settled  on  his  Majesty."  The  division  was  only  on  the 
second  part,  voting  the  present  King  one  moiety  of  the  Excise 
for  his  life,  in  addition  to  the  other  moiety  settled  on  the 
Crown  for  ever ;  and  in  this  division  it  was  the  Noes  that 
carried  by  a  majority  of  two  voices,  i.  e.  by  151  to  149. 
Annesley,  who  was  opposed  to  the  Excise  scheme,  was  one  of 
the  tellers  for  the  majority.     Very  soon,  however,  the  vote 


DISSOLUTION   OF   THE   CONVENTION   PARLIAMENT.      117 

was  reversed ;  and  so  there  went  through  the  Commons,  and 
then  through  the  Lords,  with  various  debates  and  conferences, 
two  connected  bills.  One  was  "  An  Act  for  taking  away  the 
court  of  wards  and  liveries,  and  tenures  in  capite  and  by 
knight's  service,  and  purveyance,  and  for  settling  a  revenue 
on  his  Majesty  in  lieu  thereof."  This  Act  vested  in  the 
Crown  for  ever  15c/.  from  every  barrel  of  superior  beer,  4d. 
from  every  barrel  of  inferior  beer,  15r/.  from  every  hogshead 
of  cider  or  perry,  \d.  from  every  gallon  of  metheglin  or  mead, 
6d.  from  every  barrel  of  so-called  "vinegar-beer/'  Id.  from 
every  gallon  of  aquavitse  or  strong  wTater,  4>d.  from  every 
gallon  of  coffee,  and  8d.  from  every  gallon  of  chocolate, 
sherbet,  or  tea,  besides  higher  duties  proportionally  from  im- 
ported ales,  cider  or  perry,  or  strong  waters.  The  other  Act 
was  "  A  grant  of  certain  impositions  upon  beer,  ale,  and 
other  liquors,  for  the  increase  of  his  Majesty's  revenue 
during  his  life  ;"  and  it  assigned  him  the  other  15d.  from 
every  barrel  of  superior  beer,  the  other  4;d.  from  every  barrel 
of  inferior,  and  so  on  through  the  rest  of  the  liquors, — the 
entire  duty  on  each  being,  of  course,  the  sum  of  the  moieties 
distributed  between  the  two  bills.  Not  till  the  24th  of 
December  were  there  two  bills,  with  all  their  intricacies, 
ready  for  the  King's  assent.  It  was  given  that  day  in 
the  Lords'  House,  the  Commons  attending.  His  Majesty's 
revenue  of  ^1,200,000  a  year  having  thus  been  tolerably 
wrell  secured,  his  Majesty  was  in  haste  for  the  dissolution. 
There  were  still,  however,  odds  and  ends  of  business,  including 
a  special  vote  of  <^J70,000  to  his  Majesty  for  the  expenses 
of  his  approaching  coronation  and  new  jewels  for  his  crown ; 
and  not  till  Saturday  the  29th  of  December  were  the  two 
Houses  ready  1. 

On  that  day  his  Majesty,  having  passed  the  Attainder  Bill 
on  the  Regicides,  and  thirty-one  Bills  besides,  most  of  them 
private,  dissolved  the  Convention  Parliament.  In  a  short 
speech,  he  magnified  the  services  of  that  Parliament  and  ex- 
pressed his  sense  of  his  obligations  to  it.     "Many  former 

1  Lords  and  Commons  Journals  of       text  of  the  two  Revenue  Bills  in  Statutes 
dates  ;  Hallam,  II.  312 — 314 ;  and  the       at  Large. 


118         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  Parliaments/'  he  said,  "  have  had  particular  denominations 
"  from  what  they  have  done  ;  they  have  been  styled  Learned 
"  and  Unlearned,  and  sometimes  have  had  worse  epithets  : 
"  I  pray  let  us  all  resolve  that  this  be  for  ever  called  The 
"  Healing  and  Blessed  Parliament.''''  Hyde  followed  his  master, 
as  usual,  with  a  more  diffuse  speech 1. 

Before  the  dissolution  eight  of  the  ten  bishoprics  left 
vacant  on  Nov.  6  had  been  filled  up  by  the  King,  leaving 
only  the  two  sees  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry  and  Sodor  and 
Man  still  vacant  in  the  total  Episcopate  of  England  and 
Wales.  The  bishops  additional  to  those  of  our  previous  list 
(ante  pp.  104-105)  were  now  as  follows : — 

Province  op  Canterbury. 

B.  of  Bristol :  Gilbert  Ironside,  elected  Dec.  14. 

B.  of  Gloucester  :  William  Nicholson,  elected  Nov.  26. 

B.  of  Hereford  :  Nicholas  Monk  (brother  of  the  Duke  of  Albemarle), 

elected  Dec.  1,  instead  of  Richard  Baxter,  who  had  declined. 
B.  of  Norwich  :  Edward   Reynolds,  elected  Nov.    28 ;    the    only 

former  Presbyterian  who  took  a  bishopric. 
B.  of  Peterborough  :  Benjamin  Laney,  elected  Nov.  20. 

Province  of  York. 

B.  of  Carlisle  :   Richard  Sterne  (great-grandfather  of  Sterne,  the 

novelist),  consecrated  Dec.  2. 
B.  of  Chester :  Brian  "Walton  (of  the  Polyglott  Bible),  consecrated 

Dec.  2. 
B.  of  Durham  :  John  Cosins,  consecrated  Dec.  2. 

Just  before  the  dissolution  there  had  happened  also  the 
death  of  the  King's  eldest  sister,  the  Princess  of  Orange. 
She  died  on  the  24th  of  December,  of  the  same  disease  of 
small-pox  which  had  carried  off  the  Duke  of  Gloucester. 
While  she  yet  lived,  however,  the  Royal  Family  had  con- 
sented to  the  accession  to  it  of  Chancellor  Hyde's  daughter 
as  the  legitimate  wife  of  the  Duke  of  York.  The  Duke  had 
come  round  at  last,  Berkeley  having  confessed  that  he  had 
invented  his  calumny  against  the  Chancellor's  daughter  only 
to  afford  the  Duke  the  means  of  escape  from  an  inconvenient 
marriage ;  and,  though  the  Queen-mother  had  held  out  for  a 
time,  declaring  publicly  that,  "  whenever  that  woman  should 

1  Lords  Journals  and  Pari.  Hist,  of  date  (for  speeches). 


anne  hyde's  marriage  recognised.  119 

"  be  brought  into  Whitehall  by  one  door,"  she  herself  "  would 
"  go  out  of  it  by  another  door,  and  never  come  into  it  again," 
effective  means  had  been  used  to  conciliate  her  too.  Hyde 
himself  says  that  the  chief  influence  was  that  of  Cardinal 
Mazarin,  who  had  written  over  to  the  Queen-mother  that  her 
reception  back  in  France  would  not  be  very  cordial  unless  she 
desisted  from  her  opposition  to  the  Chancellor.  Certain  it  is 
that  the  reconciliation  of  the  Duke  of  York  to  his  wife  and  the 
public  acknowledgment  of  their  marriage  date  from  about  the 
middle  of  December  1660.  And  so,  on  Jan.  1,  1660-1,  three 
days  after  the  dissolution  of  the  Parliament,  there  was  a  cere- 
monious christening  of  their  baby  by  the  name  of  Charles,  and 
with  the  title  of  Duke  of  Cambridge,  in  Worcester  House, 
the  King  and  the  Duke  of  Albemarle  standing  godfathers, 
and  the  Queen-mother  and  the  Marchioness  of  Ormond  god- 
mothers. The  very  day  after  that  ceremony,  the  Queen- 
mother  was  to  leave  London,  to  embark  at  Portsmouth,  on 
her  return  to  France.  No  one  regretted  her ;  and  Hyde's 
sarcastic  observation  with  reference  to  Jier  unexpectedly 
civil  parting  with  him  is  that  thenceforth  "  there  did  never 
appear  any  want  of  kindness "  on  her  part  towards  him, 
"  whilst  he  stood  in  no  need  of  it,  nor  until  it  might  have  done 
him  some  good."  He  is  here  looking  forward  to  the  eclipse 
of  his  fortunes  some  years  hence.  For  the  present,  who  did 
not  envy  him  ?  Established  in  his  premiership  more  firmly 
than  ever,  he  saw  his  daughter,  whom  he  wanted  to  behead 
three  months  ago,  the  acknowledged  Duchess  of  York.  She 
was,  to  Pepys's  taste,  "  a  plain  woman,  and  like  her  mother,  my 
Lady  Chancellor/-'  though  Burnet,  who  knew  her  well  after- 
wards, found  her  "  a  very  extraordinary  woman,"  with  "great 
knowledge  "  and  "  great  spirit."  Should  Charles  never  marry, 
or  should  he  have  no  legitimate  issue,  she  might  be  Queen 
of  England  one  day,  and  the  crown  her  husband's  *. 

While  the  King  was  away  from  London,  to  see  his  mother 
embark  at  Portsmouth,  there  broke   out  the  mad  little  riot 

i  Evelyn's  Diary,  Dec.  24  ;  Pepys's  of       466,  470  ;  Clarendon,  1013—1015  ;  Bur- 
Dec.  10,  1660,  and  April  20,  1661 ;  Mrs        net,  I.  286—291. 
Green's  Calendar  for  1660 — 1,  pp.  412, 


120  LIFE    OF    MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

known  as  the  insurrection  of  Venner  and  his  Fifth-Monarchy 
men.  Venner,  the  stout  wine-cooper  who  had  tried  a  similar 
outbreak  in  Cromwell's  time,  and  had  only  been  imprisoned 
for  a  while  in  consequence  (Vol.  V.  p.  134),  fared  worse  this 
time.  It  was  in  the  evening  of  Sunday,  Jan.  6,  1660-1,  that 
he  and  a  number  more,  issuing  from  their  conventicle  in 
Coleman  Street,  where  they  had  been  rousing  themselves  to 
phrenzy  with  apocalyptic  readings  and  discourses,  marched 
into  the  streets  about  St.  Paul's,  to  begin  that  work  of  the 
destruction  of  Babylon  and  human  monarchy,  and  the  insti- 
tution of  the  reign  of  King  Jesus,  which  had  been  delayed 
too  long.  Being  fifty  or  sixty  in  number,  and  armed  and 
desperate,  they  discomfited  easily  the  force  of  city  trained- 
bands  that  mustered  to  put  them  down.  After  more  pro- 
menading in  the  city  and  about  the  city  gates,  they  took 
themselves  off  to  Caen  Wood  between  Highgate  and  Hamp- 
stead,  where  they  bivouacked  that  night.  There  they  were 
attacked  next  day  by  a  party  of  horse  and  foot  sent  against 
them  by  Monk ;  but,  though  some  were  taken,  most  escaped 
from  the  wood,  to  rally  again  in  the  city.  They  did  rally 
again  there,  with  some  reinforcements,  early  on  Wednesday 
morning.  Dividing  themselves  into  two  parties,  they  fought 
against  all  odds  till  they  could  fight  no  more.  Venner's  own 
party,  whose  object  was  to  catch  the  Lord  Mayor,  was  the 
last  to  be  overpowered.  Not  till  some  had  been  killed,  re- 
fusing quarter,  and  Venner  himself  had  been  knocked  down 
and  severely  wounded,  was  the  riot  at  an  end.  About  twenty 
soldiers  or  citizens  altogether  had  been  slain,  and  as  many  of 
the  rioters.  Of  those  apprehended,  to  the  number  of  sixty- 
six  in  all,  twenty  were  tried  at  the  Old  Bailey  within  ten 
days,  of  whom  sixteen  were  condemned  to  be  hanged,  drawn, 
and  quartered.  On  Thomas  Venner  and  Roger  Hodgkins, 
as  the  two  chiefs,  the  sentence  was  fully  executed  in  Coleman 
Street,  close  to  the  meeting-place  of  the  sect,  on  the  19th  of 
January.  Eleven  more  were  hanged  at  other  places;  and 
three  seem  to  have  been  reprieved1. 

1  Phillips,  735  ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  186—188,  note;  The  Kingdom's  Intelligencer  for 
Jan.  14-21,  1060-1. 


THE   VENNEB   RIOT.  121 

Two  not  unimportant  consequences  followed  Venner's 
crazy  attempt.  One  was  the  reconsideration  in  Council  of 
the  policy  of  an  entire  disbandment  of  the  army,  and  the 
retention,  under  the  name  of  Guards,  of  two  or  three  of  the 
yet  undishanded  regiments,  to  form,  as  has  been  already 
mentioned,  the  nucleus  still  of  a  standing1  army.  The  other 
appeared  on  the  10th  of  January,  the  day  after  the  suppression 
of  the  outbreak,  when,  the  King  being  then  back  in  town, 
there  was  issued  a  proclamation  from  Whitehall  "  for  re- 
"  straining  all  seditious  meetings  and  conventicles  under 
"  pretence  of  religious  worship,  and  forbidding  any  meetings 
"  for  worship  except  in  parochial  churches  or  chapels."  This 
was  a  dreadful  blow  to  the  sectaries  of  all  sorts,  but  especially 
to  the  Baptists  and  the  Quakers,  the  two  sects  immediately 
aimed  at  after  the  Fifth-Monarchy  men,  and  the  only  sects 
expressly  named  along  with  the  Fifth-Monarchy  men  in  the 
proclamation.  The  Baptists  were  still  a  very  numerous  and 
growing  body;  the  Quakers  had  of  late  been  recruited  largely, 
or  even  enormously,  by  the  melting  into  their  ranks  of  former 
sectaries  of  all  varieties,  and  even  of  former  Independents  and 
Presbyterians,  finding  in  Quakerism  at  last  the  extreme  of 
spiritual  rest.  Since  the  Restoration,  though  subject  to  that 
popular  fury  against  "  fanatics "  which  had  become  but  a 
form  of  loyalty,  and  troubled  also  by  officious  magistrates, 
persecuting  and  imprisoning  on  their  own  responsibility,  both 
sects  had  been  able,  in  virtue  of  the  King's  Breda  Declaration, 
to  keep  up  their  own  meetings  for  worship  and  preaching. 
And  now,  by  Venner's  outbreak,  though  Venner  himself  had 
protested  that  Baptists  and  Quakers  were  no  associates  of  his, 
they  were  to  lose  the  right  of  meeting.  But  the  prohibition 
affected  others  besides  the  Quakers  and  the  Baptists.  The 
Independents  generally,  though  not  named  in  the  procla- 
mation, knew  themselves  to  be  involved  ;  nor  could  even 
those  stricter  Presbyterians  be  safe  who  had  begun  to  avoid 
liturgical  worship  in  the  parish  churches.  In  short,  there 
was  wide  consternation.  The  London  Independents  hastened 
to  publish  a  collective  manifesto,  signed  by  twenty-five  of 
their  ministers,  among  whom  were  Thomas  Goodwin,  Philip 


122  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Nye,  Joseph  Caryl,  and  John  Oxenbridge,  declaring  their 
abhorrence  of  Veuner's  rebellion,  and  of  Fifth-Monarchy 
principles,  and  their  loyalty  to  the  King-  and  his  government ; 
the  Baptists  put  forth  a  similar  document,  signed  by  about 
thirty-five  of  their  chief  ministers ;  and  George  Fox  and 
others,  besides  publishing  "  A  declaration  from  the  harmless 
and  innocent  people  of  God  called  Quakers  against  all 
sedition,  plotters,  and  fighters  in  the  world,"  presented  a 
direct  address  to  his  Majesty,  in  which  they  told  him  that, 
even  as  it  was,  there  were  400  men  and  women  of  their 
persuasion  then  in  prison  in  London,  and  above  1000 
more  in  country  jails,  and  implored  him  not  to  stop 
their  meetings.  The  benefit  was  to  be  little  or  nothing. 
From  the  date  of  Venner's  insurrection,  what  small  respect 
there  had  been  for  the  promise  of  liberty  of  conscience  and 
worship  in  the  King's  Breda  Declaration  ceased  altogether, 
and  it  became  evident  that  not  only  was  there  to  be  no  com- 
prehension for  Presbyterians  within  the  established  Church, 
but  also  no  toleration  for  any  religionists  whatsoever  out  of 
that  Church.  The  passion  for  suppressing  conventicles  and 
hunting  down  itinerant  or  unordained  preachers  of  all  deno- 
minations spread  from  the  central  authority  to  all  local 
authorities ;  and  soon  the  silenced  or  imprisoned  Baptist 
preachers,  in  addition  to  the  Quakers,  were  to  be  counted 
by  scores.  John  Bunyan,  however,  was  not  one  of  the 
victims  of  Venner's  insurrection.  His  turn  had  come  already. 
He  had  been  arrested,  by  warrant  of  a  Bedfordshire  justice, 
in  November  1660,  and  had  been  lying  in  Bedford  jail  for 
two  months  before  Venner's  exploit1. 

And  now,  in  the  midst  of  the  consequences  of  the  Venner 
riot,  there  came  round  the  anniversary  of  King  Charles  the 
Martyr.  The  30th  of  January  that  year  fell  on  a  Wednesday. 
The  sermons  and  prayers  on  the  day,  the  humiliations  and 
the  exultations,  may  be  imagined.  But  the  grandest  ceremony 
was  in  London.    The  order  of  the  two  Houses  for  disinterring 

J   Mrs.   Green's   Calendar    of   State       of  Bunyan,  273  (where  there  is  Bunyan's 
Papers  for  1660—1,   pp.   470—471   et       own  account  of  his  arrest). 
seq. ;  Neal,  IV.  320—325  ;  Philip's  Life 


ANNIVERSARY   OF   KING    CHARLES   THE   MARTYR.       123 

the  bodies   of  Cromwell.  Bradshaw,  Ireton,  and   Pride,  had 

been  procured  with  a  view  to  this  day  especially.     Save  that 

the  body  of  Pride,,  which  had  not  been  buried  in  Westminster 

Abbey,  but  in  a  country  churchyard,  was  left  undisturbed  at 

the  request  of  Monk,  the  order  was  executed  most  punctually. 

It  is    best  to    quote   the   contemporary  newspaper   account. 

'  This  day,  Jan.  30  (we  need  say  no  more,  but  name  the  day 

'  of  the  month),  was  doubly  observed, — not  only  by  a  solemn 

'  fast,  sermons,  and  prayers,  in  every  parish  church,  for  the 

'  precious  blood  of  our  late  pious  sovereign  King  Charles  the 

'  First,  of  ever  glorious  memory,  but  also  by  publicly  dragging 

'  those  odious  carcases  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  Henry  Ireton,  and 

'  John  Bradshaw,  to  Tyburn.     On  Monday  night  Cromwell 

'  and  Ireton,  in  two  several  carts,  were  drawn  to  Holborn  from 

'  Westminster,  where  they  were  digged  up  on  Saturday  last ; 

'  and  the  next  morning  Bradshaw.     To-day  they  were  drawn 

1  upon  sledges  to  Tyburn.      All   the    way    (as   before    from 

'  Westminster),  the  universal  outcry  and  curses  of  the  people 

'  went  along  with  them.     When  the  three  carcases  were  at 

'  Tyburn,  they  were  pulled  out  of  their  coffins,  and  hanged  at 

'  the  several  angles  of  that  triple  tree, — where  they  hung  till 

'  the  sun  was  set ;    after  which  they  were  taken  down,  and 

'  their  heads  cut  off,  and  their  loathsome  trunks  thrown  into 

'  a  deep  hole  under  the  gallows."     Pepys  was  not  one  of  the 

multitude  that  went  to    see  the  sight, — of  which  indeed  he 

rather  disapproved ;    but  he  went  to  Lady  Batten's  in  the 

evening  to  meet  his  young  wife  and  her  ladyship  after  they 

had  returned  from  the  pleasure 1. 

The  heads  of  Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  and  Ireton,  were  at 
once  set  up,  by  the  common  hangman,  on  poles  on  the  top  of 
Westminster  Hall,  that  of  Bradshaw  in  the  middle  2.  There 
they  were  to  remain  for  years  and  years,  people  looking  up 
at  them  for  a  while  with  whatever  thoughts  mio-ht  be  con- 
venient,  and  soon  with  no  thoughts  at  all,  and  the  heads 
themselves  looking  down,  with  their  empty  eye-sockets,  on 

1  Mereurius  Publicus  of  Jan.  24—31,       Pepys  of  Dec.  4, 1660. 
1660—1;   Noble's    Regicides    (Article,  2   Mereurius  Publicus   of  Jan.   31— 

Pride)  ;  Pepys  and  Evelyn  of  date,  with       Feb.  7, 1660-1. 


124         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

what  was  passing  underneath.  As  there  was  to  be  little 
of  much  importance  in  London  till  the  coronation  of  his 
Majesty,  we  shall  change  the  scene  till  then  for  Ireland  and 
Scotland. 

At  the  Restoration  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  of  Ireland  was 
one  of  the  honours  that  had  been  heaped  on  Monk.  It  was 
nominal  merely ;  and  the  actual  administration  of  Ireland 
remained  in  the  hands  of  such  resident  officials,  formerly 
serving  under  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  of  Henry  Cromwell,  as 
had  accommodated  themselves  to  the  change  of  times.  Of 
these  the  two  chief  were  Lord  Broghill,  President  of  Munster, 
and  Sir  Charles  Coote,  President  of  Connaught.  No  sooner 
had  the  King's  Breda  letters  been  read  in  the  Convention 
Parliament,  and  the  Restoration  made  certain,  than  the  opinion 
of  these  and  of  other  official  persons  in  Ireland  as  to  what 
would  be  best  for  that  country  in  the  new  state  of  things  was 
made  known  to  the  Convention  Parliament  by  commissioners 
sent  over  for  the  purpose.  It  was  hoped  that  the  two  Houses 
would  concur  in  a  recpaest  to  his  Majesty  to  revert  to  the 
old  practice,  and  let  Ireland  have  a  Protestant  Parliament  of 
her  own.  To  this  the  two  Houses  agreed  on  the  12th  of 
May. — Thus,  before  his  Majesty  had  set  foot  in  England,  it 
had  been  resolved  that  England  and  Ireland  should  no  longer 
be  tied  together,  as  during  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Pro- 
tectorate, but  that  Ireland  should  rebound  into  her  old  con- 
dition as  a  separate  dependency  of  the  Crown.  Accordingly, 
from  that  date  there  is  hardly  a  mention  of  Ireland  in  the 
journals  of  the  English  Convention  Parliament1. 

There  was  no  danger  of  revolt  in  Ireland,  if  there  were 
any  ordinary  good  management.  The  Cromwellian  rule  had 
expelled  all  that  was  most  furious  and  formidable  of  the  relics 
of  the  native  Roman  Catholic  confederacy,  had  enclosed  the 
most  considerable  part  of  the  remaining  Roman  Catholic 
population  within  the  single  province  of  Connaught,  and  had 
poured  into  the  island  such  numbers  of  soldierly  and  civilian 
colonists  of  English  or  Scottish  birth,  Presbyterians,  Inde- 

1  Clarendon,  1005  and  1025  ;  Lords  and  Commons  Journals  of  May  8—12, 1660. 


STATE   OF   IRELAND.  125 

pendents,  Anabaptists,  or  sectaries  of  rarer  sorts,  that  these, 
with  the  older  English  settlers,  and  the  Ulster  Presbyterian 
Scots,  formed  one  vast  land-owning  garrison,  overwhelming 
the  native  Irish  element  in  three  of  the  provinces,  and 
watching  and  governing  it  in  the  fourth.  Now  that  the 
Ludlows,  the  Axtells,  and  other  Regicide  Republicans,  were 
out  of  the  island,  the  difficulty  for  Charles  was  not  in  having 
to  reduce  any  part  of  the  country  or  any  class  of  its  inha- 
bitants to  allegiance.  His  difficulty  was  in  .settling  in  any 
tolerable  manner  the  claims  that  the  various  portions  of  the 
population  might  have  upon  him  respectively.  These  claims 
conflicted  so  among  themselves  as  to  be  utterly  irreconcilable. 
There  were,  first,  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  especially  those 
of  them  that  had  fought  for  his  father  and  himself,  and  been 
true  to  their  cause.  Were  such  of  these  "  innocent  Roman 
Catholics  "  as  had  been  deprived  by  the  Commonwealth  and 
Cromwell  of  their  lands  in  Ulster,  Munster,  and  Leinster, 
and  forced  to  accept  a  pitiful  equivalent  in  Connaught,  to  be 
denied  the  restoration  of  their  lands?  Yet  how  could  these 
be  now  restored  ?  They  were  in  possession  of  English  and 
Scottish  colonists  who  had  paid  for  them  or  purchased  them 
by  military  service.  Could  these,  or  the  persons  to  whom 
these  had  conveyed  their  lands,  be  turned  out  ?  That  would 
have  been  a  revolution  ruinous  in  itself.  "  Within  little  more 
"  than  two  years,"  says  Clarendon,  speaking  of  Cromwell's 
rule  in  Ireland,  the  country  had  been  settled  "  to  that  degree 
"  of  perfection  that  there  were  many  buildings  raised  for 
"  beauty  as  well  as  use,  orderly  and  regular  plantations  of 
"  trees,  and  raising  fences  and  enclosures  throughout  the 
"  kingdom,  purchases  made  by  one  from  the  other  at  very 
"  valuable  rates,  and  jointures  made  upon  marriages,  and  all 
"  other  conveyances  and  settlements  executed,  as  in  a  kingdom 
"  at  peace  within  itself,  and  where  no  doubt  could  be  made  of 
"  the  validity  of  titles."  Even  had  it  been  possible,  no  king, 
no  statesman,  could  seriously  disturb  such  a  state  of  things. 
But  it  was  not  possible.  It  was  the  possession  of  these  lands, 
and  the  hope  that  they  would  possess  them  still,  that  had 
turned  so  many  that  were  Presbyterians,  or  former  Common- 


126  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

wealth's  men  and  Oliverians,  into  loyal  King's  men  now ;  and 
let  their  possession  be  disturbed,  let  there  be  but  a  sign  that 
it  might  be  disturbed,  and  thousands  now  ranking  as  King's 
men  in  Ireland  would  drop  that  character  and  start  up  as 
fio-htincr  ironsides.  In  the  main,  Oliver's  settlement  of  Ireland 
must  be  ratified,  whatever  devices  of  partial  redress  might 
be  invented  for  the  dispossessed  old  Royalists  and  Roman 
Catholics.  There  was  yet,  however,  a  farther  complication  of 
the  problem.  Among  the  adventurers  for  Irish  lands  there 
were  a  good  many  who  had  adventured  as  Royalists,  had  paid 
a  moiety  of  their  subscriptions  while  Charles  I.  was  still 
sovereign  of  Ireland,  but  had  voluntarily  lost  the  benefit  of 
their  investment  by  refusing  to  pay  more  when  the  Inde- 
pendents and  Republicans  came  into  the  ascendant.  Were 
these,  whose  money  in  part  had  gone  to  help  Charles,  to  have 
no  consideration  or  allowance  ?  Altogether,  the  calculation 
was  that,  if  the  whole  of  Ireland,  with  its  7,500,000  of  Irish 
acres  of  good  land,  and  3,000,000  Irish  acres  of  bog,  moor, 
and  lake,  were  sold  three  or  four  times  over  at  fair  market 
price,  the  proceeds  would  not  satisfy  all  the  claims  upon  it 
among  the  million  and  a-half  or  two  millions  of  mixed  Roman 
Catholics  and  Protestants  that  formed  the  population 1. 

With  this  vast  problem  looming  upon  Charles,  it  was 
thought  best  to  be  in  no  hurry  to  call  an  Irish  Parliament. 
In  fact,  no  such  Parliament  did  meet  till  May  8,  1661  ;  and 
in  the  interim  Ireland  was  left  verv  much  to  herself.  Monk's 
nominal  Lord-Lieutenancy  was  rather  inconvenient,  inasmuch 
as  it  prevented  the  reinstalment  in  that  office  of  its  former 
holder,  the  Marquis  of  Ormond,  the  supreme  and  fittest 
Irishman.  As  Monk  clung  to  the  dignity,  however,  on 
account  of  interests  of  his  own  in  Ireland,  the  arrangement 
had  been  that  Lord  Roberts,  a  Cornishman,  of  "more  than 
ordinary  parts,"  though  of  "  sullen  and  morose  "  temper  and 
Presbyterian  opinions,  should  be  Lord  Deputy  under  him. 
It  was  intended  that  Roberts  should  ero  to  Ireland  for  the 
actual  exercise  of  his  office ;    but,  until  he  should  do  so,  he 

1  Clarendon,  1025—1029  ;  Hallam,  III.  394—397. 


STATE   OF   IEELA.ND.  127 

was  virtually  the  minister  for  Irish  affairs  in  his  Majesty's 
Council  at  Whitehall.  Hyde  did  not  interfere  in  any  direct 
manner  in  the  Irish  department,  leaving-  Roberts,  with  advice 
from  Ormond  and  Annesley,  to  receive  and  study  the  ap- 
plications that  continued  to  pour  in  from  all  the  Irish  parties 
and  interests.  So  much  progress  had  been  made  in  this  work 
before  November  1660  that  his  Majesty  was  able  to  issue  a 
Declaration  on  the  30th  of  that  month,  indicating  generally 
his  will  respecting  Ireland.  The  adventurers  and  Cromwellian 
soldiers  were  substantially  to  be  confirmed  in  their  estates ; 
but  there  were  to  be  various  measures  of  compensation  for 
the  "  innocent  Roman  Catholics,"  after  farther  investigation 
of  claims  ;  and  a  number  of  persons  of  signal  merit  mentioned 
by  name,  among  whom  were  thirty-five  of  the  old  Irish 
nobility  and  gentry,  were  to  be  restored  at  once  to  their 
estates  without  farther  trouble  of  proof.  Then,  in  December 
1660,  Lord  Broghill,  now  raised  to  the  dignity  of  Earl  of 
Orrery  in  the  Irish  peerage,  and  Sir  Charles  Coote,  created 
at  the  same  time  Earl  of  Mountrath,  were  conjoined  as 
Lords  Justices  of  Ireland  with  Sir  Maurice  Eustace,  an  old 
and  valued  friend  of  Ormond's,  who  had  been  appointed  to 
the  Irish  Chancellorship  two  months  before.  It  was  to  be 
their  business  to  enforce  the  oaths  of  allegiance  and  supremacy 
throughout  Ireland,  to  mature  questions  of  claims  for  the 
consideration  of  the  coming  Irish  Parliament,  and  meanwhile 
to  carry  out  his  Majesty's  Declaration  \ 

The  ecclesiastical  settlement  of  Ireland  was  easier  than  the 
civil.  It  had  been  decided,  of  course,  to  restore  the  Irish 
Episcopal  Church.  Of  the  old  Irish  bishops  there  were  still 
alive  John  Bramhall,  Bishop  of  Derry,  Thomas  Fulwar,  Bishop 
of  Ardfert,  Griffith  Williams,  Bishop  of  Ossory,  Henry  Jones, 
Bishop  of  Clogher,  Henry  Leslie,  Bishop  of  Down  and  Connor, 
Robert  Maxwell,  Bishop  of  Kilmore,  and  William  Bayly,  Bishop 
of  Clonfert  and  Kilmacduagh.  These  seven,  most  of  them  of 
English  or  Scottish  birth,  were  regarded  as  still  in  legal  posses- 
sion of  their  sees;  but  there  were  the  four  Irish  archbishoprics 

1  Clarendon,  1030 — 1031 ;  Carte's  Life       are  from  Carte  ;  Clarendon  never  gives 
of  Ormond,  II.  200—221.    The  dates       any. 


128  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  twelve  other  Irish  bishoprics  to  be  filled  up.  As  early  as 
August  1660  the  designations  for  these  had  been  made, 
including  that  of  Bramhall,  for  his  merits  and  sufferings,  to 
the  Irish  primacy  or  archbishopric  of  Armagh,  vacant  since 
Usher's  death  in  1655.  As  it  was  thought  unseemly,  how- 
ever, that  the  formal  reconstitution  of  the  Irish  Episcopate 
should  precede  that  of  the  English,  it  was  not  till  January 
1661,  when  the  English  Episcopate  was  nearly  complete,  that 
the  composition  of  the  Irish  was  fully  made  public.  On  the 
27th  of  that  month  there  was  a  great  consecration  of  new 
prelates  in  St.  Patrick's,  Dublin,  by  Bramhall  and  the  other 
survivors;  and,  an  addition  or  two  having  been  made  im- 
mediately afterwards,  with  re-arrangements  of  one  or  two  of 
the  sees,  the  Irish  Episcopate  then  stood  as  follows : — 

Province  of  Ulster: — 1.  Archbishop  of Armagh :  John  Bram- 
hall, translated  from  Derry  (Yorkshireman).  2.  B.  of  Clogher  : 
Henry  Jones,  holding  since  1645  (Irish).  3.  B.  of  Meath  :  Henry 
Leslie,  appointed  Jan.  18,  1660-1  (Scotch).  4.  B.  of  Kilmore  and 
Ardagh  :  Robert  Maxwell,  holding  from  1643  (Scotch).  5.  B.  of 
Down  and  Connor:  Jeremy  Taylor,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1 
(English).  He  was  already  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
Dublin,  under  Ormond's  Chancellorship  ;  and  both  in  that  office  and 
in  his  Bishopric  he  distinguished  himself  by  his  activity.  Carte, 
describing  the  diocese  of  Down  and  Connor  as  the  most  infested  of 
all  with  Scottish  Covenanters  and  other  "  virulent  and  clamorous  " 
sectaries,  speaks  of  Taylor's  wise  and  patient  dealings  with  such  ; 
but  in  Scotland  the  rumour  was  how  "  one  Taylor,  made  a  bishop, 
did  tyrannize  over  honest  ministers,  so  that  he  deposed  all  the 
Presbyterian  ministers  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  the  most  part 
whereof  were  Scotsmen."  We  may  suppose  that  Taylor,  though 
mild,  was  resolute.  6.  B.  of  Dromore :  Robert  Leslie,  appointed 
Jan.  19,  1660-1  (Scotch).  7.  B.  of  Derry :  George  Wylde,  ap- 
pointed Jan.  22,  1660-1  (English).  8.  B.  of  Raphoe  :  John  Leslie, 
holding  since  1633  (Scotch). 

Province  op  Leinster  : — 1.  Archbishop  of  Dublin  :  James  Mar- 
getson,   appointed  Jan.  25,  1660-1   (English).     2.  B.  of  Kildare  : 
Thomas   Price,   appointed   March   6,   1660-1   (Welsh).      3.    B.  of 
Ossory  :  Griffith  Williams,  holding  since  1641   (Welsh).     4.  B.  of 
Ferns  and  Leighlin  :  Robert  Price,   appointed  Jan.   25,   1660-1 
(Welsh). 

Province  of  Munster  : — 1.  Archbishop  of  Cashel :  Thomas 
Fulwar,  translated  from  Ardfert,  Feb.  1, 1660-1  (English).  2.  B.  of 
Waterford  and  Lismore  :  George  Baker,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1 


SEVERANCE    OF   SCOTLAND   FROM  ENGLAND.  129 

4 

(Irish).  3.  B.of  Cork  and  Ross  :  Michael  Boyle,  appointed  Jan.  22, 
1660-1  (Irish).  4.  B.oj 'Limerick,  Ardfert,  and  Aghadoe  :  Edward 
Synge,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1  (English).  5.  B.  of  Killaloe  : 
Edward  Worth,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1  (Irish).  6.  B.  of  Kil- 
fenora :  now  annexed,  in  commendam,  to  the  Archbishopric  of 
Tuam. 

Pkovince  of  Conn  aught: — 1.  Archbishop  of  Tuam:  Samuel 
Pulleyn,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1,  with  the  Bishopric  of  Kilfenora 
in  commendam  (English).  2.  B.  of  Kill al a  and  Achonry  :  Henry 
Hall,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1  (English).  3.  B.  of  Blphin  :  John 
Parker,  appointed  Jan.  19,  1660-1  (Irish).  4.  B.  of  Glonfert  and 
Kilmacduagh :  William  Bayly,  holding  since  1644  (Scotch)1. 

For  Scotland  also  the  Restoration  was  a  dissolution  of  her 
recent  political  connexion  with  England.  Indeed,  among-  the 
various  causes  of  rejoicing-  in  Scotland  over  the  Restoration, 
not  the  least  was  the  hope  among-  the  Scottish  aristocracy 
and  clergy  of  g-etting  back  their  ancient  little  nationality, 
and  their  old  Scottish  laws,  and  of  having  Parliaments,  and 
all  the  other  apparatus  of  independent  government,  once 
more  in  Edinburgh. 

Whether  all  the  Scots  shared  this  feeling  may  be  doubted. 
Clarendon,  after  describing  the  "prodigious  mutation  and 
transformation "  in  Scotland  that  had  been  effected  by  the 
introduction  there  of  English  law  and  equity  by  Cromwell's 
English  judges,  says  that  the  submission  to  the  same  by  the 
Scots  had  been  most  profound,  and  that  "  it  might  well  be  a 
question  whether  the  generality  of  the  nation  was  not  better 
contented"  with  the  system  of  things  established  by  Cromwell 
than  with  the  prospect  of  a  "  return  to  the  old  road  of  subjec- 
tion." Nor  was  the  union  of  Scotland  and  England  one  of  those 
achievements  of  Cromwell  which  Hyde  himself  wanted  to  see 
undone.  "  But  the  King,"  he  says,  "  would  not  build  according 
"to  Cromwell's  models,  and  had  many  reasons  to  continue 
"  Scotland  within  its  own  limits  and  bounds  and  sole  de- 
pendence upon  himself,  rather  than  unite  it  to  England." 
In  short,  the  re-severance  of  Scotland  from  England  was  a 
necessity  of  the  Restoration,  which  Hyde  had  to  accept2. 

1  Compiled  from  Cotton's  Fasti  Ec-       and    Life   of  Bobert    Blair   (Wodrow 
clesice  Hibernicce,  with  references    (for       Society),  p.  384. 
Jeremy  Taylor)  to  Carte,  II.  208—9,  2  Clarendon,  1020—1021. 

VOL.  VI.  K 


130  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

The  preliminary  arrangements  for  the  future  of  Scotland, 
however,  were  made  in  London.  Naturally  it  was  between 
the  King-  himself  and  such  of  the  Scottish  nobility  as  were 
now  o-athered  round  him  that  those  arrangements  were  first 
contrived.  The  Earl  of  Lauderdale  was  there,  radiant  and 
boisterous  in  the  glory  of  his  recent  release  from  his  long 
imprisonment  since  the  Battle  of  Worcester,  a  kind  of  stub- 
born Scottish  Presbyterian  still,  but  so  demonstrative  in  his 
Royalism  that  he  could  never  refer  to  the  former  Presbyterian 
parts  of  his  career,  from  his  membership  of  the  Westminster 
Assembly  onwards  to  1648,  without  abasing  himself  to  the 
ground  and  using  the  phrases  "  when  I  was  a  traitor,"  "  when 
I  was  in  rebellion."  The  Earl  of  Crawford  was  there,  "  still 
a  zealous  Presbyterian/'  whose  chief  recommendation  to  the 
King  was  that,  like  Lauderdale,  he  had  been  at  Worcester 
and  had  suffered  in  consequence.  Crawford's  son-in-law,  the 
Earl  of  Rothes,  was  there,  the  son  of  that  Earl  of  Rothes  who 
had  been  the  leader  of  the  opposition  to  Charles  I.  and  Laud  in 
Scotland  from  1633  to  1640,  and  the  foremost  of  the  original 
Scottish  Covenanters.  Despite  that  parentage,  the  present 
Earl,  though  "  very  agreeable  to  the  King ",  not  without 
ability,  and  with  the  credit  also  of  having  been  one  of  the 
captives  from  Worcester,  was  notorious  chiefly,  says  Burnet, 
for  having  "  freed  himself  from  all  impressions  of  virtue  or 
religion,  of  honour  or  good  nature,"  and  for  being  able  to 
see  "  two  or  three  sets  of  drunkards "  dead  drunk  under 
the  table  one  after  another,  any  number  of  nights  in  suc- 
cession, without  being  visibly  disordered  himself.  The  Earl  of 
Tweeddale  was  there,  rather  ashamed  of  having  been  of  late  a 
Cromwellian,  but  educated  by  that  connexion  into  careless- 
ness of  ecclesiastical  forms.  The  Earl  of  Selkirk  was  there, 
a  younger  son  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Marquis  of  Douglas, 
but  no  longer  a  Roman  Catholic  himself,  having  married  the 
heiress  of  James,  Duke  of  Hamilton,  now  Duchess  of  Hamilton 
in  her  own  right,  and  having  thus,  by  Scottish  custom, 
entitled  himself  to  be  called  Duke  of  Hamilton.  Among  the 
others,  two  may  be  mentioned  together  as  the  most  strenuously 
opposed  to  that  policy  of  indulgence  for  Presbyterianism  in 


SCOTTISH   COUNCIL    IN   LONDON.  131 

Scotland  which  was  advocated  by  Lauderdale  and  Crawford. 
These  were  William  Cunningham,  Earl  of  Glencairn,  who 
had  kept  alive  the  King's  cause  so  boldly  in  the  Highlands 
after  the  disaster  of  Worcester,  and  his  more  soldierly  associate 
for  a  while  in  that  enterprise,  General  John  Middleton,  now 
made  Earl  of  Middleton,  in  reward  for  his  long  services  and 
exile.  Both  were  of  the  Cavalier  order  of  politicians,  caring 
nothing  for  Presbytery,  and  desiring  rather  to  see  Scotland 
forced  into  Episcopacy,  if  such  should  be  the  King's  will. — 
From  among  so  many  eminent  Scots  in  London  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  forming  the  beginnings  of  a  Scottish  Ministry 
and  Privy  Council.  Middleton,  as  the  supreme  man,  was 
designated  as  the  King's  High  Commissioner  to  the  Scottish 
Parliament  when  it  should  meet ;  Glencairn  was  made  Chan- 
cellor of  Scotland  ;  the  Earl  of  Crawford  became  Scottish 
Lord  Treasurer ;  Lauderdale  was  made  Scottish  Secretary  of 
State;  and  Sir  Archibald  Primrose,  an  astute  lawyer,  who 
had  been  Clerk  of  the  Scottish  Privy  Council  in  the  days  of 
Charles  I.,  and  had  adjusted  himself  carefully  to  all  turns  of 
fortune  since,  was  made  Lord  Clerk-Register  or  Keeper  of 
the  Rolls.  These  five  were  the  Scottish  junto  of  chiefs, 
round  whom  the  other  Scots  at  hand  were  grouped  in 
London.  It  was  agreed,  however,  that  the  Council  should 
have  an  English  ingredient;  and,  accordingly,  Hyde,  the 
Earl  of  Southampton,  Monk,  Ormond,  Manchester,  and 
Secretary  Nicholas,  were  associated  with  the  Scottish  council- 
lors, and  might  be  present  at  their  meetings  with  the  King. 
Such  meetings  had  begun  in  June  1660,  and  in  July  they 
seem  to  have  been  pretty  frequent. 

While  they  are  meeting  in  Whitehall,  English  and  Scots 
together,  for  the  consideration  of  Scottish  affairs,  who  is 
this  that  comes  knocking  at  the  door?  Actually  the 
Marquis  of  Argyle.  He  had  come  all  the  way  from  Scot- 
land in  consequence  of  some  hint  from  his  son  Lord  Lome, 
then  already  in  London  and  much  about  his  Majesty,  that 
his  Majesty  would  not  object  to  receiving  him  among  the 
rest.  Better  had  he  blown  himself  up  in  his  castle  at 
Inverary,  or  tried  to  escape  across  the  Atlantic  in  the  craziest 

K  2 


132  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

boat  from  Campbellton  beach.  Yet  his  appearance  might 
well  put  them  in  a  nutter.  Though  now  sixty-two  years 
of  age,  and  wearing  still  that  grim-favoured  visage  in  which, 
"by  the  ill-placing  of  his  eyes,  he  did  not  appear  with  any 
o-reat  advantage  at  first  sight,"  he  was  worth,  for  depth  of 
brain,  more  than  Lauderdale,  Glencairn,  and  Middleton  put 
together ;  and,  had  he  been  granted  a  place  at  the  Council 
Board,  who  knows  what  service  to  Scotland  it  was  in  the 
heart  and  in  the  power  of  the  much-experienced,  much-de- 
jected man  to  render  even  yet?  But  not  even  for  half  an  hour 
would  Charles  put  himself  again  under  the  influence  of  that 
cool  and  strong  intellect,  that  subtle  tongue,  and  those  many 
other  spells, "  gay  and  pleasant  humour  "  not  wanting  on  occa- 
sion, which  had  made  Argyle  rather  his  master  than  his  mere 
minister  in  the  time  of  his  Covenanted  Kingship  in  Scotland 
ten  years  ago.  It  needed  little,  therefore,  to  instruct  Charles 
as  to  the  reception  to  be  given  to  his  old  friend.  It  was  on 
Sunday  the  8th  of  July  that  Argyle  waited,  in  the  presence- 
chamber  at  Whitehall,  for  the  King's  answer  to  his  request 
for  an  interview.  The  answer  sent  out  was  an  order  for 
carrying  him  straight  to  the  Tower. 

Argyle  thus  disposed  of,  the  Whitehall  consultations  about 
Scottish  affairs  went  on  without  him.  Orders  were  sent 
to  Major-General  Morgan,  deputy  for  Monk  in  Scotland, 
and  meanwhile  keeping  the  peace  there  with  some  of  Monk's 
old  regiments,  for  the  arrest  of  Sir  Archibald  Johnstone  of 
Warriston,  Sir  John  Chiesly,  and  Sir  James  Stewart,  Provost 
of  Edinburgh,  There  was  also  to  be  arrested  in  Scotland  a 
Captain  William  Govan,  rumoured  to  have  been  on  the 
scaffold  at  Whitehall  when  Charles  was  beheaded.  Another 
Scottish  victim  was  found  in  London  itself.  This  was  Sir 
John  Swinton  of  Swinton,  Cromwell's  favourite  Scot  next  to 
Lockhart,  and  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Scottish  government 
during  the  Protectorate.  He  had  recently  embraced  Quaker- 
ism, and  he  was  captured  in  a  Quaker's  house  in  King  Street, 
Westminster,  on  the  20th  of  July.  On  the  2nd  of  August 
a  royal  proclamation  was  sent  to  Edinburgh,  to  be  published 
at  the  market-cross,  convoking  those  that  survived  of  the  old 


INCIDENTS   IN   SCOTLAND.  133 

Committee  of  Estates  which  had  been  nominated  by  Charles 
and  his  last  Scottish  Parliament  in  1651,  and  entrusting*  to 
that  body  in  Edinburgh  the  management  of  affairs  till  there 
should  be  a  regular  meeting  of  Parliament  K 

The  revived  Committee  of  Estates  met  in  Edinburgh  on 
the  23rd  of  August.  The  Earl  of  Glencairn,  who  had  come 
from  London  for  the  purpose,  presided  as  Chancellor,  and 
there  were  present  nine  other  nobles,  ten  lairds  or  lesser 
barons,  and  ten  burgesses.  It  was  from  the  proceedings  of 
this  body  that  the  people  of  Scotland  were  to  gather  their 
first  ideas  of  what  had  been  resolved  in  London  respecting 
them  and  their  afFaii's. 

The  arrests  of  Argyle  and  Swinton  in  London,  and  of 
Chiesly,  Stewart,  and  Govan  in  Edinburgh,  after  Warriston 
had  contrived  to  escape  to  Hamburg,  had  made  it  evident 
that,  whatever  grace  and  indemnity  for  past  offences  there 
might  be  for  the  Scots  generally,  there  were  to  be  some 
exceptions.  It  might  have  been  easily  guessed  from  what 
class  of  the  community  these  would  chiefly  be.  They  were 
the  Protesters  or  Remonstrants.  Whoever,  in  1650  or  since, 
had  been  a  conspicuous  Protester,  and  especially  whoever 
had  passed  beyond  the  ranks  of  the  Protesters  to  accept  office 
in  Scotland  or  in  England  under  Cromwell,  might  expect  to  be 
called  to  account.  Accordingly,  on  the  very  first  day  of  the 
meeting  of  the  Committee  of  Estates,  the  Protesters  had  this 
lesson  sharply  read  to  them.  Most  inopportunely,  Mr.  James 
Guthrie,  minister  of  Stirling,  the  chief  of  the  Protesters,  had 
arranged  a  meeting  that  day  with  nine  other  ministers  from 
various  parts  of  Scotland,  and  two  elders,  in  a  private  house 
in  Edinburgh,  for  the  purpose  of  expressing  their  views  in 
a  humble  address  and  supplication  to  the  King.  The 
document,  which  had  been  already  drafted,  was  full  of  con- 
gi'atulations  to  the  King  and  professions  of  loyalty  to  him, 
but,  for  the  rest,  was  a  remonstrance,  in  the  name  of  the 
Covenant,  and  in  a  dull  and  stupid  ultra- Presbyterian  strain, 
not  only  against  any  restoration  of  Prelacy  or  Liturgy  any- 

1  Clarendon,  1021—1025;  Burnet,  I.       Chwrch  of  Scotland  from  the  B-storation 
173—191  ;    Wodrow's  History   of   the       to  the  Bevolution  (1721),  I.  3—6  and  42. 


134  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

where  in  his  Majesty's  dominions,  but  also  against  the  tolera- 
tion of  any  non-Presbyterian  sects  whatever.  The  twelve 
Protesters,  with  this  supplication  before  them,  were  in  a 
room  near  the  meeting-place  of  the  Committee  of  Estates, 
and  were  drafting  letters  to  be  sent  to  their  Protester 
brethren  over  the  country,  inviting  them  to  a  general  meeting 
in  Glasgow  to  adopt  the  Supplication,  when  officers  from  the 
Committee  of  Estates  broke  in  among  them  and  took  them 
and  their  papers  into  custody.  They  were  committed  to 
Edinburgh  Castle  the  same  day  (Aug.  23),  and  there  was 
much  excitement  in  the  town1. 

Through  September,  October,  and  November,  the  chief 
activity  of  the  Committee  of  Estates  was  still  in  summoning, 
imprisoning,  or  otherwise  disabling,  selected  offenders  through- 
out the  country.  The  provost  of  Glasgow,  the  town-clerk 
of  Glasgow,  and  Mr.  Patrick  Gillespie,  the  Cromwellian 
principal  of  the  University  of  Glasgow,  were  among  the  first 
arrested  ;  after  whom  were  Mr.  William  Wishart,  minister 
of  Kinneil,  Mr.  Robert  Row,  minister  of  Abercorn,  the 
Cromwellian  Provost  Jaffray  of  Aberdeen,  Mr.  John  Dickson, 
minister  of  Rutherglen,  Mr.  James  Naismith,  minister  of 
Hamilton,  Mr.  James  Simpson,  minister  of  Airth,  and  many 
more.  On  the  19th  of  September  there  was  a  proclamation 
for  the  suppression  of  all  copies  of  Mr.  James  Guthrie's 
Protesting  manifesto  of  1651  called  The  Causes  of  GocVs  Wrath, 
and  of  all  copies  of  Samuel  Rutherford's  political  treatise  of 
1644  called  Lex  Bex ;  and  in  the  following  month  copies  of 
both  books  were  burnt  in  Edinburgh  by  the  hangman.  On 
the  20th  of  September  there  was  a  proclamation  against  the 
Protesters  and  their  principles  collectively,  forbidding  all 
meetings  in  that  interest,  and  all  speech,  preaching,  or  writing 
in  memory  or  justification  of  the  "  seditious  and  treasonable  " 
sentiments  of  the  Remonstrance  of  1650.  On  the  10th  of 
October  there  was  a  decree  of  fugitation  or  outlawry  against 
Sir  Archibald  Johnstone  of  Warriston,  Colonel  Gilbert  Ker, 
Colonel  David  Barclay,   John   Hume,   Robert  Andrew,    and 

1  Wodrow,  I.  7—9,  and  Appendix,  Nos.  II.  and  III. 


STATE    OF    FEELING   IN    SCOTLAND.  135 

William  Dundas,  all  in   the   class   of  Protesters  double-dyed 
into  Cromwellians  *. 

Johnstone  of  Warriston  was  the  fugitive  whose  escape  was 
most  vexing-  to  the  authorities.  He  and  Argyle  were  to  have 
been  doomed  in  chief  together.  From  among*  the  rest  it  was 
difficult  to  say  yet  with  whom  it  would  fare  hardest ;  but  the 
odds  were  greatly  against  Swinton  of  Swinton,  and  the  two 
clerical  arch-Protesters,  Guthrie  and  Gillespie.  But,  indeed, 
no  one  knew  how  many  here  and  there  over  the  country, 
besides  those  already  imprisoned,  might  yet  be  put  in  jeopardy. 
Not  only  had  Rutherford's  book  been  burnt,  both  in  Edin- 
burgh and  St.  Andrews,  but,  having  been  deprived  of  his 
St.  Andrews  principalship,  he  had  been  summoned  to  Edin- 
burgh personally ;  and,  though  he  had  been  excused  mean- 
while, on  certificates  that  he  was  too  ill  to  move,  and  indeed  a 
dying  man,  he  might  expect  farther  trouble  till  he  did  die. 
So  with  Andrew  Cant  of  Aberdeen  and  others  2. 

While  it  was  abundantly  evident  that  the  Protester  variety 
of  Presbyterianism  was  to  be  put  down  in  Scotland,  there  was 
no  sign  as  yet  but  that  Scotland  might  still  enjoy  a  moderate 
Presbyterianism,  with  the  Westminster  Assembly's  standards, 
and  perhaps  even  the  Covenants.  This,  at  all  events,  was  the 
hope  of  the  great  body  of  the  Hesolutioner  clergy.  They  had 
been  observing  the  proceedings  against  the  Protesters  without 
much  displeasure,  though  certainly  with  no  desire  of  extreme  or 
very  severe  punishment  for  Argyle,  Warriston,  Guthrie,  Gille- 
spie, or  any  other  of  the  prisoners,  unless  it  might  perhaps  be 
Quaker  Swinton,  for  whom,  as  an  avowed  sectary  of  the  worst 
sort,  no  proper  Presbyterian  could  have  much  pity.  But  O  that 
it  could  be  made  positively  certain  that,  however  it  might  be 
thought  necessary  to  deal  with  the  Protesters  and  other 
culprits,  the  national  Presbyterian  Church  was  to  be  preserved 
entire  and  intact !  Our  friend  Baillie  will  here  again  be  the 
best  representative  of  the  Resolutioners. 

Baillie   had  been  dreadfully  shocked  at  first  by  the  news 
from   London  that  Episcopacy  was  to    be  fully  restored   in 

1  Wodrow,  I.  10—12,  and  Appendix  2  Baillie,  III.   447 ;   Life  of  Robert 

Nos.  V.  and  VI.  Blair,  365—360' ;  Wodrow,  I.  77—76. 


136  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 


England.  On  the  16th  of  June  lie  had  expressed  himself 
on  the  subject  in  a  letter  to  his  old  associate  the  Earl  of 
Lauderdale,  the  first  he  had  written  to  that  nobleman  since 
two  or  three  he  had  addressed  to  him  in  the  Tower  in  1653 
and  1654.  "Is  the  service-book  read  in  the  King's  chapel?" 
Baillie  had  there  asked.  "  Has  the  Bishop  of  Ely — I  hear 
"  Dr.  Wren,  the  worst  bishop  of  our  age  after  Dr.  Laud — 
"  preached  there  ?  Has  the  House  of  Lords  passed  an  order 
"  for  the  service-book  ?  Oh !  where  are  we  so  soon  ?  Is  our 
'  Covenant  with  England  turned  to  Harry  Marten's  almanack  ? 
"  Is  the  solemn  oath  of  the  Lords  and  Commons,  assembled 
"  in  Parliament,  subscribed  so  oft  by  their  hands,  to  eradicate 
"bishops,  turned  all  to  wind?"  The  letter  is  in  the  same 
strain  throughout.  He  could  never  have  dreamed,  he  says, 
that  the  English  Presbyterians  and  Covenanters,  especially 
those  of  London  and  Lancashire,  would  so  easily  have  re- 
admitted liturgy  and  episcopacy;  and  the  wrath  of  God, 
he  was  sure,  would  follow  "  so  hideous  a  breach "  of  the 
Covenant. — It  is  clear  that,  at  the  date  of  this  letter,  Baillie 
regarded  the  cause  of  Presbytery  as  wholly  gone  in  England, 
but  that,  in  the  midst  of  his  grief  over  that  calamity,  he  could 
not  believe  that  there  would  be  any  attempt  to  deprive 
Scotland  of  her  Presbyterianism,  or  such  virtue  as  she  might 
still  find,  for  her  particular  purposes,  in  the  Scottish  Covenant 
of  1638,  or  even  in  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant  of  1643, 
if  that  were  treated  no  longer  as  an  international  bond.  And 
this  is  exactly  the  view  of  the  case  which  Mr.  James  Sharp 
had  been  inculcating  on  the  Resolutioners  in  his  letters  from 
Breda  and  the  Hague,  and  now  from  London,  where  he 
remained  about  the  King  as  the  agent  for  the  Kirk.  He  had 
talked  with  his  Majesty  again  and  again  on  the  subject;  and 
not  only  had  his  Majesty  surprised  him  by  the  freshness  of 
his  memory  "  as  to  all  things  in  Scotland,"  proved  by  his  in- 
quiries about  this  person  and  that  by  name,  but  there  had  been 
repeated  assurances  from  his  Majesty  of  his  desire  to  preserve 
Scottish  Presbytery.  Thus,  on  the  12th  of  June,  Sharp 
could  write,  "He  was  pleased  last  week  to  say  to  me,  before 
General  Monk,  that  he  would  preserve  our  Religion,  as  it  was 


STATE   OF   FEELING   IN   SCOTLAND.  137 

settled  in  Scotland,  entirely  to  us ; "  and  again,  on  the  14th 
of  June,  reporting1  a  conversation  of  that  very  day,  "  He  was 
"  pleased  again  to  profess  that  he  was  resolved  to  preserve  to  us 
"  the  discipline  and  government  of  our  Church,  as  it  is  settled 
"among  us."     To  Mr.  Douglas  and   the  other  Besolutioner 
ministers    in    Edinburgh    these    reports    from    Sharp    were 
consoling.     Like  Baillie  in  Glasgow,  they  were  grieved  with 
the  account  of  affairs  in  England,  and  they  seem  to  have 
thought    that   Sharp  might  have    exerted   himself  more   in 
behalf  of  English  Presbytery,  if  only  by  way  of  due  exonera- 
tion of  his  own  conscience  and  theirs  in  a  matter  practically 
hopeless;    but   they  were  very  thankful  that   all  was  to  be 
so  well  in  Scotland.     "  He  is  gifted  to  his  people  in  return 
of  their  prayers  "  five  of  them  say  of  his  Majesty  in  a  joint 
letter  to  Sharp,  intended  for  his  Majesty's  eye  ;  "  and  their 
"  expectations  are  fixed  on  him  as  the  man  of  God's  right  hand, 
"  who  will  refresh  the  hearts  of  all  lovers  of  Zion."     Not  even 
yet,   it  will   be   seen,  had   the  best  and   most   conscientious 
of    the    Resolutioner    clergy    recovered    aught    of    the    old 
Presbyterian  manliness  of  Knox,   Melville,   and   Henderson, 
or  risen  above  sycophancy  and  cant1. 

There  was  confirmation  of  the  hopes  of  the  Resolutioners 
when,  on  the  31st  of  August  1660,  Mr.  Sharp  arrived  from 
London  in  person,  bringing  with  him  a  letter  from  his 
Majesty  addressed  to  Mr.  Douglas,  to  be  communicated  by 
him  to  the  Presbytery  of  Edinburgh,  and  by  that  Presbytery 
to  all  the  other  Presbyteries  of  the  kingdom.  The  letter, 
•which  was  dated  Aug.  10  and  countersigned  by  Secretary 
Lauderdale,  was  probably  of  Sharp's  penning.  It  acknow- 
ledged his  Majesty's  satisfaction  with  the  information  he  had 
received  as  to  the  behaviour  and  dispositions  of  the  Edin- 
burgh clergy  and  "  the  generality  of  the  ministers  of  Scotland  " 
in  the  present  time  of  trial.     "  And,"  it  proceeded,  "because 


1  Baillie,    III.    405 — 407;   Wodrow,  of  Swinton  seems  to  have  put  him  justly 

Introduction,  xxv— xlix  (dated  extracts  beyond  forgiveness.    "  Quakerism,"  says 

from  Sharp's  Letters).     It  is  curious  to  W'odrow,  commenting  on  Swinton's  case, 

observe  how,  not  only  in  Baillie's  notion  "  is  but  a  small  remove  from  Popery  and 

at  the  time  (p.  447),  but  also  in  Wod-  Jesuitism." 
row's  as  late  as  1721  (p.  6), the  Quakerism 


138         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"such  who,  by  the  countenance  of  usurpers,  have  disturbed 
"  the  peace  of  that  our  Church,  may  also  labour  to  create 
"jealousies  in  the  minds  of  well-meaning'  people,  We  have 
"  thought  fit  by  this  to  assure  you  that,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
"  We  resolve  to  discountenance  profanity,  and  all  contemners 
"  and  opposers  of  the  ordinances  of  the  Gospel.  We  do  also 
"resolve  to  protect  and  preserve  the  government  of  the 
"  Church  of  Scotland,  as  it  is  settled  by  law,  without  viola- 
"  tion,  and  to  countenance  in  the  due  exercise  of  their 
"  functions  all  such  ministers  who  shall  behave  themselves 
"  dutifully  and  peacefully,  as  becomes  men  of  their  calling." 
It  was  also  promised  that  the  Acts  of  the  General  Assembly 
of  1651  at  St.  Andrews  and  Dundee,  acknowledged  by  the 
Resolutioners  but  held  invalid  by  the  Protesters,  should  be 
"owned  and  stand  in  force  meanwhile,"  and  that  another 
General  Assembly  should  be  called  soon,  in  preparation  for 
which  his  Majesty  would  send  for  Mr.  Douglas  and  some 
other  ministers  to  give  him  their  best  advice1. 

His  Majesty's  letter  of  August  10, 1660,  to  the  presbyteries 
and  people  of  Scotland,  was  a  deliberate  equivocation.  Our 
authority  for  so  strong  a  statement  is  Clarendon.  There  is 
a  very  elaborate  passage  in  his  Continuation  of  Ids  Life  in 
which  he  gives  an  account  of  a  debate  there  had  been  in 
the  Scottish  Privy  Council  in  Whitehall,  the  King,  Hyde 
himself,  Monk,  and  others  of  the  English  lords  of  that 
Council  being  present,  on  the  question  whether  it  should  be 
part  of  Middleton's  instructions,  in  his  capacity  of  High 
Commissioner  for  the  King  in  the  coming  Scottish  Par- 
liament, to  move  at  once  for  the  abolition  of  Presbytery  and 
the  setting  up  of  Episcopacy.  The  story  is  as  follows : — 
Middleton  moved  earnestly  in  the  meeting  that  he  might 
begin  at  once  in  Parliament  with  an  Act  rescinding  the 
Covenant  and  all  other  Presbyterian  Acts  and  institutions  in 
Scotland,  "  and  then  proceed  to  the  erecting  of  bishops  in 
that  kingdom."  Glencairn,  Rothes,  and  "  all  the  rest "  of  the 
Scots  present,  concurred,  with  the  single  exception  of  Lauder- 
dale.    For  himself,  Lauderdale  professed   now  to  abominate 

1  Wodrow,  I.  13. 


LAUDERDALE    AND   MIDDLETON.  139 

the  Covenant,  to  have  contracted  the  highest  reverence  for 
Episcopacy,  and  to  desire  to  see  it  established  in  Scotland 
very  soon;  but  he  thought  it  would  be  fatal  to  make  the 
attempt  in  the  first  session  of  the  Parliament.  The  Covenant 
was  the  idol  of  Scotland  ;  his  Majesty  himself,  from  his 
experience  of  the  temper  of  the  Scots  and  the  power  of  their 
kirkmen,  must  know  how  cautiously  the  ecclesiastical  question 
ought  to  be  approached  among  them,  and  how  desirable  it 
was  that  Presbytery  should  be  left  intact  in  that  part  of  his 
dominions  till  Episcopacy  should  be  in  full  operation  in  the 
rest.  He  moved,  therefore,  that  Middleton  should  not  only 
receive  no  such  instructions  as  he  wanted,  but  should  be 
restrained  by  express  direction  from  stirring  the  Episcopacy 
question  till  farther  order.  "  Many  particulars  in  this  dis- 
"  course,  confidently  urged,"  says  Clarendon,  "  and  with  more 
"  advantage  of  elocution  than  the  fatness  of  his  tongue,  that 
"  ever  filled  his  mouth,  usually  was  attended  with,  seemed 
"  reasonable  to  many."  Charles  himself  hesitated,  and  Monk 
inclined  to  Lauderdale's  opinion.  But  Middleton  and  the 
other  Scottish  lords  were  firm  to  their  point.  Privately  they 
knew  that  Lauderdale,  though  now  disclaiming  the  Covenant 
and  Presbytery,  was  at  heart  as  Presbyterian,  as  anti- 
Episcopal,  as  ever ;  but,  without  divulging  that,  they  argued 
that  Lauderdale  had  been  so  long  out  of  Scotland  that  his 
knowledge  of  the  state  of  feeling  in  that  country  was  nothing 
in  comparison  with  theirs.  Tbey  undertook  that  Episcopacy 
could  be  established  in  Scotland  without  difficulty;  and  they 
hoped  his  Majesty  "  would  not  choose  to  do  his  business  by 
halves."  And  so,  Hyde  and  the  other  English  counsellors 
agreeing  with  this  view,  no  restraint  was  put  upon  Middleton, 
and  the  conduct  of  the  Kirk-question  in  the  Parliament  was 
to  be  left  to  his  own  prudence  and  discretion. — Actually  this 
secret  decision  and  the  King's  public  letter  to  the  contrary 
were  contemporaneous.  But  was  the  King's  letter  to  the 
contrary  ?  "  We  do  also  resolve  to  protect  and  preserve  the 
government  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  as  it  is  settled  by 
laiv,"  was  the  phrase  in  the  letter;  and  did  not  the  last 
words  save  all  ?    As  law  might  be  now  interpreted,  was  not 


140         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Episcopacy  still  the  legal  establishment  in  Scotland,  and  was 
not  Presbytery  but  an  illegal  interposition  of  two-and-twenty 
years?  True,  there  were  other  phrases  in  the  letter  which 
seemed  to  certify  to  the  Scots  that  only  Presbyterianism 
could  be  meant.  What  then?  Was  not  the  equivocal  wording" 
of  public  documents  a  part  of  legitimate  state-craft  all  over 
the  world  ?  Middleton  by  no  means  liked  this  view  of  things. 
He  was  a  soldier,  and  wanted  to  be  straightforward.  "  For 
"  his  share,"  he  said,  "  he  did  not  love  that  way  which  made 
"  his  Majesty's  first  appearance  in  Scotland  to  be  in  a  cheat." 
The  equivocation  which  Middleton  disliked  must  have  been 
the  invention  of  Sharp  and  Lauderdale.  It  has  to  be  said  for 
Lauderdale,  however,  that  he  hoped  yet  to  trip  up  Middleton 
and  the  Episcopal  party  in  the  Scottish  Council  by  some 
ingenuity  or  other,  and  so,  by  saving  Scottish  Presbyterianism, 
to  save  perhaps  the  King's  word  along  with  it.  He  had 
enormous  faith  in  his  own  red  head,  or,  as  Buckingham  called 
it,  his  "  blundering  understanding."  The  traitor  Sharp,  on 
the  other  hand,  walked  softly  in  decent  black,  knowing  all, 
but  not  bound  to  explain  himself1. 

Through  the  months  of  September,  October,  and  November, 
the  King's  letter  to  the  Presbytery  of  Edinburgh  was  in 
circulation  through  Scotland.  Passive  waiting  and  hoping 
for  the  best  was  all  that  was  then  left.  It  was  something  to 
know,  from  proclamation  at  the  Cross  of  Edinburgh  on  the 
1st  of  November,  that  Parliament  was  to  meet  on  the  12th  of 
December,  superseding  the  temporary  Committee  of  Estates. 
On  the  10th  of  December,  by  farther  proclamation,  the  day 
was  postponed  to  Jan.  1.  Early  in  December  the  Marquis  of 
Argyle  and  Swinton  of  Swinton  were  brought  from  London 
by  sea,  to  be  tried  by  this  Parliament.  Argyle  was  conveyed 
through  the  streets  to  Edinburgh  castle,  and  Swinton,  with 
his  hat  taken  off,  to  the  tolbooth. 


1  Clarendon,   1023 — 1025;    Wodrow,  "  he  was  in  his  principles  much  against 

I.  14  ;  Burnet,  I.  173—175,   184—185,  ropery    and   arbitrary  government,"  a 

and  189—191.     Burnet,  who  knew  Lau-  zealot  "for  Scottish  independence,  and  so 

derdale  well,  and  gives  him  the  character  much  of  a  Presbyterian  that   he  "  re- 

of  "the   coldest  friend   and  violentest  tained  his  aversion  to  King  Charles  I. 

enemy"   he   ever  knew,   vouches    that  and  his  party  to  his  death." 


LOSS   OF  THE   SCOTTISH   RECOEDS.  141 

A  peculiarly  unfortunate  incident  of  the  same  time,  remarked 
as  ominous,  was  the  loss  of  that  mass  of  the  old  records  of  the 
Scottish  kingdom  which  had  been  taken  to  London  in  1651, 
after  the  couquest  of  the  kingdom  by  Cromwell  and  Monk. 
These,  packed  in  "  107  hogsheads,  12  chests,  5  trunks,  and  4 
barrels,"  had  been  lying  in  the  Tower,  and  had  been  made  over 
to  Sir  Archibald  Primrose,  the  Scottish  clerk-register,  for  re- 
transportation  to  Scotland.  Hyde  having  suggested  that  they 
should  be  first  examined,  in  order  to  the  abstraction  of  any 
papers  unpleasantly  commemorating  the  King's  Presbyterian 
professions  in  Scotland  in  1650-1,  the  despatch  of  them  had 
been  delayed  till  winter.  Then,  very  carelessly,  they  were  sent 
by  sea,  on  board  a  frigate  called  The  Eagle,  commanded  by  a 
Major  Fletcher.  A  storm  coming  on,  the  frigate  could  not 
manage  such  a  cargo;  and,  as  the  only  alternative  that 
occurred  to  Major  Fletcher  was  to  throw  the  greater  part 
of  the  records  overboard  or  transfer  a  quantity  of  them  to 
another  vessel,  eighty-five  of  the  hogsheads  were  transferred 
from  the  frigate,  in  Yarmouth  Roads,  to  a  wretched  ship  of 
Burntisland,  called  The  Elizabeth,  the  master  of  which,  a  John 
Wemyss,  was  compelled  to  receive  them  against  his  will.  On 
her  voyage  north,  still  in  the  storm,  this  ship  sprang  a  leak  ; 
partly  because  of  the  unusual  nature  of  the  cargo,  the  place 
of  the  leak  could  not  be  discovered  ;  the  ship  went  down, 
somewhere  off  Berwick,  on  the  18th  of  December;  and  there, 
under  the  water  to  this  day,  reduced  to  pulp  or  nothing,  lie 
eighty-five  hogsheads  of  old  Scottish  history. 

Mr.  James  Sharp,  who  ought  to  have  been  interested  in 
Scottish  history,  and  especially  in  means  of  oblivion  for  it, 
must  have  heard  of  the  foundering  of  the  ship.  Since  his 
return  to  Scotland  in  August,  he  had  been  hovering  be- 
tween Fifeshire  and  Edinburgh,  everywhere  with  the  assurance 
that,  but  for  mismanagement,  Scottish  Presbytery  was  safe. 
The  demeanour  of  the  man  and  his  words  had  by  this  time 
roused  suspicions  among  his  best  friends.  "  James,  God  help 
you ! "  writes  Baillie  significantly  to  him,  in  a  letter  of 
Dec.  17.  No  bishopric  or  archbishopric  could  have  tempted 
honest  Baillie ;  but  he  did  not  object  to  the  principalship  of 


142  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Glasgow  University,  in  succession  to  his  bitterest  personal 
enemy,  the  Protester  and  Cromwellian  Gillespie,  now  removed. 
Lauderdale,  with  Sharp  assisting",  had  obtained  the  King's 
promise  of  that  place  for  Baillie  some  months  ago 1. 

"  By  letters  from  Edinburgh  we  understand  that,  since  the 
"  Marquis  of  Argyle  was  close  prisoner  and  Laird  Swinton  in 
"  the  Tolbooth,  a  general  face  of  joy  and  delight  is  all  over  that 
•'  place.  So  many  coaches  and  persons  appear  in  Edinburgh 
"  since  his  Majesty's  happy  return  and  these  Lords'  commit- 
"  ment  as  have  not  in  many  years  been  seen  in  that  city; 
"  and  the  Parliament,  no  question,  is  as  free  as  the  city,  the 
"  members  thereof  being  such  as  the  people  chose  for  their 
"  good  affection  to  their  king  and  country  2."  Such  was  the 
announcement  in  the  London  newspapers  of  the  ceremonious 
opening  of  the  Scottish  Parliament  by  Lord  High  Com- 
missioner Middleton  on  Tuesday,  the  1st  of  January  1661  3. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  it  conveyed  to  any  English  mind 
the  least  idea  of  what  the  actual  Scottish  Parliament  was. 

Under  the  name  of  The  Three  Estates,  it  comprehended  the 
body  of  the    Scottish  nobility,  together  with  representative 


1  Life  of  Robert  Blair,  361 — 369 ;  that  Lord  Lauderdale  would  be  dis- 
Wodrow,  I.  18;  Burnet,  I.  188—189;  pleased,  "they  said  it  mattered  not  if 
Mrs.  Green's  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  "  it  were  hanged  about  his  neck,  if  he 
1660—  1,  pp.  260,  402,  and  419;  Baillie,  "favoured  it,  and  that  the  Book  of 
III.  411 — 413  and  417 — 418;  Acts  of  "  Common  Prayer  would  soon  be  settled 
Exoneration  to  Major  Fletcher  and  "  in  Scotland."  On  the  same  day  there 
Skipper  Wemyss  for  the  loss  of  the  was  a  warrant  to  Ryley  "  to  deliver  to 
Scottish  Records,  in  the  printed  Acts  of  Secretary  Nicholas  four  volumes  of 
the  Scottish  Parliament  of  1661. — There  papers  and  records  at  present  in  his 
had  been  a  very  careful  examination  of  custody  relating  to  the  transactions  of 
the  hogsheads  of  Scottish  records  before  the  Parliaments  of  Scotland  from  May 
shipping  them  back  to  Scotland,  and  15,  1639  to  March  8,  1651."  Ryley  had 
this  chiefly  in  order  to  abstract  and  de-  then  received  nothing  for  his  labour  of 
tain  that  copy  of  the  Covenant  which  search  ;  for  on  the  19th  of  December  he 
Charles  had  signed  in  Scotland,  and  other  is  found  petitioning  the  King  for  "  such 
papers  verifying  his  or  his  father's  con-  a  reward,  out  of  the  excise  office  or  else- 
cessions  to  Scottish  Presbytery.  The  where,  as  he  thinks  fitting  for  the  extra- 
person  on  whom  the  trouble  of  the  search  ordinary  pains  and  charge  of  examining, 
\\as  imposed  was  William  Ryley,  Clerk  as  ordered,  107  hogsheads,  12  chests," 
of  the  Records  in  the  Tower  (ante  &c.  (Mrs.  Green's  Calendar,  of  dates). 
Vol.  V.  p.  287).  In  a  letter  of  his,  of  date  The  day  before  Ryley's  petition  for  his 
Sept.  7,  1660,  he  speaks  of  having  had  reward  the  Records  were  at  the  bottom 
his  accounts  checked  by  Sir  John  Robin-  of  the  sea. 

son,  Keeper  of  the  Tower,  and  the  two  2  The  Kingdom's  Intelligencer  ,~Dec.Zl, 

Scottish   Lords,   Middleton   and  New-  1660— Jan.  7, 1660-1. 

h.      He    had   been   "highly   com-  s  The    Scotch    then    reckoned    New 

mended"   by    them  "for  finding   the  Year's  Day  as  we  do  still;  in  England 

Covenant,"  and  told  that  it  should  be  the   dating  would  have  been  Jan.  1, 

burnt  by  the  hangman."   On  his  saying  1660,  or  Jan.  1, 1660-1. 


SCOTTISH   PARLIAMENT   OF    1661.  143 

lairds  or  lesser  barons  at  the  rate  of  two  sent  in  by  the 
lairds  of  each  shire,  and  representative  burgesses  elected  by 
the  various  Town  Councils.  Altogether,  there  were  present 
77  Nobles,  56  Lairds,  and  61  Commissiouers  of  Burghs. 
Great  care  had  been  taken  that  among  the  elected  lairds  and 
burgesses  there  should  be  none  but  King's  men.  But,  still 
farther  to  form  this  Parliament  for  the  work  required  from 
it,  there  was  a  revival,  at  Middleton's  instance,  of  that  old 
device  of  an  inner  committee,  or  deliberating  core  of  the 
Parliament,  under  the  name  of  The  Lords  of  the  Articles, 
which  had  been  found  so  convenient  by  James  I.,  and  also 
by  Charles  I.  till  the  reforming  spirit  of  his  later  Parliaments 
swept  it  away.  To  this  committee  of  12  selected  nobles, 
12  selected  lairds,  and  12  selected  burgesses,  was  entrusted 
the  preparation  of  all  bills,  and  in  fact  the  decision  what  the 
House  should  do  or  should  not  do  :  for  the  House  itself  all  that 
remained  was  to  receive  the  bills,  and,  after  such  brief  debate 
as  there  might  be,  pass  or  reject  them.  The  alternative  of 
rejection  in  the  present  Parliament  was  merely  nominal.  Day 
after  day,  as  bill  after  bill  came  in,  they  were  passed  almost 
as  fast  as  Middleton,  or  Chancellor  Glencairn,  chose  to  push 
them  through.  And  what  bills  they  were!  No  English 
Parliament,  certainly  not  the  Convention  Parliament,  though 
it  had  settled  England  for  Charles  submissively  enough, 
would  have  endured  such  bills  for  a  moment.  Hyde  could 
not  have  tried  any  such  course  in  England  if  he  would,  and 
would  have  thought  himself  dishonoured  as  an  Englishman 
and  lawyer  by  any  thought  of  trying  it  if  he  could.  But  he 
had  no  objection  to  the  establishment  of  absolute  despotism 
in  Scotland,  if  it  could  be  done  by  native  agency ;  and  there 
might  be  a  convenience  from  his  point  of  view  in  seeing 
Scotland  reduced  to  a  state  of  subjection  incredibly  below 
anything  possible  in  England.  At  all  events  the  soldier-earl 
and  his  rout  in  the  Edinburgh  Parliament,  with  Primrose  as 
the  draftsman  of  their  chief  bills,  were  free  to  plunge  on, 
legislating  in  their  own  way,  as  if  in  iron  boots,  and  with 
iron  flails,  tramping  and  thrashing  a  space  clear  for  the 
erection  of  Nebuchadnezzar's  image.      They  did  not  care  for 


•144  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

consistency  even  in  their  own  measures.  If  one  bill  did 
what  had  already  been  done  by  another,  so  much  the  better 
for  security  ;  if  one  bill  conflicted  with  another,  a  third  could 
be  applied  as  a  patch  of  reconciliation ;  if  Acts  passed  by 
former  Scottish  Parliaments  by  authority  and  in  the  interest 
of  Charles  I.,  or  of  Charles  II.  during"  his  brief  Scottish  king- 
ship in  1650-1,  were  conjoined  in  any  repealing-  bill  with 
Acts  of  a  different  character,  all  might  go  together,  and  the 
remedy  might  be  found  in  Acts  de  novo  on  the  King's  behalf. 
Men  implicated  in  this  Middletonian  phrenzy  of  1661  were 
to  look  back  afterwards  with  wonder  at  what  they  had  then 
done  and  consented  to.  Primrose,  the  draftsman  of  the  worst 
Acts,  is  one  instance.  "  He  often  confessed  to  me,"  says 
Burnet,  "  that  he  thought  he  was  as  one  bewitched  while  he 
"  drew  them  ;  for,  not  considering  the  ill  use  might  be  made 
"  of  them  afterwards,  he  drew  them  with  preambles  full  of 
"  extravagant  rhetoric,  reflecting  severely  on  the  proceedings 
"  of  the  late  times,  and  swelled  them  up  with  the  highest 
"  phrases  and  fullest  clauses  he  could  invent."  In  one  case 
Primrose  had  so  worded  an  Act  that,  but  for  the  interposition 
of  another  lawyer,  the  effect  would  have  been  stupendous 
beyond  even  Middleton's  calculations.  For  all  this  mad  haste 
and  recklessness  in  the  manner  of  Middleton's  discharge  of  his 
office  (his  matter  having  been  predetermined  coolly  enough) 
Burnet  can  account  only  in  one  way.  "  It  was  a  mad  roaring 
"  time,"  says  Burnet,  "  full  of  extravagance  ;  and  no  wonder 
"  it  was  so  when  the  men  of  affairs  were  almost  perpetually 
"drunk."  Middleton's  style  of  living  in  his  Commissioner- 
ship  was  the  most  splendid  the  nation  had  yet  seen.  There 
was  revel  in  his  house  all  night  and  every  night ;  and,  when 
they  went  to  Parliament  in  the  morning,  not  one  of  them  had 
a  clear  head  but  the  insatiable  Rothes l. 

1  Acts  of  the  Parliament  as  printed  in  At  the  same  time,  I  ought  to  say  that, 
the  Scottish  Acts  ;  Burnet,  1. 194—207  ;  if  the  chief  legislators  in  the  Scottish 
Wodrow,  I.  20- 31. —I  ought  to  say  of  Parliament  of  1661  were  constantly 
Burnet,  whom  it  has  been  the  fashion  drunk,  there  is  no  evidence  of  drunken- 
to  discredit,  that  I  have  found  his  in-  ness  in  the  form  and  wording  of  the 
formation  about  Scotland  at  this  time  preserved  and  printed  Acts  of  that  Par- 
verified  in  all  essential  particulars  by  liament.  They  are  very  numerous  ;  and 
contemporary  records  of  the  existence  there  must  have  been  enormous  industry 
of  which  he  cannot  have  been  aware.  in  preparing  and  draltiDg  them,  with 


SCOTTISH  PARLIAMENT   OF    1661.  145 

A  few  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Parliament  may  be  enume- 
rated specially.  On  the  first  day  of  their  sitting-,  after  yielding 
to  Middleton's  demand  that  Chancellor  Glencairn  should  be 
president  ex  officio,  they  passed  an  Act  confirming  that  rule 
and  also  imposing  upon  themselves  an  oath  of  allegiance 
and  supremacy,  acknowledging  the  King's  sovereignty  "  over 
all  persons  and  in  all  causes,"  and  binding  them  "  never  to 
decline "  the  same.  This  oath  struck  at  the  fundamental 
principle  of  Scottish  Presbytery,  which  denies  to  the  civil 
power  supremacy  in  spiritual  causes ;  and,  though  Middleton 
and  Glencairn  explained  that  the  oath  did  not  mean  to  touch 
these,  the  Earl  of  Cassilis,  Lord  Melville,  and  Lord  Kilburnie 
refused  to  take  it,  unless  that  exception  were  put  on  record. 
On  the  4th  of  January  there  was  a  very  proper  order  for 
taking  down  the  skull  of  Montrose  from  its  spike  on  the 
Tolbooth,  and  for  the  burial  of  the  same,  with  his  disinterred 
trunk  from  the  Boroughmuir,  and  his  collected  limbs  from 
Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  Perth,  and  Stirling,  with  all  honours,  at 
the  King's  expense.  On  the  11th  they  passed  an  Act  de- 
claring it  to  be  "  his  Majesty's  prerogative  to  choose  officers 
of  State,  Councillors,  and  Lords  of  Session"  and  pronouncing 
all  laws,  acts,  and  practices  to  the  contrary  since  1637  to 
have  been  undutiful  and  disloyal ;  and  on  the  same  day  they 
passed  another  Act,  asserting  it  to  be  part  of  the  King's  pre- 
rogative to  call,  prorogue,  or  dissolve  all  Parliaments  or  poli- 
tical conventions,  declaring  all  meetings  without  his  warrant 
to  be  void  and  null,  and  repealing  all  Acts  to  the  contrary 
since  1640,  with  the  addition  that  the  future  impugning  or 
Questioning  of  anything  in  this  Act  should  be  accounted 
treason.  On  the  16th  they  issued  a  proclamation  banishing 
from  Edinburgh,  within  forty-eight  hours,  all  persons  who 
had  been  accessory  to  the  "  Remonstrance  "  of  1650  or  to  the 
book  called  The  Causes  of  God's  Wrath,  and  passed  (1)  An 
Act  forbidding  "  convocations,  leagues,  or  bands "  without 
leave  of  the  Sovereign,  and  reflecting  on  the  Covenants  and 
all  such  bands  back  to  1638,  and  (2)  An  Act  vesting  the  sole 

perfect  sobriety  somewhere,  and  perfect       of  every  day.    One  of  them  is  an  Act 
command  of  the  pen  through  portions       against  Swearing  and  Drunkenness. 

VOL.  VI.  L 


146  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

power  of  peace  and  war  in  the  King",  as  holding  his  crown 
from  God  alone,  and  declaring  it  to  be  high  treason  "  for  any 
subjects,  upon  any  pretext  whatsoever,  to  rise  in  arms  without 
the  King's  allowance/''  On  the  22nd  they  passed  an  Act 
declaring  the  Convention  of  Estates  of  1643,  which  entered 
into  The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant  with  England,  to  be 
null  and  void,  and  annulling  also  the  Act  of  Parliament  of 
1644,  and  all  other  Acts,  ratifying  the  proceedings  of  that 
Convention.  On  the  25th,  they  passed  an  Act  declaring 
"  that  there  is  no  obligation  upon  this  Kingdom,  by  covenant, 
"  treaties,  or  otherwise,  to  endeavour  by  arms  a  reformation 
"  of  religion  in  the  Kingdom  of  England,"  pronouncing 
therefore  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant  and  all  connected 
oaths  or  promises  to  be  not  obligatory,  and  forbidding  the 
renewing  of  the  same.  There  followed  an  Act  approving  of 
Hamilton's  Engagement  of  1648  and  cancelling  all  subsequent 
condemnations  thereof,  and  an  Act  condemning  the  prior 
Declaration  of  the  Kingdom  of  Scotland  in  January  1647. 
Then  there  was  a  most  comprehensive  Act,  imposing  on  all 
persons  in  any  public  trust,  or  to  be  appointed  to  such,  an 
oath  of  supremacy  and  allegiance,  formulated  so  as  to  reca- 
pitulate the  Acts  respecting  Prerogative,  or  annulling  the 
Covenants,  already  passed  in  the  present  Parliament,  and  to 
require  sworn  obedience  to  them  all. 

These  and  other  Acts,  some  of  them  overlapping  each 
other,  had  been  touched  by  the  sceptre  of  the  High  Com- 
missioner, and  so  converted  into  statute,  when  Middleton, 
observing  that  none  of  them  assaulted  Presbytery  directly, 
wanted  something  that  should  have  that  effect.  The  rescind- 
ing of  the  Acts  of  certain  particular  years  by  which  Charles  I. 
and  Charles  II.  themselves  had  recognised,  established,  or 
confirmed  the  Presbyterian  constitution  of  the  Kirk,  was  the 
strictly  correct  method,  but  would  have  stirred  awkward 
recollections  and  roused  clamour.  In  this  difficulty,  "  Primrose 
:'  proposed,  but  half  in  jest,  as  he  assured  me,"  says  Burnet, 
•'  that  the  better  and  shorter  way  would  be  to  pass  a  general 
"  Act  Rescissory,  as  it  was  called,  annulling  all  the  Parliaments 
"that  had  been  held  since  the  year  1633."     Such  an  Act, 


SCOTTISH   PARLIAMENT   OF    1661.  147 

though  annulling  over  again  a  good  deal  that  had  been 
annulled  already  by  previous  Acts,  and  annulling  some  things 
that  previous  Acts  had  ratified,  would  have  the  advantage 
of  scraping  bare,  as  it  were,  the  whole  tract  of  time  in  which 
Presbytery  or  anything  favourable  to  Presbytery  could  pos- 
sibly exhibit  any  legal  growth  or  lodgment,  and  so  of 
effectually  extirpating  the  plant  unless  it  should  be  replanted 
by  the  King's  will.  But  the  proposition  was  of  a  monstrous 
character.  There  was  no  plea  that  could  invalidate  some  of 
the  Parliaments  in  which  Charles  and  his  father  had  sat 
voluntarily,  on  speculation  for  their  own  purposes  and  in- 
terests, except  that  spiritual  peers  or  prelates  had  not  sat  in 
them  too ;  and  that  plea  would  invalidate  the  present  Parlia- 
ment itself.  Accordingly,  "  at  a  private  juncto,"  says  Burnet, 
"  the  proposition,  though  well  liked,  was  let  fall,  as  not  capable 
"  to  have  good  colours  put  upon  it."  But  Middleton  con- 
tinued to  discuss  the  matter  with  his  juncto.  "  When  they 
"  had  drunk  higher,  they  resolved  to  venture  on  it.  Primrose 
"  was  then  ill ;  so  one  was  sent  to  him  to  desire  him  to  pre- 
"  pare  a  bill  to  that  effect."  So  says  Burnet;  but,  in  fact, 
Middleton  also  wrote  to  Primrose,  and  his  letter  is  extant, 
dated  March  27th,  1661.  "My  Lord,"  he  says  to  Primrose, 
"  the  Act  that  is  now  before  you  is  of  the  greatest  consequence 
"  imaginable,  and  is  like  to  meet  with  many  difficulties  if  not 
"  speedily  gone  about.  Petitions  are  preparing,  and,  if  the 
"  thing  were  done,  it  would  dash  all  these  bustling  oppo- 
"  sitions.  My  Lord,  your  eminent  services  done  to  his 
"  Majesty  in  this  Parliament  cannot  but  be  remembered  to  your 
"  honour  and  advantage.  I  am  so  much  concerned,  because 
"  of  the  great  help  and  assistance  I  have  had  from  you,  that 
"  I  cannot,  without  injustice  and  ingratitude,  be  wanting  in 
"  a  just  resentment.  Now,  I  am  more  concerned  in  this  than 
"  I  was  ever  in  a  particular.  The  speedy  doing  is  the  thing 
"  I  propose  as  the  great  advantage,  if  it  be  possible  to 
"  prepare  it  to  be  presented  to-morrow  by  ten  o'clock  in 
"  the  forenoon  to  the  [Lords  of  the]  Articles,  that  it  may  be 
"  brought  into  the  Parliament  to-morrow  in  the  afternoon." 
Primrose  did  as  he  was  bid,  and  drew  the  Act  Rescissory.     But 

L    3 


148  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

he  "  perceived,"  says  Burnet,  "  that  it  was  so  ill-grounded 
"  that  he  thought,  when  it  came  to  be  better  considered,  it 
"  must  certainly  be  laid  aside."  Not  so.  The  next  day,  March 
28,  it  was  approved,  without  a  change,  by  the  Lords  of  the 
Articles,  brought  into  the  House,  and,  though  vehemently 
opposed  by  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  the  Earl  of  Crawford,  and 
others,  carried  by  a  large  majority.  Middleton  touched  it 
with  the  sceptre  immediately,  without  waiting  for  leave  from 
the  King.  "  This  was  a  most  extravagant  act  and  only  fit 
"  to  be  concluded  after  a  drunken  bout,"  says  Burnet  in  con- 
clusion. Middleton,  at  all  events,  must  have  been  perfectly 
sober  when  he  wrote  his  note  to  Primrose. — Perhaps  to  stay 
the  outcry  against  this  tremendous  Act  Rescissory,  there  came 
soon  afterwards  An  Act  Concerning  Religion  and  Church  Govern- 
ment. It  declared  his  Majesty's  resolution  to  maintain  the 
Protestant  religion,  godliness,  and  sound  morality,  with 
countenance  of  all  ministers  of  the  Gospel  behaving  them- 
selves obediently  and  within  the  bounds  of  their  calling; 
and  it  announced  that,  "as  to  the  government  of  the  Church, 
"  his  Majesty  will  make  it  his  care  to  settle  and  secure  the 
"  same  in  such  a  frame  as  shall  be  most  agreeable  to  the 
"  Word  of  God,  most  suitable  to  Monarchical  Government,  and 
"  most  complying  with  the  public  peace  and  quiet  of  the 
"  Kingdom."  Presbyterians  might  construe  these  phrases  as 
well  as  they  could ;  but  they  had  at  least  the  annexed  assurance 
that  "  in  the  meantime  his  Majesty,  with  advice  and  consent" 
of  his  Parliament,  "  doth  allow  the  present  administration  by 
"  Sessions,  Presbyteries,  and  Synods,  they  keeping  within 
"  bounds  and  behaving  themselves  as  said  is,  and  that  not- 
"  withstanding  of  the  preceding  Act  Rescissory."  No  word 
now  of  the  General  Assembly  promised  in  his  Majesty's  letter 
of  the  preceding  August  \ 

Thus,  in  Parliament  itself,  Middleton  had  borne  down  all 
before  him.  The  Earl  of  Cassilis,  still  refusing  the  oath  of 
supremacy  in  the  form  in  which  it  had  been  passed,  was  ex- 

1  Life  of  Blair,  371— 382 ;  Burnet,  I.  Middleton's  Letter  to  Primrose  is  given 

197—203  ;  Wodrow,  I.  22—29,  and  Ap-  from  the  Wodrow  MSS.) ;  Printed  Acts 

pendix,  Nos.  VII,  VIII,  X,  XI  ;  Baillie,  of  the  Scottish  Parliament  of  1661. 
III.  46^—465,  and  Appendix,  586  (where 


PERPLEXITY   OF   THE   SCOTTISH   CLERGY.  149 

eluded  from  the  House  ;  and  the  opposition  by  Crawford  and 
others  had  been  overwhelmed.  Over  the  country  the  alarm 
could  express  itself  only  in  popular  mutterings,  or  in  such 
remonstrances  as  could  be  ventured  on  by  the  clergy  in  their 
pulpits,  or  in  presbyterial  meeting's.  The  boldest  com- 
mentator in  the  pulpit  on  the  Acts  abrogating  the  Covenant 
had  been  a  Mr.  Robert  McVaird  of  Glasgow;  and  he  had 
been  brought  to  Edinburgh  under  guard,  to  answer  for 
"  treasonable  preaching."  In  a  graver  way,  but  with  equal 
steadiness,  the  venerable  Mr.  Douglas  and  other  ministers  of 
Edinburgh  had  done  what  they  could,  both  by  papers  and  by 
interviews  with  Middleton.  There  were  still  to  be  meetings 
of  synods  in  April,  at  some  of  which  there  were  to  be  demon- 
strations for  the  Covenant  and  against  Prelacy  ;  but  even  in 
these  larger  gatherings  of  the  clergy,  where  they  were  not 
broken  up  by  authority,  there  was  to  be  such  management 
that  much  of  the  business  was  to  be  turned  rather  into  the 
deposing  and  censuring  of  eminent  Protesters  not  already 
censured.  Indeed,  in  aid  of  Middleton,  a  wave  of  feeling  in 
favour  of  prelacy  had  begun  to  be  visible  among  the  Resolu- 
tioner  clergy,  and  especially  the  younger  clergy  of  that 
denomination,  not  only  in  Aberdeenshire  and  the  North, 
where  the  prelatic  feeling  had  been  lurking  ineradicably  from 
of  old,  but  even  in  the  Lothians  and  other  southern  districts. 
Care  had  been  taken  to  bring  the  cleverest  of  such  compliant 
ministers  to  Edinburgh,  to  preach,  in  turn  with  Mr.  Douglas 
and  others  of  his  steady  type,  before  the  Commissioner  and 
the  Parliament;  and  some  of  the  sermons  so  preached  had 
been  almost  undisguisedly  prelatic.  One  preacher  had  called 
the  Covenant  the  Golden  Calf  of  Scotland.  Mr.  Sharp  him- 
self, of  course,  had  been  one  of  the  first  to  preach  (Jan.  6),  and 
had  delivered  a  very  puzzling  sermon  ;  after  which  he  had  gone 
quietly  to  St.  Andrews,  to  be  inducted  into  one  of  the  profes- 
sorships of  the  New  College  there,  and  made  a  Doctor  of 
Divinity,  all  in  preparation  for  another  mission  to  London,  on 
which  he  was  to  be  sent  shortly  by  Middleton  1. 

1  Wodrow,L31— 41 ;  Life  of  Blair,  373  and  384  ;  Baillie,  III.  420— 421 ;  Claren- 
don, 1110. 


150         LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Before  the  Parliament  had  completed  that  series  of  their 
public  Acts  of  which  mention  has  been  made,  they  were  deep 
in  the  trials  of  Argyle,  Guthrie,  Gillespie,  Swinton,  and  the 
other  delinquents  in  custody.  Who  or  how  many  might  be 
the  delinquents  to  be  proceeded  against  eventually  was  still 
unknown,  for  the  policy  was  to  postpone  any  general  Act  of 
Indemnity  as  long  as  possible,  so  as  to  keep  all  in  terror. 
There  were  enough  in  custody  to  begin  with.  Argyle's  trial 
began  on  the  13th  of  February,  Guthrie's  on  the  20th, 
Swinton's  on  the  22nd,  and  Gillespie's  on  the  6th  of  March. 
Rutherford,  who  had  been  cited  to  appear,  and  would  have 
been  conjoined  with  Guthrie  and  Gillespie,  died  at  St. 
Andrews,  March  20th  ;  and  McVaird  and  the  other  prisoners 
waited  their  turns.  The  indictment  against  Argyle  went 
through  his  whole  life  since  1638,  fixing  culpability  especially 
on  certain  dated  actions  of  his  in  his  government  of  Scotland, 
but  bringing  in  also  his  correspondence  with  Cromwell,  and 
trying  to  fasten  on  him  particularly  the  charge  of  having 
been  accessory  to  the  death  of  King  Charles  before  the  fact. 
The  nature  of  the  indictments  against  the  others  may  be 
guessed.  All  made  dignified  appearances  and  able  defences. 
Argyle  strenuously  denied  any  cognisance  of  the  intention  to 
put  Charles  to  death,  and  expressed  his  detestation  of  the  act. 
Guthrie  and  Gillespie  argued  powerfully  for  the  legality  of  all 
they  had  done  as  Protesters  or  Remonstrants.  These  three 
had  the  assistance  of  counsel,  which  Swinton  seems  to  have 
declined.  His  own  appearance  and  demeanour  in  his  Quaker's 
garb  were  impressive  enough.  The  trials  were  protracted  by 
adjournments  from  day  to  day,  and  were  not  at  an  end  in 
April.  Especially  in  Argyle's  case  there  was  "  no  lack  of  full 
hearing  and  debates  to  the  uttermost,"  and  it  seemed  very 
dubious  indeed  whether  the  Government  would  secure  a  con- 
viction \ 

Episcopacy  not  having  yet  been  set  up  in  Scotland,  though 
the  ground  had  been  cleared  for  it,  we  cannot  end  our  sketch 
of  Scotland  in  the  first  year  of  the  Restoration,  as  we  ended 

1  Baillie,  III.  465—467  ;  Wodrow,  I.       There  is  a  full  account  of  Argyle's  in 
42  et  seq.  (for   details   of   the   trials).       Howell's  State  Trials. 


THE    CORONATION   OF    CHARLES.  151 

that  of  Ireland,  with  a  list  of  actual  bishops.  The  only 
Scottish  bishop  now  alive,  of  those  that  had  been  swept  away 
by  the  Glasgow  General  Assembly  of  1638,  was  Thomas 
Sydserf,  Bishop  of  Galloway.  He  might  expect  his  reward 
for  having  lived  so  long ;  but,  as  two  archbishops  and  twelve 
bishops  were  required  for  the  proper  and  complete  Episcopa- 
tion of  Scotland,  there  may  have  been  many  expectants 
besides  old  Sydserf. 

In  April  1661,  when  the  heads  of  Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  and 
Ireton  had  been  exposed  on  the  top  of  Westminster  Hall  for 
two  months  and  more,  London  was  astir  for  the  grand  ceremony 
of  the  Coronation  of  Charles. 

Other  preparations  having  been  made,  there  was,  on  the 
10th  of  April,  a  creation  of  sixty-eight  knights  of  the  Bath, 
in  order  to  their  attendance,  in  the  full  costume  of  that 
knig-hthood  of  the  cross  and  red  ribbon,  at  the  coming 
solemnity.  Among  the  sixty-eight  were  John,  Viscount 
Brackley,  and  his  brother  Sir  William  Egerton,  sons  of  the 
Earl  of  Bridgewater  who  had  been  "  the  elder  brother " 
in  Comus;  also  Sir  Henry  Hyde,  eldest  son  of  Chancellor 
Hyde,  and  Sir  Rowland  Bellasis,  brother  of  Viscount 
Falconbridge  ;  also  Sir  John  Denham  the  poet,  now  in  the 
lucrative  post  of  his  Majesty's  surveyor  of  works,  formerly 
held  by  Inigo  Jones ;  also,  unabashed  in  such  company,  the 
fortunate  and  forgiven  Sir  Richard  Ingoldsby.  Then,  on 
the  16th,  with  a  view  to  the  same  coming  solemnity,  there 
was  a  chapter  of  the  supreme  Knighthood  of  the  most  noble 
and  illustrious  Order  of  the  Garter,  in  St.  George's  Chapel, 
Windsor,  for  the  purpose  of  settling  the  arrangement  of  the 
twenty-six  stalls,  in  two  rows  of  thirteen  each,  then  com- 
posing that  great  order.  On  the  Sovereign's  side,  after  the 
royal  stall  itself,  were  the  stalls  of  the  Duke  of  York,  the 
Prince  Elector  of  Brandenburg,  Prince  Rupert,  the  Earl  of 
Salisbury,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  the  Duke  of  Ormond, 
the  Earl  of  Southampton,  the  Earl  of  Bristol,  Count  Marsin, 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  and  the  Earl 
of  Manchester;    and  on  the  other   side,  after  one  stall   left 


152  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

void,  were  the  stalls  of  the  Elector  Palatine,  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  Prince  Edward,  the  Earl  of  Berkshire,  the  Duke 
D'Espernon,  the  Marquis  of  Newcastle,  the  Prince  of  Tarente, 
the  Duke  of  Albemarle,  and  the  Earls  of  Oxford,  Lindsey, 
and  Strafford.  Such  of  these  peers  as  were  now  in  England 
were  to  figure  at  the  coronation  in  the  dark-blue  velvet 
mantles,  crimson  velvet  surcoats,  gold  collars  with  the  George 
depending,  and  other  accoutrements,  of  this  highest  and 
most  gorgeous  representation  of  English  heraldry.  But,  in 
addition  to  these  peers  of  the  supreme  knighthood  and  the 
rest  of  the  existing  body  of  the  peerage,  it  was  thought 
proper  that  there  should  be  a  special  creation  of  a  few  new 
peerages,  to  be  conferred  on  those  who  had  eminently  served 
his  Majesty  in  the  Restoration  or  in  the  Convention  Parlia- 
ment, and  had  not  already,  like  Monk  and  Montague,  received 
their  reward  in  this  form.  Accordingly,  in  the  Banqueting 
House  at  Whitehall,  on  the  20th  of  April,  the  King  created 
six  earls  and  six  barons,  as  follows  : — 

Eaels. 

Lord  Chancellor  Hyde  (already  Baron  Hyde  of  Hindon) :  created 
Earl  of  Clarendon,  and  Viscount  Cornbury. 

Arthur  Annesley  (Viscount  Valentia  in  the  Irish  Peerage  by  the 
recent  death  of  his  father)  :  created  Earl  of  Anglesey,  and  Baron 
Annesley  of  Newport- Pagnel. 

Thomas  Brudenell  (Baron  Brudenell  since  1627)  :  created  Earl  of 
Cardigan. 

Arthur  Capel  (Baron  Capel  since  the  execution  of  his  father  in 
1648-9)  :  created  Earl  of  Essex,  and  Viscount  Maiden. 

Sir  John  Greenville  (the  agent  for  the  Restoration  between  the 
King  and  Monk)  :  created  Earl  of  Bath. 

Charles  Howard  (the  Cromwellian) :  created  Earl  of  Carlisle,  Vis- 
count Howard  of  Morpeth,  and  Baron  Dacre  of  Gilsland.  He 
had  been  created  Viscount  Howard  of  Morpeth  and  Baron  Gils- 
land  by  Cromwell,  July  20,  1657  ;  but  that  fact  has  sunk  out  of 
the  peerage-books. 

Barons. 

Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  Bart. :  created  Baron  Ashley. 

Sir  Frederick  Cornwallis,  Bart.  (Treasurer  of  the  Household)  :  created 

Baron  Cornwallis. 
Sir  George  Booth,  Bart. :  created  Baron  Delamere. 
Sir  Horatio  Townshend,  Bart. :  created  Baron  Townshend. 


THE   CORONATION   OF   CHARLES.  153 

Denzil  Holies,  Esq. :  created  Baron  Holies. 
John  Crewe,  Esq.  :  created  Baron  Crewe. 

Two  days  after  this  creation  of  peers,  viz.  on  Monday, 
April  22,  the  day  before  the  Coronation,  there  was,  according' 
to  ancient  custom,  a  procession  from  the  Tower  to  West- 
minster, "  in  such  a  glorious  and  splendid  manner  that  it 
"  seemed  to  outvie  whatever  had  been  seen  before  of  gallantry 
"and  riches."  All  along  the  streets,  and  through  four 
triumphal  arches,  erected  in  Leadenhall  Street,  Cornhill, 
Cheapside,  and  Fleet  Street,  there  marched,  with  hurrahing" 
and  music  of  drums  and  trumpets,  a  regulated  muster  of 
horse-guards,  equerries,  esquires,  chaplains,  lawyers,  judges, 
knights,  sons  of  peers,  peers  themselves  in  their  orders,  great 
state-officers,  heralds,  and  horse-guards  again,  all  conveying 
his  Majesty  from  the  main  commercial  city  to  the  more 
sacred  suburban  one  where  there  was  to  be  the  coronation  in 
the  Abbey  the  next  day 1. 

That  day,  Tuesday,  April  23,  had  been  selected  as  being 
St.  George's  day,  the  anniversary  of  the  patron  saint  of  all 
England.  We  vote  it  now  to  have  been  also  the  anniversary 
of  the  birth-day  of  Shakespeare  about  a  hundred  years  before; 
but  no  one  then  thought  much  about  Shakespeare's  birth-day. 
And  no  wonder  in  such  a  vast  bustle  for  the  crowning  of 
Charles  as  was  kept  up  for  four-and-twenty  hours  between 
Westminster  Hall  and  the  Abbey. 

Early  in  the  morning  Charles  was  in  the  Hall,  "  arrayed 
in  his  royal  robes  of  crimson  velvet  furred  with  ermine," 
and  with  the  judges,  nobles,  and  heralds,  and  the  elite  of 
yesterday's  procession,  about  him,  all  duly  robed  and  in 
their  ranks,  but  with  bishops  and  doctors  of  divinity  now 
conspicuous  in  the  front,  and  with  privileged  spectators 
looking  down  from  the  galleries.  There  was  the  ceremonious 
arranging  of  the  crown,  the  sceptre,  the  various  swords,  the 
rest  of  the  regalia,  and  other  mystic  implements  that  were 
-  to  be  borne  into  the  Abbey.  All  being  ready,  the  stately 
march  thither  began,  about  ten  o'clock,  through  Palace  Yard 

1  Phillips  (Baker's  Chronicle  continued),  735 — 737. 


154  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  the  Gate-House,  and  along  the  end  of  King's  Street  and 
the  Great  Sanctuary,  over  blue  cloth  laid  between  railings  all 
the  way. — The  huge  assemblage  once  fairly  marshalled  in  the 
Abbey  by  the  heralds,  all  in  their  appointed  places,  whether 
on  the  floor  or  in  galleries,  including  the  great  ladies  and 
some  fourteen  or  fifteen  ambassadors  and  envoys  from  foreign 
powers,  the  King  entered  by  the  west  door.  Then  there 
pealed  out  the  first  anthem :  "  I  was  glad  when  they  said 
unto  me,  We  will  go  into  the  house  of  the  Lord."  After  a 
few  moments  of  kneeling  at  a  stool  for  private  devotion,  the 
King  was  led  to  that  part  of  the  Abbey  where  there  was  the 
raised  dais  with  the  throne  of  state.  Then  Gilbert  Sheldon,  the 
Bishop  of  London,  did  so  much  of  the  ceremony  as  had  been 
arranged  for  this  point.  Turning  first  to  the  south,  then  to  the 
west,  and  then  to  the  north,  the  Bishop,  the  King  standing  up 
and  turning  with  him,  called  on  the  people  three  times  in 
each  direction  to  say  whether  they  accepted  Charles  as  their 
legitimate  sovereign.  The  replies  came  in  acclamations ; 
and,  the  same  question  having  been  put  to  the  nobility,  there 
was  another  anthem :  "  Let  thy  hand  be  strengthened,  and 
thy  right  hand  be  exalted;  let  justice  and  judgment  be  the 
preparation  of  thy  seat,  and  mercy  and  truth  go  before  thy 
face."  After  this  there  was  the  movement  from  the  throne 
to  the  altar,  the  King  surrounded  by  bishops  and  great 
nobles,  carrying  the  regalia.  These  were  placed  reverently  on 
the  altar,  one  by  one,  by  the  Bishop  of  London ;  and  then, 
the  King  kneeling,  the  bishop  prayed  :  "  O  God,  which  dost 
visit  those  that 'are  humble,  and  dost  comfort  us  by  thy  Holy 
Spirit,  send  down  thy  grace  upon  this  thy  servant  Charles,  that 
by  him  we  may  feel  Thy  presence  among  us,  through  Jesus 
Christ :  Amen."  It  was  next  the  turn  of  Morley,  Bishop  of 
Worcester.  Ascending  the  pulpit,  he  preached  the  coronation- 
sermon  from  Proverbs  xxviii.  2  :  "  For  the  transgression  of  a 
land  many  are  the  princes  thereof;  but  by  a  man  of  under- 
standing and  knowledge  the  state  thereof  shall  be  prolonged." 
Sermon  ended,  the  Bishop  of  London  again  officiated,  by 
asking  the  King  whether  he  would  take  the  coronation-oaths, 
to  which  Warner,   Bishop  of  Rochester,  added  the  request^ 


THE   CORONATION    OF    CHARLES.  155 

according  to  ancient  form,  that  he  would  preserve  the 
Bishops  and  the  Church  in  their  privileges.  The  oaths 
having  heen  solemnly  taken  at  the  altar,  the  King  again 
knelt,  and  Sheldon  prayed,  "We  beseech  thee,  O  Lord, 
Holy  Father,  Almighty  and  Everlasting  God.  for  this  thy 
servant  Charles,"  &c. ;  and,  the  Kiug  still  kneeling,  and 
all  the  bishops  kneeling,  and  the  Dean  of  Westminster 
kneeling,  "  they  began  the  litany,  the  quires  singing  the 
responses."  After  that  there  were  three  more  short  prayers 
by  Sheldon,  at  the  end  of  the  last  of  which  Juxon,  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  who  was  too  feeble  to  have  appeared  earlier, 
did  come  forward.  Standing  before  the  altar,  he  spoke  and 
was  responded  to  as  follows : — "  Archbishop.  Lift  up  your 
"hearts.  Besp.  We  lift  them  up  to  the  Lord.  Archbishop. 
"  Let  us  give  thanks  unto  the  Lord  our  God.  Besp.  It  is 
"  meet  and  right  so  to  do.  Archbishop.  It  is  very  meet 
"  and  right,  and  our  bounden  duty,  that  we  should  at  all 
"times,  and  in  all  places,  give  thanks  unto  Thee,  O  Lord, 
"  Holy  Father,"  &c.  Then  came  the  central  pageantry  of  all. 
First  there  was  the  Anointing,  for  which  the  Kino-  had  been 
meanwhile  sufficiently  disrobed.  It  consisted  in  the  taking  by 
the  archbishop  of  the  holy  oil  which  had  been  poured  out  of  an 
ampulla  (Latin  for  bottle)  into  a  spoon,  and  in  his  anointing 
therewith,  in  the  manner  of  a  cross,  the  palms  of  the  King's 
hands,  and  then  his  breast,  and  then  his  back  between  the 
shoulders,  and  then  his  shoulders  themselves,  and  then  the 
"  two  bowings  of  his  arms,"  and  lastly  the  crown  of  his  royal 
head.  There  were  suitable  prayers  by  the  archbishop  and 
anthems  by  the  quire  during  the  process.  After  the  oil-films 
on  his  Majesty's  person  had  been  "  dried  up  with  fine  linen," 
there  was  the  proper  manipulation  about  him,  by  the  arch- 
bishop or  others,  of  the  various  symbolic  implements  from 
the  altar.  One  by  one,  the  coif,  the  surplice,  the  taffeta 
hose  and  sandals,  the  spurs,  the  sword  of  state,  the 
armill  or  neck-bracelet,  and  the  mantle  of  cloth  of  gold, 
were  produced  and  applied,  with  formulas  of  expository 
incantation  and  blessing.  All  the  while  they  had  been 
putting  St.  Edward's  chair    in  due  place   right   against  the 


156  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

altar ;  and,  St..  Edward's  crown  having"  been  already  handled 
and  blessed,  and  the  King-  having-  sat  clown  in  the  sacred 
chair,  the  assemblage  hung-  breathless  while  the  aged  arch- 
bishop, bringing-  the  crown  again  from  the  altar,  placed  it 
on  the  King's  head.  Then,  through  the  Abbey,  there  rang 
shouts  again  and  again  of  God  save  the  King,  till  the  boom 
of  the  ordnance  in  the  Tower,  fired  by  signal,  informed  those 
within  that  the  whole  world  without  knew  that  the  superb 
moment  had  passed.  When  the  noise  had  subsided,  there 
were  more  prayers  and  anthems ;  and,  the  dukes,  marquises, 
earls,  and  viscounts  having  put  on  their  coronets,  and  the 
barons  their  caps,  there  was  the  delivery  by  the  archbishop 
to  the  King,  still  seated  in  St.  Edward's  chair,  of  the  ring 
and  the  sceptre,  and  the  sceptre  with  the  dove.  Of  the 
kneelings  and  other  religious  services  of  prayer  and  song 
that  followed,  and  the  kissing  of  the  bishops  by  the  King 
and  the  homagings  to  the  King  by  the  bishops  and  the  peers, 
and  the  changes  of  place  and  posture  in  the  Abbey,  and  the 
proclamation  of  the  King's  general  pardon  by  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Clarendon  and  heralds,  and  the  flinging  of  gold  and 
silver  medals  about  by  the  Treasurer  of  the  Household,  and 
the  readings  of  the  Epistle  and  Gospel,  and  the  intoning  of 
the  Creed  by  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  the  music  from  the 
violins,  and  other  instruments  by  performers  in  scarlet,  with 
the  bangs  from  the  drums  and  blasts  from  the  trumpets,  the 
reckoning  becomes  incoherent.  People  were  tired  of  these  fag- 
ends  and  longed  to  be  out  of  the  Abbey. — Mr.  Pepys,  for  one, 
who  had  been  admitted  bv  favour  of  Sir  John  Denham,  and 
had  been  sitting  in  a  cramped  place  since  half  past  four 
in  the  morning,  left  the  Abbey  shortly  after  the  showering 
of  the  medals,  of  which  he  had  not  been  so  fortunate  as  to 
obtain  one.  He  made  his  way,  by  privilege,  along  the  railed 
footway  into  Westminster  Hall,  where  his  wife  was  among 
the  ladies  in  one  of  the  galleries,  and  where  they  were  all 
waiting  now  to  behold  the  coronation  banquet  with  which 
the  day  was  to  be  wound  up,  and  for  which  the  tables  were 
already  laid.  Not,  however,  till  there  had  been  the  Holy 
Communion   in    the  Abbey,    with    the   consecration   of  the 


THE   CORONATION   OF   CHARLES.  157 

elements,  and  the  handing  of  the  bread  to  the  King-  by  the 
Archbishop  and  the  cup  by  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  did 
the  great  return-procession  of  the  main  personages  over  the 
footway  of  blue  cloth  fill  the  body  of  the  Hall  once  more, 
and  give  promise  of  the  concluding  sight. — When  the  King 
did  come  into  the  Hall,  crowned  and  sceptred,  and  attended 
in  state,  "under  a  canopy  borne  up  by  six  silver  staves," 
and  had  made  his  way  to  the  upper  end,  and  the  Bishop  of 
London  had  said  grace,  and  all  had  sat  down  at  their  several 
tables,  there  was  infinite  variety  of  amusement  in  observing 
the  presentation  of  the  dishes  at  the  chief  table,  and  the 
incidents  between  the  courses.  One  of  these  was  the  entry 
into  the  Hall,  just  before  the  second  course,  of  the  King's 
champion,  Sir  Edward  Dymock,  on  "a  goodly  white  courser," 
all  armed,  and  with  heralds  and  trumpeters.  After  proclama- 
tion by  York  Herald  that  here  was  a  champion  ready  to 
maintain  with  his  life,  against  all  comers,  that  Charles  the 
Second  was  the  lawful  King  of  England,  Dymock  flung 
down  his  gauntlet,  once,  twice,  thrice,  with  no  challenge  to 
the  contrary,  and  then,  having  received  a  gold  cup,  full  of  wine, 
which  his  Majesty  had  tasted  to  his  health,  drank  it  off  and 
backed  out  of  the  Hall.  The  remainder  of  the  dinner  lapsed 
into  some  disorder,  the  hungry  bystanders  crowding  round  the 
tables,  with  inconvenient  curiosity,  to  see  what  they  could 
get.  Mr.  Pepys,  by  the  kindness  of  his  patron  Lord  Sandwich, 
managed  to  carry  off  from  one  of  the  tables  "  four  rabbits  and 
a  pullet,"  with  which,  and  a  little  bread,  he  withdrew  into 
a  corner,  to  refresh  himself  and  some  friends.  It  was  about 
six  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  the  King  rose  to  retire,  the 
third  course  not  having  yet  been  served,  and  so  converted  the 
remnant  of  the  affair  into  a  mere  upstanding  and  cheering 
mob. — But,  lo  !  just  as  his  Majesty  was  going,  or  a  little 
time  before,  what  a  change  in  the  skies  outside !  All  that 
day,  as  through  the  last,  the  weather  had  been  remarkably 
fair  and  propitious  ;  but  now  it  had  gloomed  and  had  fallen 
"a-raining  and  thundering  and  lightening,"  so  that  people 
remained  huddled  in  the  Hall,  talking  to  each  other  super- 
stitiously,  after  his  Majesty  had  departed.     When  they  did 


158  LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

disperse,  it  still  rained  and  thundered.  There  could  be  no 
fireworks  that  night,  and  London  and  Westminster  had  to  be 
content  with  bonfires.  And,  through  the  night,  on  the  roof 
of  Westminster  Hall,  by  the  flashes  of  the  lightning,  one 
might  have  discerned,  as  distinctly  as  through  the  whole 
ceremonial  of  the  day,  the  three  fixed  black  poles,  with  the 
three  skulls  on  their  tops  ;  and  the  anointed  and  crowned 
King  had  gone  home  to  Mrs.  Palmer  ;  and  a  venerable  arch- 
bishop, and  a  bevy  of  good  and  learned  bishops  about  him, 
had  done  their  blasphemous  uttermost ;  and  is  it  God  or 
Mephistopheles  that  governs  the  world 1  ? 

On  the  8th  of  May  1661,  a  fortnight  after  his  Majesty's 
coronation,  the  new  Parliament  met.  This  new  English  Parlia- 
ment, the  second  of  the  Restoration  era,  differed  from  its  pre- 
decessor, the  Convention  Parliament,  in  being  properly  Charles's 
own  Parliament,  not  merely  adopted  by  him,  but  convoked  by 
his  writs.  As  the  Irish  Parliament  met  at  Dublin  on  the 
same  day,  and  as  the  Scottish  Parliament  was  still  sitting 
in  Edinburgh,  there  were  three  Parliaments  assembled  at 
once  in  the  British  Islands.  The  Irish  Parliament  differed  as 
yet  in  one  particular  from  the  others.  The  bishops  were 
in  their  places  in  the  House  of  Lords  in  that  Parliament, 
Archbishop  Bramhall  presiding  in  the  House;  but  the 
readmission  of  the  bishops  into  the  English  House  of  Lords 
was  deferred,  and  in  Scotland  bishops  had  not  yet  been  made. 
The  very  first  Acts  of  the  new  English  Parliament,  however, 
proved  that  it  was  likely  to  go  to  much  greater  lengths  for 
Episcopacy  and  Prerogative  universally  than  even  the  Con- 
vention Parliament.  Of  the  500  members  of  the  new  House 
of  Commons  the  vast  majority  were  cavaliers,  old  and  young, 
ready  now  to  show  themselves  Church  of  England  men  to  the 
core ;  and  of  the  Presbyterians  or  quasi-Presbyterians  that 
had  formed  the  bulk  of  the  preceding  House  not  above  fifty 
or  sixty  had  been  returned  to  this.  Charles  and  Hyde  had 
now,  therefore,  an  English  Parliament  that  would  sweep  on 

i  Account  of  the  Coronation  by  Elias       into  Phillips,  pp.  738—749 ;  Pepys  under 
Ashmole,  Windsor  Herald,  transcribed       date  April  23,  1661. 


MEETING    OF   A   NEW   ENGLISH    PAELIAMENT.  159 

with  due  impetus  in  the  line  required.     As  if  to  show  how 
ready  they  were  to  do  so,  the  Commons,  on  the  13th  of  May, 
the    fourth    day    of  their    sitting",    passed    a   resolution   that 
every  member  of  their  House  should  receive  the  sacrament, 
according-  to  the  form  prescribed  in  the  Liturgy,  on  a  certain 
fixed  day  in  St.  Margaret's  church,  and  should  be  reported  as 
having  been  seen  to  do  so  by  a  committee  of  scrutineers,  on 
pain  of  being  disabled  from  farther  attendance  in  the  House. 
This    did    not  hold   out  much   prospect   of   success    for   the 
twelve  Presbyterian  or  lately  Presbyterian  divines,  with  nine 
assistants,  who  were  then,   by  the    King's  commission,  en- 
gaged in  a  conference  at  the  Savoy  with  twelve  of  the  bishops 
and  nine  Episcopal  assessors  on  the  subject  of  a  revision  of 
the  Liturgy.     Indeed,  from  the  first  meeting  of  this  so-called 
Savoy  Conference  on  the  15th  of  April,  it  had  been  evident 
that  the  bishops  meant  to  be  as  rigid  as  they  could,  and 
listened  to  the  pleadings  of  Mr.  Baxter  and  his  colleagues  only 
to  consume  time  till  the  temper  of  the  new  Parliament  should 
be  fully  ascertained.     Of  that  there  was  another  symptom  on 
the  17th  of  May,  when,  by  a  majority  of  228  to  103,  it  was 
resolved  by  the  Commons  to  put  the  question  whether  "  the 
instrument  or  writing  called  The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant " 
should  be  burnt  by  the  hangman,  and,  the  question  having 
been  put,  it  was  resolved,  without  another  division,  that  the 
Covenant  should  be  so  burnt.     The  Lords  having  concurred 
May  20,  there   issued  a   printed   order  of  the  two   Houses, 
May  21,  for  the  burning  of  the  Covenant  by  the  hangman 
at  three  places  in  London  and  Westminster  on  the  following 
day,  and  also  "  that  the  said  Covenant  be  forthwith  taken  off 
"  the  records  in  the  House  of  Peers  and  in  all  other  courts 
"  and  places  where  the  same  is  recorded,  and  that  all  copies 
"  thereof  be  taken    down    out  of  all  churches,  chapels,  and 
"  other  public  places  in  England  and  Wales,  and  the  town  of 
"  Berwick-upon-Tweed."     The    burning   duly  took   place  on 
the  22nd,  and   is  commemorated   exultingly  in  the  London 
newspapers.     And  that  was  the  end  in  England  of  Hender- 
son's famous  invention  of  August  1643  for  linking  England 
and   Scotland  permanently  together.     The  Irish  Parliament 


160         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

had  already  (May  17)  expressed  itself  against  any  lingering 
of  the  Covenant  in  Ireland,  and  had  decreed  the  Liturgy  and 
Episcopal  government  to  be  the  law  of  that  island.  The 
Covenant,  as  we  have  seen,  though  not  yet  actually  burnt  in 
Scotland  by  public  order,  had  been  declared  non-obligatory 
by  the  Scottish  Parliament1. 

One  day  more  of  Restoration  rejoicings  was  to  close  the 
famous  year.  Charles's  birth-day,  May  29,  1661,  the  first 
anniversary  of  his  triumphant  entry  into  London,  had  come 
round.  By  the  Act  of  Parliament  passed  in  August,  this  was 
to  be  the  first  of  those  anniversary  thanksgivings  for  the 
Restoration  that  were  to  go  on  for  ever  in  the  realm  of 
England.  The  Scottish  Parliament  had  followed  the  example, 
and  passed  an  Act  for  the  same  observation  of  the  29th  of 
May  "  as  an  holiday  unto  the  Lord  "  perpetually  in  Scotland. 
This  was  among  their  boldest  measures,  the  doctrine  of 
holidays  by  civil  appointment  being  especially  repugnant  to 
Scottish  Presbyterianism ;  but  the  prostrate  clergy  accommo- 
dated themselves  as  well  as  they  could,  by  consenting  to  the 
celebration  of  the  day,  while  not  acknowledging  the  authority 
for  it,  or  its  "  anniversariness/''  In  Scotland,  accordingly,  no 
less  than  in  England  and  Ireland,  there  was  the  repeated 
outburst  on  that  day  of  those  Restoration  shoutings,  drink- 
ings,  bonfires,  cannonadings,  and  bell-ringings,  of  which  the 
lieges  never  could  have  enough.  But  there  was  a  tragic 
intermixture  with  the  Scottish  rejoicings.  On  the  afternoon 
of  the  27th  of  May,  two  days  before  the  anniversary,  the 
Marquis  of  Argyle  had  been  beheaded  by  "the  maiden"  in 
the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh  ;  and,  his  head  having  been 
set  up  over  the  Tolbooth  in  the  place  where  Montrose's  had 
been,  his  body  was  being  carried  by  his  relatives  to  its  rest 
in  that  sepulchre  of  the  Campbells  which  is  still  to  be  seen, 
in  its  fine  Highland  solitude,  on  the  banks  of  the  Holy  Loch. 
On  the  third  day  after  the  anniversary,  June  1,  the  good,  con- 
scientious, brave,  narrow,  and  utterly  incompetent  Mr.  James 
Guthrie,  and  the  less-known  Captain  William  Govan,  the  blunt 

1  Lords   and  Commons  Journals   of       III.   470 ;    Neal,   IV.    360 ;   Mercurius 
dates  j  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  178—209 ;  Baillie,      PublLcus  of  May  16—23,  1661., 


king's  intended  marriage.  161 

Protester  soldier,  were  hanged  in  the  same  High  Street  of 
Edinburgh.  The  head  of  Guthrie  was  put  over  the  Nether 
Bow,  and  that  of  Govan  over  the  West  Port.  What  might 
become  of  the  other  prisoners  was  still  uncertain.  Much 
might  depend  on  the  instructions  that  might  come  from 
London,  whither  Chancellor  Glencairn  and  the  Earl  of  Rothes, 
with  Dr.  Sharp  in  their  company,  had  been  sent  by  Mid- 
dleton,  late  in  April,  to  report  the  progress  of  Scottish  affairs 
so  far,  and  to  consult  with  the  King  and  Hyde  about  the 
remaining  business  of  the  Kirk  and  about  farther  dealings 
with  Scottish  delinquents 1. 

It  had  been  announced  by  the  King,  in  his  opening  speech 
to  the  English  Parliament,  that  he  and  his  Council  had 
agreed  that  his  marriage  with  the  Princess  Catharine, 
daughter  of  Alphonso  VI,  King  of  Portugal,  would  be,  in  all 
respects,  the  most  judicious  marriage  he  could  make,  and  that 
a  treaty  to  that  effect  had  been  signed.  At  the  end  of  the 
year  of  the  Restoration,  therefore,  expectations  of  this  lady 
were  mingled  with  the  other  rejoicings. 


i   Wodrow,  I.  28—29,  54—57,    and       III.  460  and  465—467  ;  Chambers's  Bo- 
69— 70;  Life  of  Blair,  384—  386;  Baillie,      mestie  Annals  of  Scotland,!!.  27 '4—277. 


VOL.  VI.  M 


CHAPTER   II. 


MILTON    THROUGH    THE    YEAR    OF    THE    RESTORATION. 

Our  last  glimpse  of  Milton  was  on  or  about  the  7th  of 
May  1660,  when,  by  the  advice  of  his  friends,  and  by  arrange- 
ments they  had  made  for  him,  he  absconded  from  his  house 
in  Petty  France,  to  avoid  the  danger  to  which  he  was  exposed 
by  the  Restoration. 

The  place  of  his  "  retirement  and  abseondence,"  Phillips 
informs  us,  was  "  a  friend's  house  in  Bartholomew  Close." 
The  narrow  passage  so  named  was  entered  from  West  Smith- 
field  by  a  very  old  arch,  part  of  the  church  of  the  Priory  of 
St.  Bartholomew,  which  dated  from  the  twelfth  century.  It 
was  a  row  or  labyrinth  of  tenements  that  must  have  been  old 
and  quaint  even  in  Milton's  time.  Here  had  lived  Dr.  Caius 
the  physician,  the  founder  of  Caius  College,  Cambridge ;  here, 
in  some  kind  of  studio,  Hubert  Le  Sceur  the  sculptor  had 
modelled  his  statue  of  Charles  I.,  the  bronze  of  which  had  been 
missing  during  the  Commonwealth,  but  was  soon  to  be  dis- 
covered in  its  concealment,  and  to  be  set  up  reverently 
at  Charing  Cross ;  and  here,  some  sixty-five  years  hence, 
Benjamin  Franklin  was  to  work  as  a  compositor  in  one  of  the 
old  houses,  when  it  had  been  turned  into  Palmer's  printing- 
office.  To  Milton,  who  may  have  known  the  close  and  its 
neighbourhood  in  his  Aldersgate  Street  days,  what  mattered 
it  now,  in  his  blindness,  in  what  dingy  recess  from  any  of  the 
city  thoroughfares,  or  in  what  room  or  garret  there,  they 
cooped  him  up  for  safety.  It  seems  not  improbable  that  he 
may  have  been  shifted  from  one  hiding-place  in  the  city  to 


MILTON   IN   ABSCONDENCE.  163 

another,  though  the  house  in  Bartholomew  Close  was  best 
remembered    by    Phillips,    and    for    sufficient    reason.      One 
would  have  liked  to  know  the  name  of  the  friend  who  gave 
him  shelter.      It  was  a  kindness  involving   real  risk,  with 
anxiety   and   vigilance  from  day  to  day.      A   malicious   or 
indiscreet  servant  might  have  ruined  all.     One  has  to  fancy, 
therefore,  a  small,  quiet  family,  managing  among  themselves, 
and  willing  to  do  anything  for  Mr.  Milton,  as  much  for  his 
own  sake  as  for  any  recompense  offered.     And  so,  in  some 
small  room,  the  walls  of  which  he  could  feel  round  in  his 
darkness,  much  alone,  and  hearing  of  the  outside  world  only 
through  the  family,  or  through  some  faithful  stealthy  visitor, 
such  as  Cyriack    Skinner  or  Andrew  Marvell,  coming  from 
Westminster  at  nights,  Milton  waited  to  know  his  fate.     He 
remained  in  his  concealment,  says  Phillips,  "  till  the  Act  of 
Oblivion   came  forth,"  i.  e.  till  the  29th  of  August.     Three 
months  and  three  weeks,   therefore,  from  the  beginning  of 
May  to  the   end  of  August  1660,  did  Milton   live  in  that 
room,  listening  for  footsteps,  and  uncertain  whether  he  was 
to  be  hanged  or  not.     The  expression  is  not  in  the  least  ex- 
aggerated.    There  had  been  exulting  prophecies  by  royalist 
pamphleteers  on  the  eve  of  the  Restoration  that  Milton  would 
soon  be  seen  going  to  Tyburn  in  a  cart.     Everybody  expected 
it ;  Milton  himself  must  have  expected  it.     As  surely  as  if  he 
had  left  the  statement  on  record,  the  imagination  of  his  own 
execution,  to  the  last  ghastly  particular  of  cart,  ladder,  hang- 
man, rope,  and  the  yelling  multitude  that  should  see  him, 
though  unseen  by  him,  must  have  passed  through  Milton's 
mind  again  and  again  during  those  three  months  and  three 
weeks  of  his  hiding  in  Bartholomew  Close  *. 

Consider,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  royalist,  what  could 
be  alleged  against  Milton.  Leave  out  of  account  his  Anti- 
Episcopal  pamphlets  and  Divorce  pamphlets,  written  between 
1640  and  1646,  though  from  those  there  might  be  produced 
matter  to  aggravate  an  indictment.  Take  only  his  writings 
and  career  since  1648.     Remember,  first,  his  Tenure  of  Kings 

1  Phillips's  Memoir  of  Milton ;  Cun-       Bartholomew  Close,  and  Art.  Charing 
ningkam's   Handbook  of  London,  Art.       Cross. 

M  2 


164         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  Magistrates :  proving  that  it  is  lawful,  and  hath  been  held  so 
through  all  ages,  for  any  who  have  the  power,  to  call  to  account 
a  Tyrant  or  wicked  King,  and,  after  due  conviction,  to  depose  and 
put  him  to  death.  Remember  that  this  pamphlet  was  partly 
written  while  King-  Charles  was  on  his  trial,  and  was  pub- 
lished on  the  13th  of  February  1648-9,  only  a  fortnight 
after  his  execution,  actually  the  first  pamphlet  justifying'  the 
regicide  and  the  institution  of  the  Republic  ;  and  remember 
with  what  invectives  against  Charles  and  bis  reign  the 
tremendous  doctrine  announced  in  the  title-page  was  made 
good  in  the  text.  Remember  that,  just  a  month  after  the 
publication  of  that  pamphlet,  and  mainly  in  consequence  of  it, 
Milton  was  made  Latin  Secretary  to  the  Council  of  State  for 
the  Commonwealth,  taking  his  place  in  that  capacity  at  the 
board  where  Bradshaw  presided,  and  round  which  Cromwell 
and  so  many  other  regicides  sat.  Remember  that  he  had 
held  this  post  for  more  than  four  years,  not  only  writing* 
foreign  despatches  for  the  successive  Councils  of  State  of  the 
Republic,  but  doing  miscellaneous  work  for  them,  and 
especially  performing-  to  their  order  several  most  important 
literary  commissions.  In  his  Observations  upon  Ormondes 
Articles  of  Peace  with  the  Irish  Rebels,  published  by  authority 
in  May  1649,  he  had  not  only  asserted,  against  royalists  of  all 
varieties,  the  legality  of  the  infant  Republic,  but  had  spoken 
with  studied  contempt  of  Ormond  personally.  Then,  in  his 
Eikcnoklastes,  published  in  October  1649,  also  by  order 
of  the  Republican  Government,  he  had  assaulted  the  King's 
own  book,  the  very  Bible  of  the  Royalists,  accusing  the  King 
of  having  stolen  the  prayers  in  it,  laughing  at  it  and  at  the 
popular  idolatry  of  it,  pronouncing-  it  a  poor  tissue  of 
hypocrisy  and  mock-piety,  and,  by  fresh  invectives  against 
the  character  and  reign  of  Charles,  representing  the  worship 
of  his  memory  as  but  a  disgusting  delusion.  In  1650  there 
had  been  a  second  edition  of  the  same  book,  with  added 
passages  of  new  ridicule  of  the  King's  memory.  Then,  in  the 
beginning  of  1651,  there  had  followed  his  first  Pro  Populo 
Anglicano  Defensio,  replying  to  Salmasius,  arraigning-  Charles  I., 
Charles  II.,  the  whole  dynasty  of  the    Stuarts,  and  kingly 


MILTON   IN   AESCONDENCE.  165 

government  itself,    before  the   European   world,  proclaiming 
the  virtues    and    deserts    of  the   Republic  and   its  founders, 
and  daring  all  Christendom   to  deny  that  the  exchange  of 
Monarchy  for  Republicanism  in  England   had  been  an  ex- 
change of  servitude,  vice,  cruelty,  and  corruption,  for  liberty, 
probity,   manliness,  and  light.     Had  not  Europe  rung  with 
the  fame  of  that  book ;  had  it  not,  in  the  opinion  of  some, 
done  more  for  the  continuation  of  the  Republic  than  anything 
else,  except  Cromwell's  battles  ?    Remember  also,  through  the 
whole  of  the  year  1651  and  beyond,  Milton's  lieensiug  editor- 
ship   of   the  Mercurins   Politicits,  and    his    association    with 
Marchamont  Needham  in  the  articles  in  that  journal,  sys- 
tematically inculcating  Republican  principles,  and   vilifying 
Charles  II.  and  his  brothers    as    the  exiled  Tarquins.     His 
blindness,  coming  on  in  the  course  of  next  year,  had  some- 
what paralysed  his  powers  of  work ;  but  had  he  not  remained 
in  office  to  the  last  moment  of  the   Republic,  on  terms  of 
intimacy  with  its  chiefs,  addressing   Cromwell  and  Vane  in 
eulogistic  sonnets,  and  employing  one  of  his  nephews  as  his 
deputy  in  a  new  pamphlet  of  Republican  tenor  ?    Blind  though 
he  was,  had  he  not,  after  public  approbation   of  Cromwell's 
assumption   of  supreme  power,  passed  into   Cromwell's  own 
service,  and  been    Cromwell's   Latin   Secretary  through  the 
whole    of  his   Protectorate,    more   and  more   in    Cromwell's 
foreign  secrets,  and  active  for  him  officially  ?    To  this  period 
also,  besides  reprints  of  former  writings,  belonged  his  second 
Pro  Pojntlo  Anglicano  Defensio,  of  May  1654,  repeating  the 
doctrines  of  the  first,  with  even  more  of  popular  effect,  but 
vindicating  the   recast   of  the   Republic   into    the    Oliverian 
sovereignty,  addressing  Oliver  in  a  laboured  panegyric  which 
asserted  him  to  be  the  greatest  and  best  man  in  the  world, 
and  bringing  in  also  Bradshaw  and  other  regicides  for  super- 
lative praise.     His  Pro  Se  Defensio  of  August  1655  had  been 
a  sequel,  pursuing  the  policy,  so  conspicuous  already  in  the 
previous  treatises,  of  deadly  attack  on  every  person,  English- 
man or  foreigner,  that  dared  to  speak  in  favour  of  the  dead 
Charles  or  the  living,  or  against  the  Commonwealth  and  the 
Regicide.     A  servant  of  Cromwell  to   the  last,  he   had  not 


166  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ceased  his  activity  at  Cromwell's  death.  He  had  served 
through  the  Protectorate  of  Richard,  had  seen  its  collapse  and 
the  restoration  of  the  Rump,  and  had  been  one  of  those  who, 
through  the  Anarchy  of  the  latter  half  of  1659,  stood  for 
"  the  good  old  cause."  In  two  ecclesiastical  tracts  and 
one  political  letter  of  this  year  he  had  set  forth  afresh  his 
extreme  views  on  Church  and  State,  arguing  for  anything 
rather  than  a  return  to  Monarchy,  and  for  the  eradication  of 
anything  in  any  form  that  could  be  called  a  Church  of 
England.  But,  above  all,  remember  his  activity  in  those 
months  of  February,  March,  and  April  1660,  just  past,  when 
Monk's  dictatorship  in  London,  and  the  replacing  of  the 
secluded  members  in  the  Rump,  had  cleared  the  way  for  the 
recall  of  Charles,  and  the  popular  impatience  for  his  recall 
had  become  ungovernable,  and  the  event  itself  was  within 
sight.  Who  had  been  fighting  to  the  last  against  that  event 
like  Milton  ?  Alone  almost  he  had  been  standing  up,  a  blind 
wonder,  adjuring  and  imploring  his  countrymen  even  yet  to 
keep  out  Charles  and  all  his  kin,  disowning  his  countrymen 
as  fools  and  God-abandoned  slaves  when  he  knew  they  would 
not  listen  to  his  advice,  and  warning  them  of  woes  and  bloody 
revenges  in  consequence.  The  hissing  and  laughter  over 
Milton's  Heady  and  Easy  Way  to  establish  a  Free  Commonwealth 
and  his  Brief  Notes  on  Br.  Griffith's  Sermon  had  not  ceased 
when  the  Convention  Parliament  met,  and  Charles's  Breda 
letters  announced  his  coming ;  and,  amid  the  hissing  and 
laughter,  and  just  before  his  absconding,  had  not  Milton's 
last  act,  in  a  second  and  more  frantic  edition  of  the  former 
pamphlet,  been  to  double  up  his  fist,  register  once  more  his 
opinion  of  the  worthlessness  of  the  whole  pack  that  were 
coming  in,  and  hit  approaching  Majesty  in  the  face  ? 

Absolutely  no  man  could  less  expect  to  be  pardoned  at  the 
Restoration  than  Milton.  Things,  however,  had  to  go  in 
regular  course  even  in  this  dreadful  business  ;  and  the  regular 
course,  as  we  know,  was  that  of  a  Bill  of  General  Indemnity 
and  Oblivion,  brought  into  the  Commons  House  of  the  Con- 
vention Parliament  on  the  8th  of  May,  in  accordance  with 
Charles's  pledged  word,   in    his    Declaration  from   Breda  of 


MILTON    AND   THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  167 

April  14,  that  he  would  pardon  all  his  subjects,  of  what 
degree  or  quality  soever,  except  such  as  Parliament  itself 
should  deem  it  right  to  except,  "  these  only  to  be  excepted." 
The  question  of  Milton's  fate,  therefore,  was  bound  up  with 
those  proceedings  of  the  Convention  Parliament  on  the  In- 
demnity Bill  the  history  of  which  has  been  given  in  detail 
in  the  last  chapter.  With  Parliament,  and  with  Parliament 
alone,  lay  the  determination  of  the  extent  and  nature  of  the 
exceptions  from  the  benefits  of  the  Indemnity  Bill  that  should 
be  specifically  inserted  and  enumerated  in  the  final  wording 
of  the  Bill  itself.  The  determination  of  the  exceptions,  first  in 
one  House  and  then  in  the  other,  and  the  agreement  of  the 
two  Houses  eventually  on  one  mid  the  same  list  of  'exceptions ;  was 
the  terrible  and  difficult  process  from  the  9th  of  May  onwards. 
Periodically,  to  Milton,  during-  the  process,  by  stealthy  visits 
of  Parliamentary  friends,  or  through  copies  of  the  three  or 
four  London  newspapers  then  published  on  different  days  of 
the  week1,  there  would  be  conveyed,  we  may  suppose,  reports 
of  what  was  happening. 

Between  May  9,  when  Charles  was  still  abroad,  and 
May  29,  when  he  entered  London,  the  substance  of  the  in- 
formation that  can  have  reached  Milton  was  that  the  House 
of  Commons  had  resolved  (1)  to  except  all  persons  classed  by 
them  as  regicides,  consisting  of  all  the  sixty-seven  King's 
judges,  dead  or  living,  that  had  been  present  at  the  sentence, 
together  with  Cook,  Broughton,  Phelps,  and  Dendy,  who  had 
assisted  officially  at  the  trial,  and  also  the  two  unknown 
executioners  ;  (2)  to  pass  posthumous  attainder  on  Cromwell, 

1  The  three  chief  newspapers  of  that  "person  whatsoever  do  presume,  at  his 

date,  all  weekly,  were  the  Parliamentary  "  peril,  to  print  any  votes  or  proceedings 

[ntelligencer,    published    on    Mondays  "  of  this  House  without  the  special  leave 

(printed  by  John  Macock  and  Thomas  "and  order  of  the  House."     Newcome, 

Newcome),   Mercurius    Publicus,    pub-  it  will  be  seen,  so  long  the  printer  of 

lished  on  Thursdays  (same  proprietor-  Needham's  Mercurius  Politicus  for  the 

ship  as  the  Intelligencer  and  with  matter  Commonwealth,    and    connected    with 

in  common),  and  An  Exact  Accompt,  Milton  thus  and  otherwise,  had  managed 

&c,  published  on  Fridays.     These  were  to  continue  his  newspaper  business  under 

authorized.     A  David  Maxwell,  a  Scots-  the  new  authorities.     Edward  Husband 

man,  started,  on  Tuesday,  June  12, 1660,  and  Thomas   Newcome    had    been   ap- 

;i    Mercurius   Veridicus ;    but,   after   a  pointed  Printers  to  the  House  May  5 ; 

sea  ind  number,  it  was  stopped  by  order  and  it  was  probably  mi  Newcome's  com- 

of  the  Commons,  who  questioned  Max-  plaint  that  Maxwell  was  crushed, 
well,  and  resolved  (June  25)  "that  no 


168  LIFE  OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

Bradshaw,  Ireton,  and  Pride,  as  the  supreme  dead  regicides  ; 
and  (3)  to  bring-  to  trial  for  their  lives  seven  of  the  regicides 
still  living,  reserving  the  rest  for  any  punishment,  the  severest 
that  could  be  devised,  not  extending  to  life.  This,  with  the 
intelligence  of  the  orders  out  for  the  arrest  of  the  regicides, 
wherever  they  might  be  found,  can  hardly  have  surprised 
Milton. — It  was  at  this  point,  and  when  it  had  not  yet  been 
announced  who  the  seven  capital  victims  from  the  living 
regicides  were  to  be,  but  that  and  other  questions  had  gone 
into  Committee  of  the  Commons,  that  there  came  the  day  of 
Charles's  triumphant  entry  into  London.  Some  sound  of  the 
rush  and  tumult  through  the  city  on  that  day  (May  29)  may 
have  penetrated  even  to  Milton's  seclusion  in  the  court  off 
West  Smithfield,  and  with  it  the  feeling  that  Hyde  and 
those  about  the  King  would  now  have  a  good  deal  to  do  with 
the  farther  management  of  the  Indemnity  Bill. — Not  till  a 
week  more  had  elapsed,  and  restored  Royalty  had  fully  settled 
itself  in  Whitehall,  were  there  farther  distinct  tidings  about 
the  Bill  in  the  Commons.  Then  (June  5-7)  Milton  might 
learn  that  the  House  had  voted  that  the  seven  capital  victims 
among  the  King's  judges  should  be  Harrison,  Say,  Jones, 
Scott,  Holland,  Lisle,  and  Barkstead,  but  that  the  House  had 
seemed  to  rise  in  severity  above  its  original  mark  by  making 
capital  exceptions  also  of  Cook,  Broughton,  Dendy,  and  the 
two  unknown  executioners,  thus  raising  the  number  of  the 
capitally  excepted  regicides  from  seven  to  twelve.  Perhaps, 
however,  the  most  startling  piece  of  news  to  Milton  at  this 
date  may  have  been  that  Hugh  Peters  had  been  named  in 
the  House,  on  speculation,  as  an  extra  regicide,  and  that  an 
order  had  gone  out  for  his  apprehension. — Yet  a  few  days 
more  (June  7-11)  and  there  was  fresh  proof  that  the  estab- 
lishment of  Charles  and  his  Court  in  Whitehall  had  not 
increased  the  disposition  of  the  Commons  to  clemency.  True, 
they  had  in  the  interim  agreed  to  remove  from  the  class  of 
sentencing  regicides,  for  special  consideration,  Lord  Grey  of 
Groby  among  the  dead,  and  Colonel  Tomlinson,  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  and  Adrian  Scroope,  among  the  living.  But,  on 
the   other   hand,   they   had   widened  their  definition  of  the 


MILTON    AND   THE    INDEMNITY   BILL.  169 

regicide  class  generally,  by  adding*  to  the  sixty-three 
sentencing  regicides,  living  or  dead,  nine  of  the  eleven  King's 
judges,  not  mentioned  before,  who  had  taken  part  in  the 
trial  without  being  present  at  the  sentence.  Also  they  had 
resolved  that,  apart  altogether  from  the  living  regicides,  of 
whom  ten  or  possibly  twelve  were  to  be  punished  capitally, 
and  the  rest  by  any  pains  and  penalties  short  of  death,  there 
should  be  a  selection  from  the  general  community  of  twenty 
other  delinquents ,  to  be  conjoined  with  this  lower  division  of 
the  regicides  for  any  punishment  not  capital. 

Let  us  rest  a  moment,  on  Milton's  account,  at  June  11. 
The  theory  of  the  exceptions  to  the  Indemnity  Bill,  with 
many  of  the  particulars  of  application,  so  far  as  they  were 
to  depend  on  the  Commons,  was  then  clearly  announced  as 
follows : — 

Two  Classes  of  Exceptions  among  the  Living  :  viz : 
I.  All  the  Living  Regicides,  as  now  left  in  that  Class 

AND  ENUMERATED  BY  THE  HOUSE  ;    of  whom  I  — 

1 .  Excepted  absolutely,  and  to  be  proceeded  against  for  life  and 
estate,  these  ten  (or  twelve) : — Harrison,  Say,  Jones,  Scott,  Holland, 
Lisle,  Bavkstead,  Cook,  Broughton,  Dendy  (and  the  two  unascer- 
tained executioners). 

2.  Excepted  for  all  but  life,  these  forty-three: — Blagrave,  Bour- 
chier,  Carew,  Cawley,  James  Challoner,  Thomas  Challoner,  Clements, 
Corbet,  Dixwell,  Downes,  George  Fleetwood,  Garland,  Goffe,  Harring- 
ton, Harvey,  Heveningham,  Hewson,  Robert  Lilburne,  Lister.  Live- 
sey,  Love,  Ludlow,  Marten,  Mayne,  Mildmay,  Millington,  Monson, 
Okey,  Pennington,  Pickering,  Potter,  Rowe,  Smith,  James  Temple, 
Peter  Temple,  Tichbourne,  Sir  Hardress  "Waller,  Wallop,  "Walton, 
"Wayte,  AVhalley,  "Wogan  ;   Phelps. 

II.  Twenty  other  Delinquents,  yet  to  be  named,  and  to  stand 
in  the  same  category  as  the  second  division  of  the  Regicides,  i.  e. 
to  be  excepted  for  all  but  life. 

Actually,  on  Monday  the  11th  of  June,  this  was  the  schedule 
which  Milton,  grasping  its  purport  through  the  ear,  had  to 
study,  and  which  his  friends  were  studying  for  him.  It 
affected  himself  more  than  may  appear  at  first  sight.  It 
might  appear  at  first  sight  that,  so  far  as  the  Commons  had 
then  resolved,  the  only  risk  for  Milton  was  that  of  being 
included  among  the  twenty  delinquents  that  had  yet  to  be 


170  LTFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

named  in  addition  to  the  enumerated  regicides.  That  risk  was 
fearful  enough.  It  might  involve  imprisonment  for  life,  every 
penalty  short  of  the  scaffold.  But  was  there  not  a  possibility 
that  even  yet  Milton  might  be  ranked  in  the  class  of  the 
regicides,  and  put  either  in  the  second  section  of  this  class, 
or  perhaps  among  those  doomed  to  death  ?    There  was. 

If  the  law  of  treason  upon  which  the  Court  afterwards  pro- 
ceeded in  trying  the  regicides  was  sound  law,  then  Milton 
was  indubitably  one  of  the  regicides.  "  Compassing  or 
imagining  the  King's  death  "  was  the  capital  offence  by  the 
statute  of  the  25th  of  Edward  III ;  and,  as  Chief  Baron 
Bridgman  expounded,  the  compassing  or  pre-imagining 
the  death  of  Charles  I.  might  be  proved  against  any  one  by 
any  "  overt  act "  whatever  showing  such  pre-imagination. 
Having  conspired  and  consulted  with  others  to  bring  about 
the  King's  death  was  one  form  of  such  overt  act  of  compassing 
and  imagining ;  but  words  or  writings  would  suffice.  What, 
then,  of  Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates:  proving  that  it 
is  lawful,  and  hath  been  held  so  through  all  ages,  for  any  who  have 
the  power,  to  call  to  account  a  Tyrant  or  wicked  King,  and,  after 
due  conviction,  to  depose  and  put  him  to  death  ?  That  pamphlet 
had  not  appeared  till  a  fortnight  after  the  execution  of 
Charles;  but  it  could  be  proved,  by  the  language  of  the 
pamphlet  itself,  by  other  miscellaneous  evidence,  and  by  a 
passage  in  Milton's  own  hand  in  his  Defensio  Secunda,  five 
years  afterwards,  that  it  was  schemed,  and  lying  on  Milton's 
table,  nearly  complete  in  manuscript,  or  in  proof-sheets, 
while  the  King  was  yet  alive.  True,  in  this  last  passage 
Milton  had  declared  that  not  even  then  did  he  "  write  or 
advise  anything  concerning  Charles  personally,"  and  that  the 
book  had  been  "  made  rather  for  composing  men's  minds " 
after  the  fact  "  than  for  deciding  anything  about  Charles 
beforehand,"  a  business  which  he  considered  not  his,  but  that 
of  the  public  authorities.  This  would  have  had  small  chance 
with  Chief  Justice  Bridgman.  There,  while  the  King  was 
yet  alive,  and  his  trial  was  going  on,  Mr.  Milton,  on  his 
own  confession,  had  been  deliberately  writing  a  pamphlet 
advocating  with  all  his  might  the  doctrine  of  tyrannicide,  in 


MILTON   AND   THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  171 

such  a  sense  and  in  such  circumstances  that  it  could  have  no 
other  application  than  to  Charles,  and  had  been  carefully 
getting  the  pamphlet  ready,  that  it  might  appear  as  soon  as 
Charles's  head  had  been  cut  off,  to  extol  and  defend  the  deed. 
What  more  express  and  continuous  overt  act  of  "  compassing 
and  imagining"  could  there  be  than  that?  It  was  not 
necessary  that  Mr.  Milton  should  have  shown  what  he  was 
writing  to  anybody  before  the  King's  death,,  or  should  have 
been  writing  it  by  advice  or  in  concert  with  others.  But  was 
it  likely  that  no  one  knew  of  the  forthcoming  pamphlet,  or 
that  there  were  no  conversations  and  confidences  about  it 
while  it  was  in  progress  ?  If  even  part  of  it  was  in  the 
printer's  hands  before  the  King's  death, — the  hands  of 
Matthew  Simmons  of  Aldersgate  Street, — was  not  that  com- 
bining and  conspiring  between  author  and  printer?  Then 
were  there  no  friends  of  Milton's,  among  the  sentencing 
judges  and  signers  of  the  death-warrant,  cognisant,  at  the 
time  of  the  sentence,  of  that  justification  of  their  action  which 
Milton  had  in  preparation?  Was  Bradshaw,  the  president  of 
the  Court,  not  cognisant  ? 

All  this  is  exactly  what  Chief  Justice  Bridgman  would 
have  brought  out,  had  the  matter  been  already  in  his  hands. 
Fortunately  for  Milton,  the  definition  of  the  regicides  had 
not  yet  come  into  the  hands  of  judges  and  lawyers,  and  so 
there  was  no  such  incessant  reference  to  the  statute  of  the 
25th  of  Edward  III,  with  interpretation  of  the  treasonable 
"  compassing  or  imagining  "  there  intended,  as  there  was  to 
be  when  the  actual  trials  came  on.  But  the  House  of 
Commons  itself,  in  a  vague  way,  had  been  feeling  on  in  the 
same  spirit.  Not  only  had  they  widened  their  definition  of 
regicide  by  adding  to  their  first  list  of  the  excepted  regicides 
nine  of  the  King's  judges  not  actually  present  at  the  sentence; 
they  had  ordered  the  arrest  of  Hugh  Peters,  on  the  clear 
supposition  that  he  too  might  be  brought  in  as  a  regicide. 
As  the  absurd  rumour  that  Peters  had  been  one  of  the 
executioners,  though  it  furnished  a  pretext,  cannot  have  been 
entertained  in  the  House  for  a  moment,  the  real  fact  must 
have  been  that  the  House  was  now  inclined  to  class  amon<r 


172  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  regicides  any  one  who  could  be  proved  to  have  been  in 
any  notorious  and  conspicuous  manner  connected  with  the 
King's  death.  But  might  not  this  inclination  have  easily 
reached  Milton  as  well  as  Peters  ?  If  Peters  had  been  bustling 
about  Westminster  Hall  during  the  King's  trial,  if  he  had 
preached  sermons  about  the  trial  while  it  was  still  going  on, 
had  not  Milton,  in  his  bouse  in  High  Holborn,  been  as 
strenuously,  though  more  quietly,  elaborating  his  pamphlet 
in  defence  of  the  same  proceedings  and  of  the  act  in  which 
they  were  to  end  ?  That  Milton  had  not  occurred  to  the 
House  in  such  close  association  with  Peters  may  have  been 
owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates, 
with  the  date  and  circumstances  of  it,  was  a  far  less  distinct 
affair  in  the  recollection  of  the  House  than  in  Milton's  own. 
He  must  have  remembered  all  vividly  ;  and  not  one  of  all  his 
pamphlets  can  have  seemed  to  him  of  such  dangerous  con- 
sequence to  himself  nowT,  if  attention  were  called  to  it. 

If  he  were  to  escape  being  classed  among  the  regicides, 
might  it  not  be  only  to  find  himself  one  of  the  twenty  other 
delinquents  ?  That  was  the  terrible  question  for  him  from 
Monday  the  11th  of  June  to  Monday  the  18th.  It  wTas  the 
week  of  the  very  crisis  of  the  fate  of  Milton  and  others,  for 
it  was  through  that  week,  with  vehement  and  exciting 
debates  every  day,  that  the  Commons  were  engaged  in  the 
business  of  nominating  the  twenty.  One  may  imagine  the 
difficulty  and  the  conflict  of  opinion.  The  House  having 
resolved  to  restrict  itself  to  "twenty  and  no  more/'  every 
active  member  would  have  ready  his  list  of  the  twenty  he 
hated  most,  and  there  would  be  a  competition  among  these 
lists,  every  member  anxious  to  get  in  his  own  favourite 
enemies,  and  to  save  friends  of  his  that  might  be  on  other 
people's  lists.  A  good  number  of  persons  would  be  common 
to  all  the  lists,  and  it  would  be  after  these  had  been  voted 
into  the  twenty,  and  the  remaining  places  were  becoming 
fewer  and  fewer,  that  the  competition  would  be  most  eager. 
The  members  that  took  the  lead  in  harmonising  the  lists  as 
far  as  possible,  and  then,  where  they  could  not  be  harmonised, 
in  fighting  resolutely  either  to  secure  the  inclusion  of  this  or 


MILTON   AND   THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  173 

that  person  or  to  bring*  this  or  that  other  person  off,  seem 
to  have  been  Prynne,  Annesley,  Clarges,  Attorney-General 
Palmer,  Solicitor-General  Finch,  Lord  Falkland,  Mr.  Charlton, 
Sir  George  Booth,  Mr.  Turner,  Sir  John  Robinson,  Sir 
William  Wylde,  Sir  Richard  Temple,  Colonel  King-,  and 
Colonel  Ralph  Knight.  Above  all,  Prynne  was  active.  To 
let  any  one  off  in  any  circumstances  was  not  in  his  nature ; 
gladly  would  he  have  taken  all  on  all  the  lists,  and  voted  a 
total  of  forty  or  sixty  instead  of  twenty;  but  all  the  more 
ruthlessly,  as  he  could  have  but  twenty,  was  he  likely  to  push 
his  own  nominations.  He  seems  to  have  revelled,  however, 
in  bringing  before  the  House,  in  the  course  of  the  week's 
debate,  the  names  of  as  many  delinquents  as  possible,  so  that 
there  might  be  plenty  for  himself  and  others  to  choose  from, 
and  those  that  got  off  this  time  might  be  kept  in  memory 
for  future  occasion.  This  was  all  the  worse  for  Milton, 
whose  contemptuous  notices  of  "  marginal  Prynne  "  in  several 
of  his  pamphlets  had  increased  an  animosity  to  him  on 
Prynne's  part  manifest  since  1644. — Milton's  name  may  have 
been  in  many  lists  besides  Prynne's  from  the  first,  and  may 
have  been  tossed  about  in  the  House  in  those  debates  of 
June  11,  12,  13,  14,  and  15,  which  had  settled  that  Vane, 
Lenthall,  William  Burton,  Oliver  St.  John,  Alderman  John 
Ireton,  Sir  Arthur  Hasilrig,  Sydenham,  Desborough,  Axtell, 
and  John  Blackwell  of  Mortlake,  should  be  ten  of  the  twenty, 
while  Whitlocke  and  Major-General  Butler  had  escaped  by 
divisions  in  their  favour.  Not  till  Saturday,  June  16,  however, 
when  half  of  the  twenty  had  been  thus  agreed  on,  did 
Milton's  time  come  for  passing  the  ordeal.  On  that  day  the 
discussion  was  on  Lambert,  Alderman  Pack,  Sergeant  Keble 
for  the  second  time,  Sir  William  Roberts,  John  Milton,  and 
John  Goodwin.  Roberts  escaped  by  one  vote ;  Lambert, 
Pack,  and  Keble  were  unanimously  added  to  the  ten  already 
chosen,  raising  the  number  to  thirteen.  What  was  done  with 
Milton  and  Goodwin  will  appear  from  the  following  extract 
from  the  Journals  of  the  House  : — 

u  Ordered,   That  his  Majesty  be  humbly  moved  from  this  House 
that  he  will  please  to  issue  his  proclamation  for  the  calling  in  of  the 


174         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

two  books  written  by  John  Milton,  one  entitled  Johannis  Miltoni 
Angli]>ro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio  contra  Claudii  Anonymi,  alias 
Salmasii,  Defensionem  Begiam,  and  tbe  other  [the  Uikonoklastes] 
in  answer  to  a  book  entitled  "  The  Portraiture  of  his  Sacred 
Majesty  in  his  Solitudes  and  Sufferings " ;  and  also  the  book  en- 
titled The  Obstructors  of  Justice,  written  in  defence  of  the  traitorous 
sentence  against  his  said  late  Majesty  by  John  Goodwin  ;  and  such 
other  books  as  shall  be  presented  to  his  Majesty  in  a  schedule  from 
this  House :  and  to  order  them  to  be  burnt  by  the  hand  of  the 
common  hangman. 

"  Ordered,  That  Mr.  Attorney-General  [Geoffrey  Palmer]  do  cause 
effectual  proceedings  to  be  forthwith  had,  by  way  of  indictment  or 
information,  against  John  Milton,  in  respect  of  the  two  books  by 
him  written  [the  two  books  described  again  exactly  as  above], 
and  also  against  John  Goodwin,  in  respect  of  a  book  by  him 
written,  entitled  The  Obstructors  of  Justice,  being  in  defence  of  the 
traitorous  sentence  against  the  late  King's  Majesty. 

"  Resolved,  That  Mr.  Milton  and  Me.  John  Goodwin  be  forth- 
with sent  for  in  custody  by  the  sergeant- at-arms  attending  this 
House." 

Construing"  this  result  in  the  light  of  all  the  circumstances, 
I  have  little  doubt  how  it  was  brought  about.  Milton  and 
Goodwin  had  been  talked  of  that  day,  along-  with  Lambert, 
Pack,  and  Keble,  as  proper  persons  to  be  included  among  the 
excepted  twenty.  Of  Milton's  title  to  that  distinction  we 
are  sufficiently  aware.  The  title  of  our  old  friend,  the  free- 
thinking  and  tolerationist  preacher,  John  Goodwin  of  Cole- 
man Street,  was  that  he  had  been  about  King  Charles  in  his 
last  moments,  as  a  minister  deputed  by  the  regicides  or  by 
some  of  them  to  converse  with  him,  and  that,  on  the  30th  of 
May  1649,  three  months  and  a  half  after  the  publication  of 
Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  he  had  published  a 
treatise  called  The  Obstructors  of  Justice  opposed,  or  a  Discourse 
of  the  honourable  sentence  passed  upon  the  late  King  by  the 
High  Court  of  Justice.  In  this  treatise,  written  wholly  after 
the  King's  death,  he  had  but  followed  Milton  and  reiterated 
his  doctrine,  with  admiring  quotations  from  his  text1. 
Altogether,  the  conjunction  of  Goodwin  with  Milton  now 
was  fit  enough,    although    Goodwin,    unless   his    ministerial 

1  See   some   account    of   Goodwin's       about  King  Charles,  in  footnote  to  p. 
book,  with  a  curious  extract  from  it       95  of  Vol.  IV. 


- 


MILTON    AND   THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  175 

presence  about  the  King  in  his  last  moments  and  on  the 
scaffold  were  counted  against  him,  was  much  the  minor 
culprit  of  the  two.  But  a  difficulty  seems  to  have  occurred 
about  both.  If  they  also  were  placed  among  the  twenty  that 
day,  fifteen  of  the  twenty  would  have  been  chosen,  and  only 
five  vacant  places  would  be  left.  In  view  of  the  number  of 
others  in  reserve,  this  was  a  serious  consideration ;  and  more 
and  more  the  inconvenience  of  the  limitation  to  twenty  was 
felt.  As  the  House  could  not,  however,  break  its  own 
resolution  of  "  twenty  and  no  more"  an  expedient  seems  to 
have  suggested  itself.  Besides  all  the  regicides  and  twenty  other 
delinquents,  according  to  the  original  scheme  of  two  classes  of 
exceptions  only  from  the  Indemnity  Bill,  why  should  not  the 
House  now  invent  a  small  and  peculiar  third  class  of  excep- 
tions, to  consist  of  notorious  literary  defenders  of  the  regicide, 
and  put  Milton  and  Goodwin  at  once  into  this  class  ?  Thus, 
at  all  events,  there  would  be  seven  places  left  to  be  filled  up 
of  the  twenty,  instead  of  only  five.  The  obvious  objection 
was  that  the  proposed  procedure  would  be  a  trick.  The 
House  was  engaged  on  an  Indemnity  Bill,  and  the  very 
meaning  of  the  Indemnity  Bill  was  that  every  intended 
exception  from  it  should  be  named  in  itself,  so  that,  after  it 
had  passed,  all  not  specifically  named  in  it  for  exception, 
whatever  their  antecedents  or  the  amount  of  their  criminality, 
should  be  safe  and  free.  It  was  but  a  pretence  of  escape  from 
this  dilemma  to  say  that  the  cases  of  Milton  and  Goodwin 
might  be  provided  for,  apart  from  the  Indemnity  Bill  alto- 
gether, by  a  present  and  independent  order  for  burning  their 
books,  accompanied  by  a  resolution  for  taking  themselves 
into  custody,  and  an  order  for  their  indictment  in  ordinary 
course  of  law  by  the  Attorney-General.  That,  however,  was 
what  was  proposed ;  and  it  seems  to  have,  for  the  moment, 
satisfied  all  parties.  The  indictment  of  Milton  and  Good- 
win, their  books  being  what  they  were,  pointed  to  their 
capital  conviction  and  condemnation,  if  the  Attorney-General 
should  do  his  duty;  and  was  not  that  better,  in  the  case  of 
two  such  peculiarly  black  criminals,  than  including  them 
among  the  twenty,  whose  punishment,  it  had  been  expressly 


176  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS  TIME. 

determined,  was  to  stop  short  of  the  scaffold  ?  By  some  such 
reasoning  I  conceive  Prynne  to  have  reconciled  himself  that 
Saturday  to  the  omission  of  Milton  and  Goodwin  from  the 
twenty.  They  would  be  hanged,  at  any  rate,  he  could  hope, 
in  course  of  law  ;  and,  by  that  mode  of  disposing  of  them, 
seven  more  might  be  got  in  among  the  twenty,  instead  of 
only  five. 

Through  Sunday,  June  17,  Milton,  ruminating  what  had 
been  determined  concerning  him  in  the  Commons  on  the 
preceding  day,  may  have  had  his  own  thoughts.  But  the 
very  next  day  there  was  to  be  a  surprise. 

The  debate  on  Monday  June  18  over  the  filling  up  of  the 
last  seven  places  of  the  twenty  seems  to  have  exceeded  all  the 
foregoing  in  vehemence.  Prynne  had  asterisked  his  seven  ; 
others  had  their  asterisked  sevens :  the  problem  was  to  agree 
on  any  seven  out  of  perhaps  a  score  that  might  be  brought 
forward.  Actually  brought  forward,  and  argued  for  or 
against,  were,  as  we  know,  these  twelve, — Charles  Fleet- 
wood, Colonel  Pyne,  Colonel  Philip  Jones,  Richard  Cromwell, 
Major  Salway,  Richard  Dean,  Whitlocke  again,  Major  Creed, 
Mr.  Philip  Nye,  John  Goodwin,  Judge  Thorpe,  and  Colonel 
Cobbet.  Of  these  there  escaped  Jones,  Richard  Cromwell, 
Salway,  Whitlocke  again,  and  Thorpe  ;  and  the  seven  actually 
chosen  by  the  House  were  Fleetwood,  Pyne,  Richard  Dean, 
Creed,  Nye,  John  Goodwin,  and  Cobbet.  The  selection  of 
Nye  at  the  last  moment  was  a  little  peculiar,  but  may  have 
recommended  itself  to  the  House  on  the  ground  that  there 
was  no  representative  of  the  Independent  clergy  yet  among 
the  twenty,  and  that  Nye,  of  all  the  chiefs  of  that  body,  was 
most  generally  disliked.  The  surprise  was  in  the  selection 
of  John  Goodwin.  Had  he  not  been  disposed  of  on  Saturday, 
by  the  orders  coupling  him  with  Milton,  securing  the  burning 
of  their  books,  and  handing  over  both  pointedly  for  indict- 
ment by  the  Attorney-General?  Whether  because  Prynne 
had  been  thinking  over  this  arrangement  since  Saturday  and 
had  begun  to  have  his  doubts  about  it,  or  for  some  other 
reason,  it  was  he  that  now  moved  that  Goodwin  should  be 
secured  by  being,  made  one  of  the  twenty ;   and  the  House 


MILTON    AND   THE   INDEMNITY   BILL.  177 

seems  to  have  had   no  difficulty  in   concurring.      But  how 
about  Milton,  thus  dissevered  from  Goodwin,  and  left  alone 
in  the  predicament  in  which  they  had  both  been  placed  on 
Saturday?    Not  a  word  more,  so  far  as  we  know,  was  said 
this  day  about  Milton.     Indictment  by  tie  Attorney-General, 
without  inclusion  among  the  Twenty,  remained  the  decreed  pro- 
cedure in  his,  now.  solitary,  case.     Perhaps  well  that  it  was 
so ;  perhaps  well  for  Milton  that  they  did  not  reconsider  the 
arrangement  of   Saturday  for   him   while    they  were   recon- 
sidering it  for  Goodwin.     For,  though  they  had  now  com- 
pleted their  tale  of  twenty,  and  had  left  Milton  as  a  kind  of 
twenty-first  man,  separated  by  a  hiatus  from  the  twenty,  they 
had  another  device,  worse  than  that,  for  the  treatment  of 
such  supernumeraries.     It  was  that  of  flinging  them  among 
the  Regicides.     The  number  of  these  was  not  so  fixed  but  that 
any  new  person  that  might  be  conjectured  as  closely  connected 
with  the  King's  death  might  be    added  to  it,  and,  actually, 
on  this  day,  the  last  business  of  the  House,  after  the  tale  of 
the  twenty  had    been    completed,  was  a  separate   vote  that 
William  Hewlet  and  Hugh  Peters  should  be  totally  excepted 
from  the  indemnity.     Hewlet,  suspected  of  being  one  of  the 
executioners,  only  came  in  where  a  blank  had  been  left  for 
him  ;  but  in  the  case  of  Peters  the  decision  was  a  new  step. 
They  had  ordered   his  arrest    on  June  7  on  the  speculation 
that  he  might  be  classed  among  the  regicides ;  and  now,  on 
the   18th,   they  had  put   him  in  that  class.     Why  did  they 
adopt  this  course  with  Peters,  instead  of  leaving  him  out- 
standing, for  separate  indictment,  as  a  kind  of  twenty-second 
man,  in  company  with   Milton    as  the  already  outstanding 
twenty-first?    Practically,   no  doubt,  it  was  because   Peters, 
in  the  view  of  the  House,  was  a  being  sui  generis ;  but  it  may 
have  been   fortunate   for  Milton  that  the  question  was  not 
started    whether   it  would    not    be    more   symmetrical,    now 
that  he  was  detached  from  Goodwin  and  left  for  indictment 
by  himself,  to    club    him   and  Peters    together  as    the  only 
supernumeraries.     For,  if  that  question  had  been  started  and 
argued  logically,  it    might   have    led    to    the   production  of 
Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates',   and,  had  a  few 
VOL.  VI.  N 


178         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

passages  from  that  book  been  read,  or  even  only  its  full  title, 
with  recollection  of  the  date  of  publication,  the  end  might 
have  been  that  Milton,  as  well  as  Peters,  would  have  been 
flung-  among-  the  totally  excepted  regicides. 

Through  the  remaining  three  weeks  of  the  passage  of  the 
Bill  through  the  Commons  there  was  little  or  nothing  of 
additional  significance  for  Milton  personally.  He  would  hear 
of  the  efforts  of  Prynne  and  others  to  obtain  the  insertion  of 
provisos  increasing  the  revengeful  character  of  the  Bill ;  and, 
even  in  his  condition,  it  may  not  have  been  without  interest 
to  him  that  the  House  had  resisted  those  attempts,  and 
especially  that  they  had  rejected,  by  a  majority  of  180  to  151, 
the  proviso  requiring  all  officials  of  the  Protectorate  to 
refund  their  salaries.  On  the  11th  of  July  he  would  learn 
that  the  Bill  was  through  the  Commons  substantially  as  it 
had  been  settled  on  the  18th  of  June,  only  with  the  trans- 
ference into  the  category  of  the  totally  excepted  of  those 
eleven  regicides  who  had  not  surrendered  to  the  King's 
proclamation,  but  were  still  fugitive  from  justice.  These 
were  Blagrave,  Cawley,  Corbet,  Dixwell,  Goffe,  Hewson, 
Livesey,  Love,  Okey,  Walton,  and  Whaliey.  Altogether, 
to  rectify  his  mental  schedule  of  June  11  (ante,  p.  169)  so  as 
to  bring  it  up  to  date  on  July  11,  when  the  Bill  left  the 
Commons,  Milton  had  to  transfer  the  names  of  these  eleven 
from  the  lower  section  to  the  higher  in  the  class  of  regicides, 
and  also  to  insert  in  the  same  higher  section  the  names  of 
Peters  and  Hewlet,  thus  raising  the  number  of  the  total  ly- 
excepted  to  twenty -three  or  twenty-five,  and  leaving  but  thirty- 
two  in  the  section  of  those  excepted  for  all  but  life.  He  had 
already  filled  up  the  space  in  the  schedule  left  for  the  twenty 
other  delinquents  with  the  names  of  the  twenty  selected. 
The  strange  thing  was  that  he  himself  had  no  place  in  any 
part  of  the  schedule,  and  was  the  only  man  in  the  peculiar 
predicament  of  standing  quite  out  of  it  under  the  menace  of 
separate  indictment  by  the  Attorney-General. 

But  the  Bill  had  to  go  through  the  Lords,  and  all  might 
be  disturbed.  How  far  and  in  what  way  it  would  be  dis- 
turbed by  the  Lords  was  the   anxiety   for  Milton,   and    for 


MILTON  AND  THE  INDEMNITY  BILL.        179 

Milton's  friends  on  his  account,  as  for  so  many  others  on 
other  accounts,  from  the  11th  of  July  onwards1.  The  Lords, 
as  we  know,  were  deliberate  and  dilatory,  and  not  till  the 
beginning-  of  August  could  Milton  know  the  full  drift  of 
their  proposed  amendments  on  the  Bill  as  it  had  been  sent  up 
from  the  Commons.  He  would  then  know  that  the  Lords 
proposed  to  upset  the  whole  arrangement  made  by  the  Com- 
mons about  the  twenty,  taking-  Vane,  Hasilrig-,  Lambert,  and 
Axtell  out  of  the  twenty,  as  four  deserving  to  be  capital 
exceptions,  but  on  the  other  hand  dealing-  more  leniently 
with  the  remaining-  sixteen  by  punishing  them  only  with 
perpetual  incapacitation  for  public  office,  instead  of  reserving 
them  for  any  penalties  short  of  death  that  might  be  fixed 
by  a  special  Act.  In  this  recast  of  the  arrangement  for  the 
twenty  Milton  was  concerned  only  in  so  far  as  it  indicated 
the  disposition  of  the  Lords  to  make  the  regicides,  as  such, 
the  objects  of  supreme  vengeance,  and  to  be  content  with  a 
very  few  other  capital  exceptions.  Here  was  Milton's  danger 
in  the  Lords.  From  the  moment  they  had  the  Bill  in  their 
House  it  was  the  regicides,  the  regicides,  that  they  inquired 
after.  Not  content  with  the  enumeration  sent  up  by  the 
Commons,  they  were  exploring  the  whole  history  of  the 
King's  trial,  last  hours,  and  execution,  over  again  for  them- 
selves, by  the  help  of  witnesses  and  documents,  including  the 
original  death-warrant,  demanded  and  obtained  by  them  from 
Hacker  in  the  Tower.  Now,  in  every  investigation  round 
that  fatal  30th  of  January  1648-9,  there  was  the  risk  that 
Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  with  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  it,  should  be  brought  to  light,  and  so   that, 


1  On  the  14th  of  July  there  was  out  God's  judgments  on   Republicans  are 

in  London,  "  printed  and  to  be  sold  at  specified  as  follows  : — 1.  Dorislaus.    2. 

divers  booksellers'  shops,  1660,"  a  large  Anthony   Ascham.      "  3.   Milton,    that 

folio  leaf  or  placard  with  this  title  : —  writ  two  books  against  the  King  and 

"  The  Picture  of  the  (rood  Old   Cause,  Salmasius  his  Defence  of  Kings  :  struck 

drawn  to  the  life  in  the  effigies  of  Master  totally  blind,  he  beiHg  not  much  above 

"Praise  God  Barebone:  with  several  ex-  40  years  old."    4.  Alderman   Hoyle   of 

amples  of  God's  judgments   on    some  York  (hanged  himself).    5.  Sir  Gregory 

. ».  inent  engagers   against   Kingly  go-  Norton    (died  mad).     6.  The  Levelling 

vernment."    There  is  a  professed  por-  trooper  Lockyer  (shot).  7.  Colonel  Venn 

trait  of  Barebone,  rather  well  done,  with  (died  suddenly).—  The  copy  I  have  seen 

a  kind  of  memoir  ;  and  in  the  accoin-  is  among  the  Thomason  pamphlets,  and 

panying  letter-press  seven  examples  of  bears  the  dating  "  July  14  "  in  MS. 

N  2 


180         LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

however  willing-  the  Lords  might  be  to  let  Milton  be  punished 
only  as  a  general  political  delinquent  on  account  of  his  later 
writings  and  his  secretaryship    to    the   Commonwealth  and 
Cromwell,  they  should  be  compelled  to  exhibit  him  as  acces- 
sory to  the  regicide  before  the  fact,  and  so  to  except  him 
capitally.     It  is  really  singular  that  this  did  not  occur ;  but  it 
did   not.      With  all    the   minuteness  of  their  investigations 
through  a  whole  month,  the  Lords  do  not  seem  to  have  once 
named  Milton,  or  to  have  shown  any  signs  of  questioning  the 
sufficiency  of  the  peculiar  arrangement  for  him  made  by  the 
Commons.     On  the  10th  of  August,  when  they  had  shaped 
the  Bill  fully  to  their  mind,  what  most  interested  Milton, 
besides   the    fact    of  their   proposed    breaking   up    of   "  the 
twenty "  of  the  Commons  into  four  to  be  totally  excepted 
and   sixteen   to   be    incapacitated    only,   was    that   they   had 
extended  the   list   of  regicides,  refused  any  sub-classification 
of  them  into  more    guilty  and   less   guilty,  and  (with  con- 
donation   only   for    Lister     and    Pickering,   in    addition    to 
Hutchinson,  Tomlinson,    and    Ingoldsby)    doomed    them   all 
equally  for  capital  punishment, — and  yet  that  they  had,  some- 
how or  other,  taken  no  note  of  himself  in  this  vast  connexion. 
Axtell,  hitherto  one  of  the  twenty,  they  had  voted  to  be  a 
regicide;    Hacker  they  had  put   in    the   same  list;    Adrian 
Scroope  and  Lassels  they  had  put  back  into  the  list,  refusing 
to  agree  with  the  Commons  in  condoning  them ;  and  these 
four,  with   all   the    other    fifty-five    or    fifty-seven   regicides 
already  enumerated  by  the  Commons,  they  had  left  merely  to 
the  scaffold  or  the  King's  mercy. 

For  three  days  (August  11-13),  as  we  know,  the  Commons 
debated  the  amendments  on  the  Bill  as  it  had  thus  been  sent 
back  to  them.  They  accepted  the  amendment  of  incapaci- 
tation for  sixteen  of  their  former  twenty,  and  they  consented 
to  include  Hacker  among  the  regicides  ;  but  on  other  points 
they  would  not  yield-  They  refused  to  agree  in  making 
Vane,  Hasilrig,  Lambert,  and  Axtell,  capital  exceptions ;  and 
they  strenuously  maintained  their  former  classification  of  the 
regicides  into  less  and  more  pardonable,  insisting  particularly 
that  they  were  bound  in  honour  to   spare   the  lives  of  the 


PROCLAMATION   AGAINST   MILTON   AND   GOODWIN.      181 

twenty-one  regicides  who  had  surrendered  in  faith  in  the 
King's  proclamation,  and  also  that  there  should  be  special 
favour  for  Adrian  Scroope.  On  the  13th  of  August  Solicitor- 
General  Sir  Heneage  Finch  was  instructed  to  carry  up  this 
and  other  information  respecting  the  Bill  to  the  Lords. 

Precisely  on  this  13th  of  August  1660,  when  the  Indem- 
nity Bill  was  thus  hanging  unsettled  between  the  Lords  and 
the  Commons,  did  the  Royal  Proclamation  respecting  Milton 
and  Goodwin,  recommended  by  the  Commons  two  months 
before,  come  out  in  print.  It  was  placarded  over  London, 
and  reprinted  in  the  newspapers  of  the  week,  as  follows  : — 

"  Charles  R 

"  "Whereas  John  Milton,  late  of  Westminster  in  the 
County  of  Middlesex,  Iiatli  published  in  print  two  several  Books, 
the  one  intituled  Johannis  Miltoni  Angli  pro  Populo  Anglicano 
Defensio  contra  Claud ii  Anonymi,  alias  Salmasii,  Defensionem 
Regiam,  and  the  other  in  Answer  to  a  Book  intituled  "  The  Por- 
traicture  of  his  Sacred  Majesty  in  his  Solitude  and  Sufferings  " — in 
both  which  are  contained  sundry  treasonable  passages  against  Us 
and  our  Government,  and  most  impious  endeavours  to  justify  the 
horrid  and  unnatural  murder  of  our  late  dear  Father  of  glorious 
memory;  And  whereas  John  Goodwin,  late  of  Coleman  Street, 
London,  clerk,  hath  also  published  in  print  a  Book  intituled  The 
Obstructors  of  Justice,  written  in  defence  of  his  said  late  Majesty 
[sic  in  some  copies,  ^he  words  "  the  traitorous  sentence  against " 
having  marvellously  dropped  out  in  the  printing]  ;  And  whereas 
the  said  John  Milton  and  John  Goodwin  are  both  fled,  or  so 
obscure  themselves  that  no  endeavours  used  for  their  apprehension 
can  take  effect,  whereby  they  might  be  brought  to  legal  trial,  and 
deservedly  receive  condign  punishment  for  their  treasons  and 
offences  : — 

"  Now,  to  the  end  that  our  good  subjects  may  not  be  corrupted 
in  their  judgments  with  such  wicked  and  traitorous  principles 
as  are  dispersed  and  scattered  throughout  the  before-mentioned 
books,  We,  upon  the  motion  of  the  Commons  in  Parliament  now 
assembled,  do  hereby  strictly  charge  and  command  all  and  every 
person  and  persons  whatsoever  who  live  in  any  city,  borough,  or 
town  incorporate,  within  this  our  Kingdom  of  England,  the 
Dominion  of  Wales,  and  Town  of  Berwick-upon-Tweed,  in  whose 
hands  any  of  those  Books  are,  or  hereafter  shall  be,  that  they, 
upon  pain  of  our  high  displeasure  and  the  consequence  thereof,  do 
forthwith,  upon  publication  of  this  our  command,  or  within  ten 
•lavs  immediately  following,  deliver  or  cause  the  same  to  be  di- 
livered  to  the  Mayor,  Bailiffs,  or  other  Chief  Officer  or  Magistrate, 


18.2  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

in  any  of  the  said  cities,  boroughs,  or  towns  incorporate,  where 
such  person  or  persons  do  live,  or,  if  living  out  of  any  city, 
borough,  or  town  incorporate,  then  to  the  next  Justice  of  Peace 
adjoining  to  his  or  their  dwelling  or  place  of  abode,  or,  if  living 
in  either  of  our  Universities,  then  to  the  Vice-Chancellor  of  that 
University  where  he  or  they  do  reside. 

"  And,  in  default  of  such  voluntary  delivery,  which  we  do  expect 
in  observance  of  our  said  command,  That  then,  and  after  the  time 
before  limited  expired,  the  said  Chief  Magistrate  of  all  and  every 
the  said  cities,  boroughs,  or  towns  incorporate,  the  Justices  of 
Peace  in  their  several  counties,  and  the  Vice-Chancellors  of  Our 
said  Universities  respectively,  are  hereby  commanded  to  seize  and 
take  all  and  every  the  Books  aforesaid,  in  whose  hands  or  pos- 
session soever  they  shall  be  found,  and  certify  the  names  of  the 
offenders  to  our  Privy  Council. 

"  And  We  do  hereby  give  special  charge  and  command  to  the 
said  Chief  Magistrates,  Justices  of  the  Peace,  and  Chancellors, 
respectively,  that  they  cause  the  said  Books  which  shall  be  so 
brought  unto  any  of  their  hands,  or  seized  or  taken  as  aforesaid 
by  virtue  of  this  Our  Proclamation,  to  be  delivered  to  the  respective 
Sheriffs  of  those  Counties  where  they  respectively  live,  the  first  and 
next  assizes  that  shall  after  happen ;  And  the  said  Sheriffs  are 
hereby  also  required,  in  time  of  holding  such  assizes,  to  cause  the 
same  to  be  publicly  burnt  by  the  hand  of  the  common  hangman. 

"  And  We  do  further  straitly  charge  and  command  that  no  man 
hereafter  presume  to  print,  sell,  or  disperse  any  of  the  aforesaid 
Books,  upon  pain  of  our  heavy  displeasure,  and  of  such  further 
punishment  as,  for  their  presumption  on  that  behalf,  may  any  way 
be  inflicted  upon  them  by  the  laws  of  this  realm. 

"  Given  at  Our  Court  at  Whitehall,  the  13th  day  of  August  in 
the  12th  year  of  Our  Reign,  1660." 

It  is  worth  observing  that,  though  the  Commons  had  moved 
for  such  a  proclamation  on  the  16th  of  June,  and  though  the 
order  to  the  Attorney-General  to  draft  it  had  been  given  at  a 
Privy  Council  meeting  on  the  27th  of  June,  the  issue  of  it  had 
been  delayed  till  now.  It  is  worth  observing  also  that  there 
is  no  further  order  in  the  proclamation  for  the  arrest  of  Milton 
and  Goodwin,  both  of  whom  it  declares  to  have  evaded  all 
efforts  for  their  apprehension  hitherto,  but  only  for  the  sup- 
pression and  burning  of  their  books.  The  order  of  the  Com- 
mons of  June  16  remained  still  the  only  warrant  for  taking 
either  Milton  or  Goodwin  into  custody.  The  proclamation, 
however,  reminds  the  public  of  that  warrant,  and  of  the  fact 
that,  if  apprehended  by  it,  the  two  would,  in  accordance  with 


milton's  escape.  183 

the  instructions  of  the  Commons  at  the  time  of  the  warrant, 
"  be  brought  to  legal  trial  and  deservedly  receive  condign 
punishment  for  their  treasons  and  offences."  Was  this  a  hint 
that,  unless  the  Lords  and  Commons  were  speedily  to  agree 
about  the  Indemnity  Bill,  the  Government  might  be  driven 
to  that  kind  of  independent  action  against  such  culprits  which 
the  Commons  had  prescribed  for  Milton  and  Goodwin  together 
originally,  though  they  had  afterwards  provided  otherwise  for 
Goodwin  ? 

After  conferences  and   struggles,   extending   over  another 
fortnight,  and  chiefly  by  Hyde's  expedients  for  compromise  of 
differences,  the  two  Houses  did  come  to  an  agreement.     The 
Commons  gave  up   Axtell    and    also  Adrian    Scroope ;    they 
consented  that  Vane  and  Lambert  should  be  tried  capitally  if 
the  King   thought  fit,  on  condition  that  there  should  be  a 
petition  from  the  two  Houses  themselves  for  their  lives ;  they 
induced  the  Lords   to   accept   their  final  vote  that  Hasilrig 
should  not  be  punished  capitally,  but  only  by  penalties  short 
of  life  ;  and,  on  the  great  question  of  the  regicides  that  had 
surrendered  on  the  Proclamation,  and  were  therefore  entitled 
in  honour  to  some   grace,  they  yielded  so  far  as  to  consent 
that  there  should  be  no  formal  distribution  of  the  regicides 
into  those  to  be  prosecuted   capitally   and  those  to  be  pro- 
secuted  non-capitally,  but  that  all  should  be  alike  liable  to 
capital  prosecution,  with   only  a  saving  clause   for  nineteen, 
to  the   effect  that,  if  condemned,  their  execution   should  be 
stopped  till  ordered  by  Act  of  Parliament.     And  so  at  last 
the  Bill  of  Indemnity  passed  the  two  Houses  on  the  28th  of 
August ;  and  on  Wednesday,  the  29th  of  August,  it  received 
the  King's  assent.     An  abstract  of  it  as  it  then  became  law, 
and  as  it  stands  in  the  Statute-book,  has  been  given  (ante, 
pp.  54-56) ;  and  the  singular  and  important  fact  for  us  here 
is  that  Milton's  name  does  not  occur  in  it  from  beginning  to 
end.     He  had,  therefore,  the  full  benefit  of  the  indemnity, 
without  any  exception  whatever ;  and,  by  all  construction  of 
law  and  equity,  the  order  of  the  Commons  of  June  16  for  his 
special  indictment  by  the  Attorney-General  was  quashed  and 
at  an  end.     It  was  at  an  end  also  for  Goodwin,  whom  the 


184  LIFE   OF   MILTON  AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Bill  did  mention  by  name,  including-  him  among-  eighteen 
persons  incapacitated  perpetually  for  any  public  trust.  Not 
even  this  brand  of  incapacitation  was  put  upon  Milton. 

There  is  no  greater  historical  puzzle  than  this  complete 
escape  of  Milton  after  the  Restoration.  It  amazed  people 
at  the  time1.  "John  Goodwin  and  Milton,"  says  Burnet,  in 
his  summary  account  of  the  fates  of  the  regicides,  after 
expressing-  his  surprise  that  Henry  Marten  escaped  with  his 
life,  "  did  also  escape  all  censure,  to  the  surprise  of  all  people. 
"  Goodwin  had  so  often  not  only  justified,  but  magnified,  the 
"  putting  the  King  to  death,  both  in  his  sermons  and  books, 
"  that  few  thought  he  could  have  been  either  forgot  or 
"excused;  for  Peters  and  he  were  the  only  preachers  that 
"  spoke  of  it  in  that  strain.  But  Goodwin  had  been  so 
"  zealous  an  Arminian,  and  had  sown  such  division  among 
"all  the  sectaries  upon  these  heads,  that  it  was  said  this 
"  procured  him  friends.  Upon  what  account  soever  it  was, 
"  he  was  not  censured.  Milton  had  appeared  so  boldly, 
"  though  with  much  wit,  and  great  purity  and  elegancy  of 
"  style,  against  Salmasius  and  others,  upon  that  argument  of 
"  putting  the  King  to  death,  and  had  discovered  such  violence 
"  against  the  late  King  and  all  the  royal  family,  and  against 
"  Monarchy,  that  it  was  thought  a  strange  omission  if  he 
"  was  forgot,  and  an  odd  strain  of  clemency  if  it  was  intended 
"  he  should  be  forgiven/'  There  are  several  inaccuracies  in 
this  passage,  besides  the  insufficient  acquaintance  with  the 
extent  of  Milton's  demerits  shown  by  the  omission  of  all 
reference  to  his  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates.  Goodwin 
did  not  escape  all  censure,  but  was  expressly  named  among 
the  exceptions  in  the  Indemnity  Bill,  though  for  incapaci- 
tation only.  Milton,  on  the  other  hand,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  not  been  forgotten  in  the  course  of  the  proceedings, 
though  he  emerged  unscathed  at  the   last.      All   the    more 

1  "  Be  Miltono  et  captivis  quid  actum  Professor  Stern  (Milton  und  seme  Zeit 

fuerit  aut   agetur  proximis   tuis   mihi  IV.  196)  from  a  letter,  dated  Amsterdam 

rescribes"  ("What  has  been  done  or  is  Aug.  10,  1660,  among  the  Sloane  MSs! 

being  done  about  Milton  and  the  pri-  (No.  649,  f.  42  a).     The  letter,  which  is 

soners  you  will  send  me  back  word  in  signed  "  Q.  N.  B.",  is  supposed  by  Pro- 

your  next,")  is  a  quotation  given  by  fessor  Stern  to  be  to  Hartlib. 


HOW   DID   MILTON   ESCAPE?  185 

does  such  absolute  final  escape  in  his  case  require  to  be 
accounted  for.  Goodwin  was  dismissed  with  his  minor 
punishment,  if  Burnet  is  right,  because  his  Arminianism 
and  years  of  hard  hitting  among  the  Calvinistic  sects  had 
recommended  him  to  the  new  Anglican  clergy  as  a  pardon- 
able animal  after  all.  But  why  and  how  did  Milton,  with 
ten  times  Goodwin's  culpability,  escape  altogether?  The  iohy 
lay  in  God's  will,  but  we  may  inquire  into  the  how. 

Edward  Phillips,  writing  in  1694,  remembered  his  uncle's 
escape  thus: — "It  was  in  a  friend's  house  in  Bartholomew 
"  Close,  where  he  lived  till  the  Act  of  Oblivion  came 
"  forth  ;  which,  it  pleased  God,  proved  as  favourable  to  him 
"  as  could  be  hoped  or  expected,  through  the  intercession 
"  of  some  that  stood  his  friends  both  in  Council  and  Par- 
"  liament  :  particularly,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Mr. 
"  Andrew  Marvell,  a  member  for  Hull,  acted  vigorously  in 
";his  behalf,  and  made  a  considerable  party  for  him, — so 
"  that,  together  with  John  Goodwin  of  Coleman  Street,  he 
"  was  only  so  far  excepted  as  not  to  bear  any  office  in  the 
"  Commonwealth."  Phillips  ought  not  to  have  made  this 
blunder  of  representing  his  uncle  as  excepted  for  incapaci- 
tation along  with  Goodwin,  when  the  curious  fact  was  that 
he  escaped  even  that  small  punishment;  but  the  rest  of  the 
passage  is  valuable.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Marvell, 
the  fine  anc^  faithful  man,  did  exert  himself  to  the  uttermost 
for  his  friend  and  late  co-secretaiy.  Another  tradition  comes 
to  us  from  the  painter  Richardson,  born  about  1665.  In 
his  Life  of  Milton,  prefixed  to  his  notes  on  Paradise  Lost, 
in  1734,  there  is  the  following  passage  about  Milton's  escape: 
— "  Some  secret  cause  must  be  recurred  to  in  accounting 
"  for  this  indulgence.  I  have  heard  that  Secretary  Morrice 
"  and  Sir  Thomas  Clarges  were  his  friends,  and  managed 
"  matters  artfully  in  his  favour.  Doubtless  they  or  some- 
"  body  else  did;  and  they  very  probably,  as  being  very  powerful 
"  friends  at  that  time;  but  still  how  came  they  to  put  their 
"  interest  on  such  a  stretch  in  favour  of  a  man  so  notoriously 
"  obnoxious  ?  Perplexed  and  inquisitive  as  I  was,  I  at  length 
'•  found  out  the  secret;  which  he  from  whom  I  had  it  thought 


186         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  he  had  communicated  to  me  long  ago,  and  wondered  he  had 
"  not.  I  will  no  longer  keep  you  in  expectation :  'twas  Sir 
"  William  Davenant  obtained  his  release,  in  return  for  his  own 
"  life  procured  by  Milton's  interest  when  himself  was  under 
"condemnation,  anno  1650.  A  life  was  owing  to  Milton, 
"  and  'twas  paid  nobly,  Milton's  for  Davenant's  at  Davenant's 
"intercession.  The  management  of  the  affair  in  the  Commons, 
"  whether  by  signifying  the  King's  desire  or  otherwise, 
"  was  perhaps  by  those  gentlemen  named. — It  will  now  be 
"  expected  I  should  declare  what  authority  I  have  for  this 
"  story.  My  first  answer  is,  Mr.  Pope  told  it  me.  Whence 
"had  he  it?  From  Mr.  Betterton.  Sir  William  was  his 
"patron. — To  obtain  full  credit  to  this  piece  of  secret  history 
"  'twill  be  necessary  to  digress  a  little,  if  indeed  it  be  a 
"  digression.  Betterton  was  prentice  to  a  bookseller,  John 
"  Holden,  the  same  who  printed  Davenant's  Gondibert.  There 
"  Sir  William  saw  him,  and,  persuading  his  master  to  part 
"  with  him,  brought  him  first  on  the  stage.  Betterton  then 
"  may  be  well  allowed  to  know  this  transaction  from  the 
"  fountain  head." — This  interesting  tradition,  so  circumstan- 
tiated as  having1  come  from  Davenant  himself,  through 
Betterton  and  Pope,  also  deserves  attention. 

Although  Mar  veil  must  have  done  his  utmost,  and 
Davenant,  we  may  well  believe,  took  part,  neither  of  them, 
nor  the  two  together,  could  have  effected  anything,  had  not 
men  of  greater  influence  concurred.  Marvell,  though  not  an 
inactive  member  of  the  House,  was  hardly  of  much  regard 
there  ;  and  Davenant's  influence  was  only  that  of  a  non- 
parliamentary  veteran  restored  to  his  laureateship  and  dramatic 
activity,  and  popular  with  the  courtiers.  The  pardon  in  this 
case  was  not  a  something  to  be  obtained  by  earnest  private 
application  to  any  one  great  person  or  even  to  the  Privy 
Council.  It  had  to  be  managed  as  part  of  a  great  and  intricate 
business  going  through  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament,  where 
there  were  all  sorts  of  opinions  and  tempers,  where  everything 
was  openly  debated,  and  where  an  indiscreet  word  or  motion 
in  Milton's  favour,  rousing  Prynne  or  others,  might  have 
marred  all.     In  short,  after  the  minutest  study  I  have  been 


HOW   DID    MILTON    ESCAPE?  187 

able  to  give  to  the  subject,  I  have  no  doubt  that  Milton's 
escape  was  the  result  of  a  powerful  organization  in  his  behalf, 
uniting  a  number  of  influences,  and  most  skilfully  and 
cunningly  conducted. 

That  part  of  Richardson's  tradition  which  mentions  Monk's 
brother-in-law,   Sir    Thomas    Clarges,    and    Monk's   intimate 
friend,  Secretary  Morrice,  as  having  "managed  matters  art- 
fully" in  Milton's  favour,  is  as  significant  as  it  is  credible. 
They  were  men  of  weight  in  the  Commons,  and  could  com- 
mand Monk's  immediate  adherents  in  that  House  for  anything 
they  wanted.     Then  Mr.  Arthur  Annesley,  still  more  a  lead- 
ing man   in  the   House,  and  with    all  the   credit  of  having 
been  the  chief  manager  of  the  Restoration  along  with  Monk, 
is  found  afterwards,  under  his  higher  title  of  Earl  of  Angle- 
sey, on  intimate  terms  with  Milton,  visiting  him   often,  and 
y  much  coveting  his  society  and  converse/'  to  the  day  of  his 
death;    and  this  points,  if  not  to  an  accpuaintance  between 
them  before   the   Restoration,  at  least  to  the   origin   of  the 
subsequent    acquaintance  in    Annesley's    hearty    cooperation 
now  in  Milton's  behalf.       But    persons    more    powerful  still 
must  have  at  least  concurred.     Not  a  particular  in  the  Bill 
of  Indemnity,  though    it    belonged    to    Parliament    and    to 
Parliament  only,  but  must  have  been  discussed  privately  by 
Hyde  and  his  colleagues  of  the  Junto  or  Cabinet,  if  not  by 
the  Privy  Council  as  such.     Annesley  and  Morrice  were  of  the 
Privy  Council  and  near  to  the  Junto,  and  Monk  as  one  of  the 
chiefs  of  the  Junto  had  all  deference  paid  him  ;  but  every- 
thing  depended,  in  last  resort,  on  Hyde.     Had  Hyde  been 
resolute  against  Milton,  had  he  given  the  word  that  Milton 
must  be  left  to  his  fate,  no  exertions  to  the  contrary  would 
have  availed.       Now,   Hyde  certainly  did   not   like    Milton. 
He  had  taken  sufficient  note  when  abroad  of  Milton's  suc- 
cessive publications  in  defence  of  the  Regicide.     "  Since  so 
"  impious    and    scurrilous    a    pamphlet    as    that    written    by 
"Milton"  Hyde  had   written  from   St.    Germains,  Aug.  27, 
1652,  to  one  of  his  correspondents  in  Germany,  "  hath  found 
"  the  way  into  Germany  (where  we  hope  it  found  the  same 
"  exemplary    reproach    and   judgment    it   met  in  France),    I 


188  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

"  suppose  that  book  written  by  Salmasius  hath  likewise  got 
"  thither  Vs     The  reference  here,  of  course,  is  to  Milton's  De- 
fenslo  Prima,  out  since  1651.     Copies  had  got  into  Germany, 
and  Hyde  hoped  the  book  of  Salmasius,  to  which  it  was  an 
answer,  was  also  in  circulation  there.     Again,  writing  from 
Paris  to  Secretary  Nicholas,  Jan.  18,  1652-3,  Hyde  had  said 
"  Nothing  is  heard  of  Milton's  book  being   translated    into 
"  French  2."  This  referred  to  the  Eikonoklastes,  Durie's  French 
translation   of  which  was  then  just  out  in  London,  though 
Hyde  was  uncertain  of  the  fact.     "  Though  Jo.  Jane  be  really 
"  an  able  man,"  proceeds  Hyde  in  the  same  letter,  "  are  his 
"  writings,  if  translated,   weighty   enough  to  gain  credit  in 
"other  languages?"     The  reference  here  was  to  the  anony- 
mous Eikon  Aklados  of  1651  in  answer  to  Milton's  Eikono- 
klastes.      The    author    of    that    book3    was   Joseph    Jane,    a 
lawyer  of  some  kind ;   and   Jane    himself  and    others    were 
urging  Hyde  to  have  his  book  translated  into  French,  so  that 
there  might  be  an  antidote    to    Durie's    translation    of  the 
Eikouoklastes  when  it  reached  France.    As  Hyde  had  hinted, 
the  translation   recommended    had  not    been  thought  worth 
while,  Jane's  book  being  a  wretchedly  silly  one;  but,  as  late 
as  April  27,    1654,   one    of  Hyde's  correspondents   is  found 
writing :  "  Mr.  Jos.  Jane  desires  to  know  whether  his  book 
"  against  Milton  has  been  translated  into  French,  as  a  Jersey 
"  man  undertook  that  task  :   he   thinks  that,  were  it  printed 
"  in  French  and  dispersed,  it  might  do  some  good  especially 
"since  Milton's  book  is  now  printed  in  French  in  England  V 
Altogether,  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  that  Milton  had  been 
an  object  of  very  considerable  attention  to  Hyde  while  abroad, 
and  that,  when  Hyde  was  back  in  London,  and  in  the  Pre- 
miership, Milton  had  no  reason  to  expect  much  mercy  from  him. 
Undoubtedly,  however,  Hyde  must  have  given  his  consent  to 
the  proposal  that  Milton  should  be  spared.     One  may  imagine 
a  generous  relenting  in  one  who  was  a  scholar  and  man  of 
letters  himself  towards  an  enemy  of  such  indubitable  ability 

1  Calendar  of  the   Clarendon  State  3  See  account  of  it,  in  Vol.  IV.  pp. 
Papers  by  Mr.  Macray,  II.  145.                     349—350. 

2  Ibid.  171.  *  Calendar  of  the   Clarendon  State 

Papers  by  Mr.  Macray,  II.  339. 


HOW   DID    MILTON    ESCAPE?  189 

and  such  high  literary  reputation ;  and  one  may  imagine 
also  how  the  fact  of  Milton's  blindness  and  desolation  would 
operate  in  his  favour  in  any  heart  capable  of  pity.  Indeed, 
we  must  suppose  these  two  feelings, — admiration  of  Milton's 
intellectual  power,  though  it  had  been  exerted  on  what 
was  now  called  the  wrong  side,  and  pity  for  his  blind  and 
disabled  condition, — to  have  been  the  chief  motives  with 
many  in  being  active  for  bringing  him  off,  or  at  least 
not  vehement  for  his  punishment.  The  extent  of  Hyde's 
kindness  can  hardly  have  been  more  than  a  promise  to 
Annesley,  Morrice,  and  Clarges,  that,  if  they  could  succeed 
in  keeping  Milton  from  being  named  among  the  exceptions 
to  the  Indemnity  Bill  in  the  Commons,  he  would  not  himself 
disturb  that  arrangement  in  the  Lords,  and  would  advise  his 
Majesty  to  be  satisfied.  On  some  such  understanding 
Annesley,  Morrice,  and  Clarges  must  have  acted,  Davenant 
assisting  and  stimulating  their  efforts  ;  and  whatever  could  be 
done  by  talking  and  negotiating  among  likely  members  not 
on  the  Government  bench,  and  representing  to  them  what 
a  man  Milton  was,  and  how  unnecessary  it  was  to  proceed 
against  him  capitally,  was  done,  we  may  be  sure,  by  honest 
Andrew  Mar  veil. 

The  business,  we  repeat,  was  one  of  extreme  difficulty, 
and  the  least  mismanagement  might  have  been  fatal.  Two 
things,  one  can  see,  were  essential.  In  the  first  place,  it  had 
to  be  contrived,  if  possible,  that  Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and 
Magistrates  should  be  kept  out  of  sight  and  out  of  recollection. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceive  the  very  title  of  that  pamphlet 
to  have  been  read  in  the  House,  especially  if  the  date  and 
other  circumstances  had  been  explained,  without  such  instant 
effect  as  would  have  been  disastrous  and  irretrievable.  "  Why, 
here  is  a  regicide-in-chief,"  would  have  been  the  cry;  "  here 
is  the  very  penman  of  the  regicides,  who  was  compassing  and 
imagining  the  King's  death  on  paper  while  he  was  still  alive, 
equally  with  Cook,  the  prosecuting  counsel,  in  his  speeches  at 
the  trial,  and  with  Peters  in  his  preachings  to  the  soldiers." 
Any  incautious  mention  of  that  pamphlet  of  1648-9  would 
have  been  ruinous;  and  hardly  less  desirable  was  any  reference 


190  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

to  Milton's   last  pamphlet   of  all,  his  Heady  and  Easy  Way 
to  establish  a  Free  Commonwealth,  of  so  late  a  date  as  March 
1660,  and  still  in  men's  minds  as  his  dying*  defiance  of  the 
Restoration.     On  the  other  hand,  direct  and  open  procedure, 
as    if  for    bringing    Milton   off,   would    have   been  stupidly 
imprudent.     On  the  contrary,  he  must  be  named,  and  named 
distinctly  among    the    criminals ;    offences    of  his    must    be 
specified ;  and  the  procedure  must  be  as  if  for  his  severe  and 
sufficient  punishment.      Otherwise  Prynne  would  have  been 
on  the  floor  of  the  House,  and  no  entreaty  could  have  stopped 
his  mouth.     Hence  the    method    actually  adopted.     On   the 
16th   of  June    there  was    the  Resolution   for  the    arrest    of 
Milton,  for  moving  the  King  to  call  in  copies  of  his  Befensio 
Prima   and   Eikouohlasles    for    public    burning,    and   for   in- 
structing the  Attorney-General  to  prosecute  him  and  Goodwin 
by  special  indictment.      That  fastened  full  attention  on  the 
two  most  celebrated  of  Milton's  defences  of  the  regicide,  the 
two  that  everybody  remembered,  though  not  legally  the  worst. 
It  held  out  a  prospect  that  Milton  would  soon  be  at  the  bar 
in  the  Old  Bailey,  and  that  thence  he  could  hardly  depart 
with  less  than  a  death  sentence.     From  that  moment,  ac- 
cordingly, he  could  be  supposed  set  aside  and  disposed  of, 
and  the  House  could  go  on  settling  the  fates  of  other  crimi- 
nals by  the  Indemnity  Bill  itself.     To  prevent  Milton's  case 
from  coming  up  again  in  connexion  with  the  Indemnity  Bill, 
as  Goodwin's  had  done  within  two  days  after  his  conjunction 
with  Milton  in  the  resolutions  of  the  16th  of  June,  was  then 
the  policy.     Till  the  Indemnity  Bill  should  be  through  the 
two    Houses,    the    Attorney- General's    indictment    must   be 
supposed  hanging  over  Milton,  and   the  police  in  search  of 
him.     "  Milton  was  not  seized,  nor  perhaps  very  diligently 
pursued,"  says  Dr.  Johnson  ;  and  there  may  be  something  in 
the  shrewd  remark, — though,  as  Peters,  who  was  "  diligently 
pursued,"  evaded   capture   till  the  end   of  August,  it  is  not 
necessary  to   suppose  that  the   search   for  Milton  was   only 
pretended  or   slack.      There    is    a    story,   first   put    in    print 
by  Warton,  on    information   from    the  critic  Thomas   Tyers 
(1726-1787),  that   Milton's    friends,    to    divert  the   search, 


HOW   DID   MILTON    ESCAPE?  191 

spread  the  rumour  that  he  was  dead,  and  got  up  a  mock 
funeral  to  confirm  the  report,  and  that  the  King  afterwards 
laughed  heartily  over  the  trick.  The  story  may  be  at  once 
set  aside  as  a  myth.  There  is  no  mention  of  the  rumour,  or 
of  the  funeral,  in  the  London  newspapers  of  the  time,  where 
such  a  thing  would  almost  certainly  have  been  turned  into  a 
paragraph  ;  the  mock-funeral  trick  was  a  stale  one ;  and,  if 
any  one  will  try  to  conceive  the  alleged  mock-funeral  in 
Milton's  case,  in  the  visual  form  of  a  procession  from  some 
house,  he  will  see  that  it  could  not  possibly  have  happened, 
except  by  absurdly  inviting  attention  to  Milton's  real  hiding- 
place,  or  subjecting  some  other  house  and  a  number  of  persons 
to  unnecessary  inquiry.  In  fact,  it  mattered  little,  for  the 
real  issue,  whether  Milton  remained  in  his  hiding  in  Bar- 
tholomew Close  or  was  captured  and  put  in  prison.  What 
really  mattered  was  that  he  should  be  still  thought  of  by  the 
public  as  a  delinquent  reserved  for  the  law.  Hence  the 
appearance,  August  13,  when  the  Indemnity  Bill  was  hang- 
ing in  its  last  stage  between  the  Commons  and  the  Lords, 
of  the  King's  proclamation  about  Milton  and  Goodwin. 
One  may  discern  some  meaning  in  Milton's  favour  in  the 
delay  of  that  proclamation  for  so  many  weeks  after  it  had 
been  moved  for  in  the  Commons,  and  actually  ordered  by 
the  Council.  Nor  can  one  read  the  proclamation  without 
noting  the  enormous  advantage  given  to  Milton  by  the 
mention  only  of  his  Eikonoklastes  and  his  Defensio  Prima  as 
his  treasonable  books,  and  the  total  suppression,  more  par- 
ticularly, of  his  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  the  pre- 
cursor by  three  months  of  Goodwin's  Obstructors  of  Justice,  the 
one  book  of  Goodwin's  mentioned  in  the  same  proclamation. 
I  cannot  persuade  myself  that  this  advantage  to  Milton  was 
accidental.  How  easily,  but  for  subtle  pre-arrangement,  the 
preamble  of  the  proclamation  might  have  run  thus:  "Whereas 
John  Milton,  late  of  Westminster,  in  the  county  of  Middle- 
sex, hath  published  in  print  several  Books,  whereof  one, 
entitled  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates :  proving  that  it  is 
lawful,  and  hath  been  held  so  through  all  ages,  for  any  who  have 
the  power,  to  call  to  account  a  Tyrant  or  wicked  King,  and,  after 


192  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

due  conviction,  to  depose  and  put  him  to  death,  was  in  pre- 
paration by  the  said  John  Milton  while  our  dear  Father,  his 
late  sacred  Majesty  of  glorious  memory,  was  still  alive,  and 
was  put  forth  in  London  a  fortnight  after  his  Majesty's 
execrable  murder,  and  whereof  these  following  also  contain 
sundry  treasonable  passages  against  Us  and  our  Government, 
and  most  impious  endeavours  to  justify  the  said  horrid  and 
unnatural  murder :  to  wit,  one  entitled/'  &c. !  Had  such  a 
proclamation  appeared,  would  there  not  have  been  a  necessity, 
even  at  that  stage,  for  Lords  and  Commons  to  go  back  upon 
Milton's  case,  retract  the  mere  order  for  his  indictment  by 
the  Attorney- General,  and  insert  him  by  name  in  the  In- 
demnity Bill;  beside  Hugh  Peters,  among  the  unpardonable 
regicides  ?  There  had  been  precaution  against  this ;  only  the 
order  for  indictment  by  regular  process  was  left  hanging  over 
Milton ;  and,  sixteen  days  afterwards,  when  the  Houses  had 
put  their  last  touches  to  the  Indemnity  Bill,  and  the  King 
had  given  his  assent  to  it  (August  29),  it  came  forth  without 
Milton's  name  in  it  anywhere  or  anyhow,  so  that  the  order 
for  his  indictment  was  made  waste  paper  by  that  fact,  and 
he  could  walk  abroad  an  absolutely  free  man. 

Not  all  at  once,  it  seems.  It  was  fated  that  Milton  should, 
for  a  while,  experience  the  inside  of  a  prison.  We  know  for 
certain,  by  the  words  of  the  Proclamation  of  the  13th  of 
August,  that  he  remained  uncaptured  then ;  but  it  is  as 
certain  that  the  sergeant-at-arms  of  the  Commons  had  him 
in  custody  some  little  time  afterwards. — It  is  just  possible 
that  this  official,  "  James  Norfolke,  Esq./'  tracked  out 
Milton's  hiding-place  between  the  proclamation  on  the  13th 
and  the  passing  of  the  Indemnity  Bill  on  the  29th,  and  so 
had  him  in  custody  before  the  order  for  his  arrest  of  June  16 
could  be  considered  legally  cancelled.  In  that  case,  Milton 
was  lying  in  some  prison  when  the  Indemnity  Bill  was  re- 
ceiving those  last  touches  of  which  we  have  spoken,  and  when 
there  were  the  first  burnings  of  his  books  by  the  hangman. 
These  seem  to  have  begun  in  London  on  the  27th  of  August, 
two  days  before  the  passing  of  the  Indemnity  Bill,  but  to 


MILTON    IN    CUSTODY   FOR   A   WHILE.  193 

have  been  repeated  several  times  through  the  following  week 
or  ten  days,  as  copies  came  to  hand.  "  This  week,  according 
"  to  a  former  proclamation,"  say  the  newspapers  of  Sept. 
3-10,  1660,  "  several  copies  of  those  infamous  books  made 
"  by  John  Goodwin  and  John  Milton  in  justification  of  the 
"  horrid  murder  of  our  late  glorious  sovereign  King  Charles 
"  the  First  were  solemnly  burnt  at  the  session  house  in  the 
"  Old  Bailey  by  the  hand  of  the  common  hangman."  Such 
burnings  in  London  and  Westminster  were  but  the  signal  for 
burnings  that  were  to  continue  for  some  time  in  different 
parts  of  the  country,  though  it  may  be  inferred  from  the 
numbers  of  copies  of  the  several  books  that  have  come  down 
to  our  own  day  that  people  took  very  little  trouble  to  obey 
his  Majesty's  strict  order  for  their  surrender,  and  that  there 
was  no  very  general  visitation  of  libraries  to  secure  copies. 
It  may  have  been  not  inconvenient  for  Milton  to  be  under 
lock  and  key  himself  while  they  were  burning  his  books. — 
On  the  whole,  however,  Phillips's  words,  already  quoted, 
rather  imply  that  his  uncle  was  not  in  custody  at  the  passing 
of  the  Indemnity  Bill.  He  takes  no  notice  of  his  uncle's 
imprisonment  at  all,  having  apparently  forgotten  it ;  but  he 
speaks  as  if  his  uncle  came  out  of  Bartholomew  Close,  and 
began  to  be  led  about  the  streets  again,  the  moment  the  Bill 
passed.  In  that  case  his  arrest  was  a  subsequent  affair,  of 
which  the  date  is  uncertain.  The  likeliest  time  would  be 
during  the  seven  weeks  of  the  recess  of  Parliament  from  Sept. 
13  to  Nov.  6.  The  sergeant-at-arms,  arguing  with  himself 
that  it  was  no  business  of  his  to  regard  the  order  of  the 
Commons  of  June  16  for  Milton's  arrest  as  cancelled  by  the 
Bill,  and  that  at  all  events  he  had  fees  to  expect  from  Milton 
before  letting  him  out  of  his  grasp,  seems  to  have  ventured 
on  apprehending  him.  The  Indemnity  Bill,  indeed,  positively 
forbade,  under  damages  and  other  penalties,  such  arresting  or 
troubling  of  any  one  who  could  plead  the  benefit  of  it ;  but 
Mr.  Norfolke  had  the  extraordinary  warrant  of  the  House  of 
Commons  itself  for  Milton's  arrest,  and  could  allege  that, 
though  the  House  had  sat  a  fortnight  after  the  passing  of  the 
Indemnity  Bill,  they  had  not  repealed  the  warrant.  It  was 
VOL.  vi.  o 


194  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

not  for  him  to  assume  it  to  be  repealed  or  to  reconcile  it  with 
the  Indemnity  Bill.  In  fact,  it  was  the  interest  of  officials 
generally  that  persons  who  had  been  in  peculiar  danger  should 
not  escape  by  merely  pleading  the  Indemnity,  but  should  be 
induced  to  obtain  double  assurance  of  their  safety  by  the 
process  of  applying  for  their  pardons  individually  under  the 
great  seal  or  privy  seal  in  terms  of  the  Indemnity,  and  so 
yielding  clerks  and  other  gentlemen  their  proper  perquisites. 
It  may  have  been  no  great  mishap  to  Milton  if  Mr.  Nor- 
folke  did  capture  him  early  in  the  recess,  and  prevent  him 
from  being  seen  in  the  streets  through  all  that  time.  It  was 
the  dreadful  time  of  the  trials  of  the  regicides,  and  of  the 
hangings  and  quarterings  of  Harrison,  Carew,  Cook,  Hugh 
Peters,  Scott,  Clements,  Scroope,  and  Jones,  at  Charing  Cross, 
and  Axtell  and  Hacker  at  Tyburn  (Oct.  13-19).  Milton 
had  known  those  men,  or  most  of  them  ;  some  of  them  may 
have  been  his  familiars ;  Harrison  must  have  been  a  man  after 
his  own  heart  in  many  things.  The  horror  of  that  week  of 
bloodshed,  we  shall  suppose,  passed  round  Milton  in  London 
while  he  was  immured  somewhere,  and  it  was  impossible  for 
any  of  the  mobs  coming  from  the  executions  to  surround  him 
in  a  chance  walk  in  any  bye-way,  and  salute  him  in  mob- 
fashion  as  the  blind  regicide  who  had  been  left  unhanged. 
The  various  proceedings  for  the  reconstitution  of  the  Church 
of  England  having  also  passed,  including  his  Majesty's 
assurance  to  the  Presbyterians,  by  his  Declaration  concerning 
Ecclesiastical  Affairs  of  October  25,  that  the  episcopacy  now 
set  up  was  not  to  be  high  episcopacy,  but  a  moderate  and 
limited  episcopacy,  much  after  Usher's  model,  the  recess 
came  to  an  end  and  the  two  Houses  reassembled.  From 
November  6,  when  they  did  reassemble,  they  had  so  much 
to  do  with  their  revenue  debates,  their  bill  for  the  attainder 
of  the  dead  regicides,  and  other  matters,  that  it  was  not  till 
the  15th  of  December  that  they  could  attend  to  the  case  of 
Milton.  On  that  day,  which  was  a  Saturday,  they  did  attend 
to  it.  ,,  Ordered  that  Mr.  Milton,  now  in  custody  of  the 
"  sergeant- at-arms  attending  this  House,  be  forthwith  re- 
;'  leased,  paying  his  fees/'  is  the  entry  on  the  subject  in  the 


MILTON    IN   CUSTODY   FOR   A   WHILE.  195 

journals.     In  other  words,  the  House  had  concluded  that  most 
certainly  Milton  must  have  the  full  benefit  of  the  Indemnity 
Bill,  but  that,  as  he  had  been  arrested  by  authority  of  an 
order  of  theirs  of  older  date,  the  sergeant-at-arms  must  not 
lose  his  money.     The  money  seems  to  have  been  forthcoming' 
at  once,  enabling   Milton  to   leave   prison  that  day  and  to 
spend  the  Sunday  with  his  friends.     But  the  fees  demanded 
by  Mr.  Norfolke  had  been  exorbitant ;  and  on  the  Monday 
(Dec.  17),  "  a  complaint  having  been  made  that  the  sergeant- 
"  at-arms  had  demanded  excessive  fees  for  the  imprisonment 
"  of  Mr.  Milton/'   it   was  ordered  "  that  it  be  referred  to 
"  the  committee  for  privileges  to   call   Mr.  Milton  and  the 
"  Sergeant  before  them,  and  to  determine  what  is  fit  to  be 
"  given  the  Sergeant  for  his  fees  in  this  case."     Such  is  the 
entry  in  the  journals ;  but  on  other  authority  we  learn  that 
the  fees  demanded  had  been  a^l50,  a  sum   equal  to  about 
<3£J500  now.     On  the  same    authority,  we  learn  that  it  was 
Mr.  Andrew  Marvell  that  made  the  complaint  in  Milton's 
behalf  and  obtained  the  modifying   order,  and  that  he  was 
seconded  by  "Colonel   King  and  Colonel   Shapcott,"  while, 
on  the  contrary,    Sir   Heneage   Finch  observed  that  Milton 
"  was  Latin  Secretary  to   Cromwell  and  deserved  hanging." 
The  Colonel  King  so  mentioned  I  take  to  have  been  Edward 
King,  one  of  the  members  for  Great  Grimsby,  and  the  Colonel 
Shapcott  to  have  been  Robert  Shapcott,  one  of  the  members 
for  Tiverton.    It  may  be  assumed,  I  think,  that  they  had  been 
among  those  acting  in  Milton's  interest  all  through.   It  would 
be  curious  if  the  Edward  King  of  this  occasion  were  some 
relative  of  the  Edward  King  of  Lycidas1. 

Milton,  on  being  fully  restored  to  liberty  in  December 
1660,  did  not  return  to  his  former  house  in  Petty  France, 
but,  as  his  nephew  tells  us,  "  took  a  house  in  Holborn,  near 
Red   Lion    Fields."      He   had   lived  in  Holborn,  it  may  be 

1  Phillips's  Memoir  of  Milton  ;  Todd's  1660 ;  Commons  Journals  of  dates ;  Pari. 

Life,  p.  116  (for  the  burning  of  Milton's  Hist.  IV.  162,  adding  the  details  of  Dec. 

books  as  early  as  the  27th  Aug.)  ;  Par-  17,  as  I  imagine,  from  the  contemporary 

liamentary  Intelligencer  of  Sept.  3—10,  MS.  diary  used  in  aid  of  the  Journals. 

O   2 


196         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

remembered,  once  before  :  viz.  from  about  September  1647, 
when  he  broke  up  his  school-establishment  in  the  Barbican, 
to  March  1648-9,  when  he  became  Latin  Secretary  to  the 
first  Council  of  State  of  the  Commonwealth.  The  part  of 
Holborn  where  he  now  took  a  house,  however,  was  not  that 
part,  on  the  south  side,  where  he  had  formerly  had  his  quarters 
among1  the  houses  opening  backward  into  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields, 
but  was  on  the  north  side,  nearer  Bloomsbury,  where  Holborn 
has  now  Red  Lion  Square  behind  it.  Both  the  Square  and 
the  "  Fields  "  which  preceded  it  derived  their  name  from  the 
Red  Lion  Inn,  once  the  largest  inn  in  Holborn.  Milton's 
new  house,  taken  only  till  he  could  find  one  more  suitable, 
must  have  been  some  small  tenement  near  the  bustle  of  the 
Inn,  with  the  Fields  behind  it.  There  he  began  life  over 
again  after  the  Restoration,  looking  about  in  the  havoc  caused 
by  that  event,  as  a  blind  man  could  look x. 

What  had  become,  during  Milton's  abscondence  and  impri- 
sonment, of  those  public  persons  with  whom  he  had  been  most 
intimately  associated  through  the  time  of  his  secretaryship, 
and  of  whom  his  recollections  were  strongest? 

Oliver  Cromwell  had  been  dead  two  years ;  but,  in  December 
1660,  thoughts  would  revert  even  to  him,  if  only  because  they 
had  then  resolved  to  drag  his  body  from  its  tomb  and  hang 
it  up  at  Tyburn.  They  were  to  do  the  same  with  the  body 
of  Bradshaw,  and  that  would  recall  also  Bradshaw's  living 
image  and  valued  friendship.  Richard  Cromwell  had  van- 
ished for  the  time  abroad.  Henry  Cromwell  was  in  England, 
signifying  his  complete  submission  to  his  present  Majesty's 
government  in  any  way  that  should  not  be  inconsistent  with 
his  "  natural  love  to  his  late  father,"  pleading  also  that  in  the 
time  of  his  government  of  Ireland  he  had  proved  himself  to 
be  no  fanatic  in  politics,  inasmuch  as  he  had  "  encouraged  a 
learned  ministry,"  "  maintained  several  bishops,"  and  been 
favourable  to  the  king's  friends,"  and  hoping  that  those  things 
would  be  considered,  and  that  he  and  his  family  might  be 
allowed  to  live  on  in  peace,  with  some  fragment  of  their  Irish 

1  Phillips's  Memoir ;  Cuningham's  Handbook  of  Loudon,  Art.  Red  Lion  Square. 


OLD   FRIENDS   AND   ASSOCIATES.  197 

estates  confirmed  to  them  \     Of  the  regicides  that  had  been 
especially  known  to  Milton,  besides  any  that  were  dead  before 
the  Restoration,  or  had  been  hanged  and  quartered  since,  there 
was  Whalley,  one  of  the  condemned  fugitives,  and  to  be  heard 
of  no  more.     Milton's    especial    friend   Vane,  and  Lambert, 
whose  exploits  for  the  Commonwealth  he  had  also  celebrated, 
were   prisoners  for  life,   with   the  possibility  of  the  scaffold 
expressly  reserved  for  either  or  both.     Overton,  Milton's  best 
beloved  of  all  the  republican  soldiers,  was  in  no  such  extreme 
danger,  and  might  even  have  expected  to  be  in  some  favour 
with  the  new  powers  on  account  of  his  memorable  imprison- 
ment through  the  Protectorate.     He  seems,  however,  to  have 
been  an  object  of  special  suspicion  just  at  the  time  of  Milton's 
release ;   for  a  note  of  news  in  Mercurias  Publicus  for  Dec. 
13-20,  1660,  is  that  "  Colonel  Robert  Overton,  formerly  called 
Major-General  Overton,  is  sent  to  the  Tower,"  and  one  finds 
elsewhere  that   a   porter  living  in    St.   Andrew's,    Holborn, 
gave  evidence  that  week  that  he   had  been  "employed   by 
"  Major-General  Overton  to  pack  and  carry  divers  trunks  and 
"  bedding  from  Counsellor  Vaughan's,  Holborn  Bar,  to  Mr. 
"  Stanbridge's,  Three  Leg  Alley,  Fetter  Lane 2 ."     Cromwell's 
son-in-law,  Fleetwood,   Milton's  friend    from  their  boyhood, 
was  now  past  all  his  greatness,  and  more  permanently  under  a 
cloud  than  Overton.     He  was  one  of  those  incapacitated  for 
life  by  the  Indemnity  Bill;  in  which  list  also  were  Desborough, 
Sydenham,  and  Pickering,  three  of  the  Councillors  of  the  Re- 
public and  the  Protectorate  for  whom  Milton  had  expressed  his 
particular  respect.     On  the  same  list  were  St.  John,  whom  he 
must  have  known  well,  and  John  Goodwin,  connected  with  him 
now  so  notoriously.      Lawrence,  Whitlocke,   Strickland,   and 
Algernon  Sidney,  four  others  of  the  Councillors  of  the  Com- 
monwealth grouped  for  such  honourable  mention  by  Milton  in 
1654,  were  not  among  the  formally  incapacitated,  but  were 
quite  out  of  public  view,  with  small  chance  of  further  activity. 
Sidney,  indeed,  had  not  dared  to  return  to  England  from  that 
embassy  to  Denmark  on  which  he  had  been  sent  in  July  1659 

1   Mrs.    Green's    Calendar   of   State       Henry  Cromwell. 
Papers,  1660—1,  p.    519:    Petition  of  2  Ibid.  p.  418  ;  and  Merc.  Pub.  oi  date. 


198  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AXD    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

by  the  Restored  Rump.  There  were  reports  of  his  still  incur- 
able republicanism,  and  of  the  dreadful  things  he  had  been 
sayino-  and  doing-  in  that  spirit  at  Copenhagen.  Congratulated 
there  by  some  one  on  not  having  been  one  of  those  who  had 
been  o-uilty  of  sentencing  Charles  or  signing  his  death-warrant, 
though  he  had  been  nominally  one  of  his  judges,  "  Guilty  /" 
he  had  exclaimed:  "why,  it  was  the  justest  and  bravest  action 
that  "  ever  was  done  in  England  or  anywhere  else";  and,  on 
hearing  that  there  was  a  design  to  seize  him,  he  had  gone  to 
the  Kins'  of  Denmark,  and  asked  who  was  at  the  bottom  of 
the  design,  "Est  ce  notre  bandit?"  meaning  Charles  II1. 
How  different  the  fate  of  that  Montague,  "  of  the  highest 
ability  and  the  best  culture  and  accomplishments,"  whom 
Milton  had  praised  on  that  account  in  1634  in  the  same 
sentence  in  which  he  had  noticed  Sidney  for  his  "  illustrious 
name,"  and  who  had  been  conjoined  with  Sidney  as  plenipo- 
tentiary for  the  Rump  in  his  mission  to  the  Baltic  Courts. 
It  was  during  that  mission  that  he  had  first  veered  round  to 
Charles ;  and  now  he  was  Earl  of  Sandwich,  and  Charles's 
great  liegeman,  with  Milton's  farewell  blessing. 

So  much  for  those  eminent  leaders  and  statesmen  of  the 
Commonwealth  to  whom  Milton's  personal  relations  had  been 
closest.  But  we  must  not  forget  Thurloe  and  Milton's  other 
colleagues  or  acquaintances  of  the  Council  Office.  Thurloe  had 
been  handsomely  forgiven,  and  might  have  been  taken  into 
Charles's  service,  with  fine  prospects,  had  he  chosen  ;  but  he 
preferred  being  remembered  by  posterity  as  Oliver's  secretary 
only,  and  was  to  spend  his  few  remaining  years  in  private 
between  his  country-place  in  Oxfordshire  and  his  chambers  in 
Lincoln's  Inn 2.  Jessop,  one  of  the  two  chief  clerks  in 
Cromwell's  council  office  under  Thurloe,  had  accommodated 
himself  to  the  Restoration,  had  been  clerk  to  the  House  of 
Commons  in  the  Convention  Parliament  from  the  beginning, 
and  had  obtained  a  patent  of  that  office  for  life,  with  hopes 
of  other  good  things 3.     As  clerk  of  the  Commons,  he  may 

1  English    Cycl.,    Article    A  Igernon       his  State  Papers. 

Sidney,    with    quotations    there    from  3  Commons  Journals,  April  25,  and 

letters  between  Sidney  and  his  lather.  Sept.  11  and  13   1660. 

2  Birch's  Lite  of  Thurloe,  prefixed  to 


OLD   FRIENDS   AND    ASSOCIATES.  199 

possibly  have  been  of  use  to  Milton  in  the  passage  of  his  ease 
through  the  House, — who  knows?  Scobell,  Jessop's  fellow- 
clerk  under  Thurloe,  and  since  then  clerk  of  Cromwell's 
Second  Parliament,  and  troubled  on  that  account  by  the 
Restored  Rump,  did  not  fare  so  well  as  Jessop.  He  had 
been  required  to  deliver  up  to  Jessop  all  parliamentary  papers 
in  his  possession  *,  and  was  now  therefore  a  retired  Cromwel- 
lian  official,  from  whom  a  visit  to  Milton  would  be  nothing- 
strange.  Morland  and  Downing,  the  former  attaches  of 
Thurloe's  office,  and  well  known  to  Milton  about  the  office 
even  before  he  had  drafted  their  credentials  for  their  famous 
foreign  missions  for  Cromwell  on  the  Piedmontese  business 
and  on  others,  are  not  likely  to  have  darkened  Milton's  door. 
They  were  now  Sir  Samuel  Morland  and  Sir  George  Downing, 
the  two  prosperous  renegades  of  the  Restoration.  Mr.  John 
Durie,  who  had  also  figured  so  much  in  Cromwell's  diplomacy, 
aiid  in  Milton's  society  and  correspondence,  would  not,  for 
any  consideration,  have  behaved  like  Morland  and  Downing  ; 
but  even  he  had  succumbed,  and  was  trying  to  manoeuvre.  In 
July  1660  we  find  him  writing  to  the  King,  and  offering  "  a 
method  of  treating  about  peace  and  unity  in  matters  of  religion 
between  the  Episcopal  and  Presbyterian  parties"  ;  and  there  is 
evidence  that  for  some  months  afterwards  he  was  in  hopes  of 
being  able  to  renew,  under  the  government  of  Charles,  and  with 
countenance  from  Hyde  and  the  new  clergy,  his  labours  for 
his  life-long  idea  of  a  union  of  all  the  Protestant  Churches, 
and  was  willing  in  that  behalf  to  represent  himself  as  "  never 
having  served  the  turn  of  any  party,"  and  as  quite  ready,  in 
loyalty  to  his  restored  Majesty,  to  forget  that  there  had  ever 
been  a  Commonwealth  or  a  Cromwell.  The  Restoration 
Government,  however,  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  Mr. 
Durie ;  and  having  lost  his  post  of  keeper  of  the  library  at 
St.  James's,  he  was  to  go  abroad  early  in  1661,  and  to  remain 
abroad  for  the  rest  of  his  life  2.  Milton's  old  friend  Hartlib, 
also  a  supernumerary  in  Thurloe's  office,  was  still  extant,  in 

1  Commons  Journals  May  8  and  11,  112  ;  Kennett's  Register,  pp.  197 — 198  ; 
1660.  Bayle,  Art.  Dureus  ;  Stern's  Milton  and 

2  Mrs.    Green's    Calendar   of    State  seine  Zeit,  IV.  21,  22,  and  note. 
Tapers    (under  date    July  6,  1660)   p. 


200  LIFE   OP  MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

his  house  in  Axe-yard,  in  Westminster,  beside  his  daughter 
and  her  husband,  the  chemist  Clodius,  and  with  another 
daughter  just  married  to  another  German,  named  Roder ;  nor, 
though  he  accommodated  himself  to  the  Restoration  as  well 
as  he  could,  and  had  many  Restoration  acquaintances,  of 
whom  Pepys  was  one,  can  he  have  ceased  to  look  after 
Milton,  or  at  least  to  remember  him  among  those  he  had 
known  longer1?  Of  Meadows,  Milton's  former  assistant  in 
the  foreign  secretaryship,  and  lately  ambassador  for  Crom- 
well on  the  great  Swedish-Danish  business,  one  would  like  to 
know  more  than  we  do.  He  had  returned  from  the  Baltic 
befoi-e  the  Restoration,  and  seems  now  to  have  withdrawn 
from  affairs,  to  live  on,  highly  respected,  as  Sir  Philip 
Meadows,  because  of  some  Danish  or  Swedish  knighthood 
that  had  been  conferred  upon  him.  The  present  whereabouts 
of  Andrew  Marvell,  the  successor  of  Meadows  in  the  Latin 
co-secretaryship  with  Milton,  is  no  secret  to  us.  Whoever 
forsook  Milton  or  was  to  forsake  him,  the  brave  member  for 
Hull,  who  had  stood  his  friend  so  faithfully  through  his  late 
danger,  was  to  cultivate  him  and  be  proud  of  him  to  the  last. 
Marvell  was  living  in  Westminster,  and  had  begun  thence 
his  series  of  letters  to  his  Hull  constituents2. 

What  had  become  of  Marchamount  Needham,  of  the  Mer- 
ciirins  Politicns,  who  had  absconded  about  the  same  time  as 
Milton,  with  a  hue  and  cry  after  him  to  Amsterdam,  de- 
scribing him  as  likely  to  be  seen  in  that  city,  a  hawk-nosed, 
short-sighted,  thin-bodied  man,  wearing  ear-rings  (Vol.  V. 
p.  702)  ?  He  had  remained  in  Amsterdam  or  elsewhere  abroad 
till  the  Indemnity  Bill  passed  ;  and  then,  finding  himself  not 
among  the  exceptions,  he  had  boldly  returned  to  London. 
"  There  is  lately  come  to  town  that  subtile  sophister,  Mar — 
"  Ned — ,  Oliver's  vindicator,  the  metropolitan  pamphleteer 
"  and  writer  of  that  damnable,"  &c,  is  the  announcement, 
under  date  October  1,  1660,  in  a  wretched  weekly  periodical 
of  the  day,  trying  to  establish  itself  by  obscenities  and  gossip. 

^  x  Pepys,  under  dates  July  10  and  Aug.       series   is   dated   Nov.    17,  1660.     See 
'>  16^0-  Grosart's  edition  of  Marvell's  Works,  II. 

2  The   first   preserved  letter  of  the       17— 20» 


MARCHAMONT  NEEDHAM  AGAIN.  201 

But  the  extraordinary  fact  of  Needham's  escape  with  im- 
punity had  already  formed  the  subject  of  a  formidable  special 
pamphlet,  published  on  the  7th  of  September,  with  the  title 
"  A  Pope  for  Pol.,  or  a  Hue  and  Cry  after  Marchemount  Need- 
ham,  the  late  scurrilous  news-writer:  being  a  Collection  of  his 
horrid  Blasphemies  and  Pevilings  against  the  King's  Majesty, 
his  person,  his  cause,  and  his  friends,  published  in  his  weekly 
Politicus.1^  On  the  title-page  were  two  Scripture  texts,  the 
first  being-  2  Sam.  xix.  21,  "  Shall  not  Shimei  be  put  to 
death  for  this,  because  he  cursed  the  Lord's  Anointed  ? " 
Then  followed  "  an  advertisement  to  the  reader,"  starting" 
with  the  question  "  whether  more  mischiefs  than  advantages 
were  not  occasioned  to  the  Christian  world  by  the  invention 
of  typography,"  dilating  on  the  enormities  of  the  English 
press  since  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  and  indicting 
Needham  in  particular  as  "  the  Goliath  of  the  Philistines,  the 
".  great  champion  of  the  late  usurper,  whose  pen  was  in  com- 
"  parison  of  others  like  a  weaver's  beam."  The  present 
pamphlet,  it  is  announced,  is  to  consist  of  a  series  of  specimen- 
extracts  from  the  Mercurius  Politicus  under  Needham's  editor- 
ship, from  which  the  reader  will  doubtless  "  judge  that,  had 
"  the  Devil  himself,  the  father  of  lies,  and  who  has  his  name 
"  from  calumny,  been  in  this  man's  office,  he  could  not  have 
"  exceeded  him."  The  pamphlet  was  published  lest,  "through 
the  inconsiderableness  of  his  person,"  so  heinous  an  offender 
should  be  forgotten.  "  I  have  no  enmity  to  his  person,"  says 
the  writer,  "  but  nevertheless  there  is  some  kind  of  necessity 
"  that  he  that  hath  with  so  much  malice  calumniated  his 
"  sovereign,  so  scurrilously  abused  the  nobility,  so  impudently 
"  blasphemed  the  Church,  so  industriously  poisoned  the 
"  people  with  dangerous  principles,  should  at  least  carry  some 
"  mark  about  him,  as  the  recompense  of  his  villainies."  Then 
comes  the  body  of  the  pamphlet,  consisting  of  forty-five  pages 
of  accurately  cited  extracts  from  the  Mercurius  Politicus,  from 
its  first  number,  published  June  13,  1650,  to  its  386th  num- 
ber, published  about  the  close  of  1657.  The  array  is  most 
impressive  and  effective,  including  such  recurring  phrases 
about   Charles    II.   as   "  young  Tarquin,"    "  the   lad,"    "  the 


202  LIFE   OF   MILTOX   AND    HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

thing-  called  his  Majesty,"  and  such  expressions  about  the 
death  of  Charles  I.  as  "  the  heroic  and  most  noble  act  of 
justice  in  judging-  and  executing  the  late  King-."  Some  of 
the  longest  and  most  striking  extracts  are  from  the  remark- 
able series  of  leaders  that  appeared  in  Mercurius  Politicus 
during  that  year  or  more,  from  September  1650,  or,  at  all 
events,  from  January  1650-1,  onwards,  when  Milton  was 
censor  or  superintending  editor  of  the  paper,  and,  as  I  believe, 
a  contributor.  Milton's  connexion  with  the  paper  was  now 
out  of  mind;  it  was  Needham  that  had  to  bear  the  brunt. 
Notwithstanding  this  convenient  "  rope  for  Pol.,"  so  tempt- 
ingly furnished,  they  could  not  now  hang  him  ;  and  he  was 
to  live  on  in  England  as  long  as  Milton  himself,  and  a  little 
longer.  As  he  had  twice  changed  his  politics  before  be- 
coming editor  of  the  Mercurius  Politicus  in  1650,  one  would 
not  have  been  surprised  if  he  had  become  Government 
journalist  for  Charles  II.  But,  since  his  flight  in  April 
1660,  Henry  Muddiman  and  Giles  Bury  had  been  jointly  in 
possession  as  the  authorized  Restoration  journalists.  They 
had  been  publishing  the  Parliamentary  Patelligencer  on 
Mondays  and  the  Mercurius  Publicus  on  Thursdays,  with 
John  Macock  and  Thomas  Newcome  for  the  joint-printers 
since  May,  and  John  Birkenhead  as  the  supervising  censor 
and  licencer  since  November.  Newcome,  so  long  Needham's 
printer  and  Milton's,  has  to  be  noted  therefore  as  one  of 
the  most  rapid  of  the  Restoration  turncoats.  Was  Need- 
ham  himself,  who  had  changed  his  colours  twice  already,  to 
change  them  once  more?  To  do  him  justiee,  he  seems  to 
have  had  no  desire  to  try  another  political  phase.  To  earn 
an  honest  livelihood,  he  abandoned  literature  for  the  time, 
and  resumed  the  practice  of  physic  \ 

1  The  Man  in  the  Moon,  No.  2  (Oct.  Early  in  May  they  register  the  papers 
1660)  ;  dated  copy  of  A  Rope  for  Pol.  by  authority,  but  without  the  name  of 
among  the  Thomason  Pamphlets  ;  any  licencer  till  November  1660,  when 
Wood's  Ath.  1182—1190  ;  my  notes  Birkenhead  steps  in  as  licencer. — Wood 
from  Stationers'  Registers  for  1660.  actually  hints  that  Needham  had  man- 
Newcome's  last  registration  of  Need-  aged  to  bribe  Hyde.  The  supposition 
ham's  Mercurius  Politicus  had  been  on  seems  preposterous,  and  could  hardly 
March  29, 1660  ;  Macock  had  begun  the  have  been  entertained  by  the  good  anti- 
printing  of  Mercurius  Publicus  a  week  quary  but  for  his  strong  personal  an- 
before  ;  and  Macock  and  Newcome  are  tipathy  to  the  Chancellor, 
co-printers  of  that  and  the  Intelligencer. 


SALMASIUS's   POSTHUMOUS   REPLY  TO   MILTON.         203 

Claudii  Salmasii  ad  Johannem  Miltonum  Responsio,  opus 
posf/iumum  ("  Reply  of  Claudius  Salmasius  to  John  Milton,  a 
posthumous  work  ") :  such  was  the  title  of  a  little  book  of 
304  pages  duodecimo,  in  very  small  print,  which  had  been 
registered  on  the  29th  of  September  by  three  booksellers, 
"  Mr.  John  Martin,  Mr.  James  Allestree,  and  Thomas  Dicas," 
and  which  was  out  in  London,  from  their  shop  "  at  the  sign 
of  the  Bell  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,"  in  December,  just 
about  the  time  when  Milton  obtained  his  release  and  was 
settling  himself  in  Holborn.  It  was,  in  fact,  that  reply  to 
Milton's  first  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio  which  Salmasius, 
at  his  death  in  September  1653,  had  left  unfinished.  Milton, 
as  we  know,  had  heard  again  and  again,  even  while  Salmasius 
was  alive,  of  some  such  book  as  in  preparation,  and  had 
waited  for  its  appearance;  but,  as  it  never  had  appeared,  he 
had  begun  to  have  doubts  as  to  its  existence  in  any  publish- 
able  form.  Dr.  Crantzius,  indeed,  in  his  preface  to  Ulac's 
Hague  reprint  of  the  Defensio  Secunda  in  1654,  had  said, 
"  If  ever  the  posthumous  book  of  the  great  man  shall  come 
"  forth,  Milton  will  feel  that  even  the  dead  can  bite  :  I  have 
"  happened  to  see  a  portion  of  it ;  and,  heavens !  what  a 
"  blackguard  is  Milton,  if  one  may  trust  Salmasius  !  "  Years, 
however,  had  passed  without  farther  word  of  the  book,  the 
publication  of  which  in  Holland,  or  even  in  France,  was  no 
easy  matter  while  Cromwell's  Protectorate  lasted.  Not  till 
the  Protectorate  was  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  the  British 
Islands  were  in  the  anarchy  preceding  the  Restoration,  do 
steps  seem  to  have  been  taken  by  the  representatives  and 
executors  of  Salmasius  to  give  his  manuscript  to  the  world. 
"  Of  my  posthumous  adversary,  as  soon  as  he  makes  his 
"  appearance,  be  good  enough  to  give  me  the  earliest  in- 
"  formation,"  Milton  had  written  to  Henry  Oldenburg  in  Paris 
on  the  20th  of  December  1659.  And  lo  !  now,  after  another 
year,  here  was  the  book,  printed  and  published  in  London, 
close  to  his  own  door.  It  was  a  judicious  arrangement  on 
the  part  of  the  friends  of  Salmasius.  The  book  would  fall 
on  Milton  when  his  hands  were  tied  from  every  attempt 
at   reply  and  he  must  receive  it  helplessly  as  part  of  his 


204  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

punishment.  It  would  also  be  welcome  to  the  royalists  as 
a  chastisement  of  Milton  personally,  and  as  a  new  argument 
in  favour  of  Monarchy  by  a  man  whose  fame  was  still  great 
throughout  Europe.  As  early  as  September  1653,  the  very 
month  of  the  death  of  Salmasius,  Hyde  had  been  making 
inquiries  about  "  the  book  Salmasius  had  prepared  to  print 
against  Milton,"  and  desiring  from  Secretary  Nicholas  a 
complete  catalogue  of  the  writings  of  the  dead  scholar.  The 
publication  now  of  the  Ad  Johannem  Miltonum  Resjoonsio  in 
London  under  his  own  premiership  may  have  been  noted  by 
Hyde,  therefore,  with  some  satisfaction1. 

The  book  being  in  Latin,  only  learned  readers  at  the  time 
could  know  distinctly  what  it  said  of  Milton,  or  how  it 
argued  for  Monarchy  again  in  opposition  to  Milton's  reason- 
ings in  the  Defensio  Prima.  Copies  of  the  book  are  now 
scarce,  and  the  tradition  of  it  is  very  vague.  Some  account 
of  it,  therefore,  may  be  expected  here. 

There  is,  first,  a  dedication  of  the  book  to  Charles  II  by 
Claudius  Salmasius,  the  son  and  representative  of  the  deceased 
author,  dated  from  Dijon,  Sept.  1,  1660 2.  "I  had  no  need 
"  to  deliberate,  most  serene  King,"  says  this  dedication, 
"  to  whom  I  should  consecrate  my  father's  Reply  to  John 
"  Milton,  inasmuch  as  it  is  your  own  property,  and  can  now 
"  behold  the  happy  re-erection  by  yourself  of  that  kingly 
"  dignity  in  your  England  which  had  for  some  years  been 
"  ruthlessly  overthrown.  It  seems  to  me  to  belong  to  you 
"  no  less  rightfully  than  did  the  Royal  Defence  itself,  written 
"  by  him  to  your  order  and  inscribed  by  him  with  your  name. 
"  Whereas,  however,  this  Reply  had  begun  to  be  printed  in 
"  such  turbulent  and  sad  times  of  your  kingdoms  as  there 
"  have  been  heretofore,  I  reckon  it  now  the  chief  part  of  my 
"  happiness  that  it  finds  your  Majesty  restored  to  your 
"  paternal  throne,  your  native    country,  and  all  your  goods, 

1  Stationers'  Registers  for  date  of  I  find  that  there  are  two  copies  of  the 
registration  of  the  Responsio ;  Thomason  book  in  that  library, — one  of  the  London 
( latalogue  for  month  of  publication  (day  edition,  and  another  of  an  edition  in 
of  month  not  given)  ;  Macray's  Calendar  quarto  published  Divione  (i.e.  at  Dijon) 
of  the  Clarendon  State  Papers,  II.  255 ;  1660).  This  last  must  have  been  an 
and  ante  Vol.  V.  pp.  151—152  and  p.  635.  edition  for  sale  on  the  continent. 

2  From  the  catalogue  of  the  Bodleian 


SALMASIUS  S   POSTHUMOUS   REPLY   TO   MILTON.  205 

"  as  if  by  right  of  recovery  after  absence,  amid  the  auspicious 
"  acclamations  of  your  peoples." 

The  book  itself  consists  of  a  Preface,  occupying"  fifty  pages, 
printed  without  the  least  break  by  paragraphing,  two  com- 
pleted chapters,  each  of  greater  length,  printed  in  the  same 
uncomfortable  fashion,  and  a  considerable  fragment  of  a  third 
chapter,  ending  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  with  thirteen 
asterisks  added  to  mark  the  fact,  and  with  the  subjoined 
words  "  Catera  desunt  in  Autographo  "  ("  The  rest  wanting  in  the 
Author's  Manuscript"}.  The  manuscript  used  for  it,  or  for 
any  portion  that  had  already  been  in  type  on  the  Continent, 
was  that  which  Salmasius  had  begun  at  the  Court  of  Queen 
Christina  in  Sweden  in  May  1651,  when  Milton's  Pro  Populo 
Auglicano  Defensio  had  just  reached  him  there,  and  the  smart 
of  that  terrible  answer  to  the  Defensio  Regia  was  felt  most 
severely  ;  but  it  had  been  revised  and  languidly  continued  at 
intervals  in  1652,  after  Salmasius  had  returned  from  Sweden 
to  Holland,  and  may  be  regarded  as  in  the  main  a  per- 
formance of  that  year,  with  feeble  touches  of  addition  even 
in  1653,  when  it  was  left  among  the  dead  scholar's  papers. 
The  sole  interest  of  the  book  now  lies  in  its  vituperations  of 
Milton.  These  straggle  through  the  whole.  Direct  and 
special  retaliation  on  Milton,  however,  is  the  business  of  the 
fifty  pages  of  preface  ;  and  a  string  of  translated  sentences 
from  those  pages  will  be  enough  here : — 

There  appeared  two  years  and  more  ago  a  Defensio  Regia  for 
Charles  the  First,  who,  with  sacrilegious  daring,  and  with  a 
criminality  heard  of  nowhere  else  before,  was  slain  with  parricidal 
axe  by  impious  and  rebellious  citizens,  for  no  other  cause  than  that 
he  was  a  king,  and  that  they  wanted  to  reign  themselves.  That 
writing  experienced  various  judgments,  not  only  here  in  Holland,  but 
also  in  other  places,  accoi'ding  as  the  author  and  the  cause  pleased 
or  displeased  different  sets  of  persons.  The  majority,  however, 
judged  of  it  as  the  matter  itself  seemed  to  demand,  and  as  the 
atrocity  of  the  crime  deseiwed,  and  condemned  unanimously  a  deed 
which,  to  almost  all  save  those  that  perpetrated  it,  or  had  part  in 
that  nefarious  conspiracy,  could  appear  no  otherwise  than  detestable 
and  to  be  visited  upon  its  authors  with  avenging  flames.  That 
Defence  ran  through  the  hands  and  through  the  talk  of  the  public, 
set  forth  in  several  editions,  and  translated  into  various  languages, 
for  the  space  of  a  year  and  more  before  any  ill-employed  fellow 


206  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

presented  himself  who  could,  or  would,  undertake  the  work  of  refut- 
ing it.  The  infamous  authors  of  the  parricide,  as  appears,  sought  for 
some  one  among  their  adherents  fit  to  handle  well  this  bad  cause, 
and  found  none  ;  but  at  length  there  crept  forth  from  his  hovel  a 
certain  obscure  scamp  of  a  low  London  schoolmaster,  who  offered 
himself  to  those  labouring  to  find  such  an  one  as  he  turned  out  to 
be,  and  ventured  to  promise  that  he  would  execute  the  task,  if  it 
were  assigned  to  him,  neither  idly  nor  weakly.  He  had,  he  said, 
all  the  possible  requisites  in  abundance  for  hatcheting  out  such 
a  work, — a  forehead  of  iron,  a  heart  of  lead,  a  mischievous  spirit, 
an  evil  tongue,  an  atrocious  style ;  his  match  in  railing  could  not 
be  found ;  no  calumniator  anywhere  in  existence,  no  sycophant,  no 
impostor,  by  whom  he  could  be  beaten,  or  that  he  could  not  beat. 
He  had  in  his  possession  at  home  such  chests  full  of  scurrilities 
that,  if  they  were  but  crammed  with  as  many  coins,  he  would  sur- 
pass in  wealth  the  griffins  that  inhabit  the  golden  mountains.  Not 
that  he  promised  to  turn  a  very  bad  cause  into  a  good  one,  for  who 
can  do  that  ]  But  that  he  would  strive  by  every  means  to  get  up  a 
delusion  for  the  credulous,  and  impose  it  upon  the  less  cautious  by 
plenty  of  lying.  Either  the  parricide  admitted  of  no  sort  of 
defence  whatever,  or  he  would  defend  it  so  that  it  should  come  out 
defended  by  the  same  arts  by  which  it  had  been  committed.  And 
truly  he  has  performed  more  than  he  promised,  more  even  than 
could  be  required  of  him.  .  .  .  Among  the  terms  of  reproach  with 
which  Milton  has  aspersed  Salmasius  is  his  designation  of  Professor, 
as  if  it  were  a  greater  crime  to  be  a  professor  than  to  be  a 
parricide.  .  .  .  But  who  objects  this  to  Salmasius  1  The  man  who 
was  master  in  a  petty  London  school,  and  to  whom  it  seemed  a 
more  compendious  way  to  riches  to  attack  the  King's  life  and 
furnish  a  pleading  for  the  parricide  by  which  he  was  taken  off  than 
to  set  tasks  of  dictation  to  boys,  and  teach  lists  of  odd  vocables. 
The  same  gentleman  has  the  additional  distinction  of  having 
repudiated  his  wife  after  a  year  of  marriage,  for  certain  or  uncertain 
reasons  known  to  himself,  and  of  propounding  the  lawfulness  of 
divorce  for  any  cause  whatsoever,  and  wounding  the  reputation  of 
the  wives  of  others  by  calumnious  insinuations.  In  many  places 
he  calls  Salmasius  a  little  scrub  of  a  fellow.  On  my  word,  when  I 
read  those  passages,  I  thought  he  must  be  himself  well  nigh  among 
the  giants  for  height  of  body.  Yet  it  has  been  reported  to  me  by 
those  who  have  seen  him  that  he  is  a  pigmy  in  stature,  a  giant 
in  malice  only.  .  .  .  Who,  or  whence,  is  Milton?  Who  ever 
heard  his  name  before  this  Defence  of  his  for  the  English  people  1 
Nay,  many  deny  that  even  that  Defence  is  of  his  authorship, 
farther  than  the  mere  title,  averring  that  it  was  written  by  a  certain 
insignificant  French  schoolmaster,  who  teaches  boys  a  deal  of 
nothing  in  London,  inasmuch  ar  those  who  have  pretty  intimate 
acquaintance  with  Milton  himself  seriously  deny  that  he  knows 
Latin  or  can  write  it.  ...  I  am  of  another  opinion  myself.     For, 


SALMASIUS's    POSTHUMOUS   REPLY   TO   MILTON.         207 

if  Milton  is  a  poet,  and  of  no  mean  aspiration  either,  why  should  he 
not  be  able  also  to  be  an  eloquent  orator  1  But  that  he  has  sought 
the  laurel-wreath  on  account  of  some  namby-pamby  poetry  is 
proved  by  his  printed  Poemata,  in  which  he  exults  in  the  fact  that 
his  father,  in  producing  him,  had  bestowed  a  poet  on  the  world. 
But  that  he  is  no  better  a  poet  than  he  is  a  citizen  appears  from 
this,  that,  just  a",  in  his  character  of  a  bad  citizen,  he  sins  against 
the  laws  of  his  country  by  defending  its  rebels,  so,  being  a  very  bad 
poet,  he  frequently  violates  the  laws  of  metre  by  putting  shorts  for 
longs  and  longs  for  shorts.  Thus  he  shortens  the  last  syllable  in 
quotannis  x,  the  first  syllable  in  paruisset 2,  the  first  also  in  semi- 
fracta  a,  and  in  the  proper  name  Opis i,  and  the  second  syllable  in 
Jacobus5.  He  commits  many  other  errors  in  these  poems  through- 
out, offensive  both  to  grammar  and  to  the  Latin  idiom.  He  has 
Belgia  for  Belgium  6.  He  might  as  well  write  Gallium  for  Gallia. 
He  calls  birds  augures7;  why  should  not  birds  as  well  be  spoken 
of  as  aucupes  1  He  calls  the  sky  stelliparum  8,  as  if  it  produced 
stars.  There  is  an  infinity  of  other  things,  which  I  omit,  and 
among  them  verses  out  of  rule,  such  as  et  callebat  avium  linguas  9. 
Even  though  he  had  not  annexed  to  those  poems  the  age  at 
which  they  were  written,  we  should  have  easily  seen  that  they 
were  the  poems  of  a  boy.  But  he  ought  to  correct  his  boyish 
errors  now  that  he  is  a  man,  especially  as  he  caused  them  to  be 
reprinted  in  London  a  few  years  ago.  Had  this  been  his  style 
for  ever,  and  he  had  spent  his  time  only  in  singing  of  loves, 
or  in  writing  doleful  funeral  elegies,  I  should  think  much  better  of 
him  as  the  worst  of  poets  than  I  do  now  that  he  figures  as  the  best 
of  patrons  in  protecting  the  worst  of  causes.  For  I  would  rather 
have  the  blunt  pen  of  a  leaden  poet  than  the  sharp  axe  of  an  iron 
hangman  or  defender  of  hangmen.  .  .  .  One  observes  it  as  of  con- 
siderable consequence,  Milton,  that  you  announce  your  Defence  as 
having  been  undertaken  Pro  Populo  Anglicano,  for  the  English 
people.  For  the  English  people?  Is  it  that  English  people 
for  whom  the  dying  King,  in  his  extreme  hour,  expressed  his  care 
in  his  last  words,  praying  to  God  for  their  safety  1  Is  it  that 
English  people  you  speak  for  that  now  groans  under  a  savage 
tyranny,  and  would  assuredly  recall  its  King  from  death  if  it  could, 
or  give  back  his  throne  to  his  heir,  and  restore  the  form  of  ancient 
government  which  has  prevailed  in  England  from  time  immemorial  ? 
Is  it  that  people,  Milton,  that  has  empowered  you  to  plead  its  cause 

1  Eleg.  V.  30,  where  quotannis  stood       right  quantity. 

in  the   edition  of  1645 :    rectified   into  5  First  line  of  the  third  of  the  epi- 

perennie  in  that  of  1673.  grams  In  Proditionem  Bambardieum  ; 

2  Possibly  In  Quint.  Nov.  165  ;  where,  where  the  liberty  was  taken  knowingly 
however,  the  word  is  paruere.  and  deliberately. 

3  In   Quint.   Nov.   143,  where  semi-  s  Eleg.  III.   12,  where  Belgia  still 
fractaqUe  stood    in   the  first   edition :  stands. 

changed  into  prmwptaque  in  the  second.  7  Eleg.  Til.  25. 

4  Is  the  reference  here  to  Mansus,  47?  8  Eleg.  VI.  85. 

The  word  there  is  now  Upin,  with  the  9  Epitaph.  Damonls,  76. 


208         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME, 

and  defend  the  crime  1  What  ill  has  it  done  or  merited  1  Did  it 
revolt  from  its  King,  make  war  upon  him,  give  him  up  captive  at 
last  to  the  executioner?  Nay,  it  would  willingly  give  up  to  the 
executioner,  if  it  could,  all  those  who,  by  a  wicked  deed  and  with 
monstrous  fury,  deprived  it  of  the  best  of  kings.  More  fitly  and 
truly,  Milton,  might  you  have  entitled  your  Defence  Pro  Rebellious 
Anglice,  for  the  Rebels  of  England,  or  Pro  factione  Brounistarum  et 
Independenlium,  for  the  Faction  of  the  Brownists  and  Independents. 
.  .  .  Lest  any  one  hereafter  should  be  misled  by  Milton's  deceptive 
phraseology,  his  People  of  England  is  merely  Cromwell,  with  his 
satellites  and  underlings,  the  commanders,  colonels,  and  captains  of 
the  rebel  army.  .  .  .  Salrnasius,  according  to  Milton,  intermeddled 
with  the  affairs  of  another  commonwealth.  A  great  crime,  forsooth  ! 
Was  it  not  allowable  1  "  No,"  says  Milton,  "  for  he  is  a  foreigner 
"  and  a  grammarian,  though  he  deny  it  a  thousand  times."  With 
perfect  justice  he  denies  it.  Milton  himself  would  admit  that  it  is 
rightly  denied,  if  he  understood  Latin  or  Greek.  For  he  would 
then  understand  that  the  Greeks  and  Romans  recognised  by  the 
name  of  grammarian  only  a  person  who  publicly  taught  and  read 
the  poets  and  historians  and  expounded  them  ;  and  that  Salmasius 
has  done  this  it  will  verily  be  hard  for  him  to  prove.  If,  however, 
Milton  will  insist  that  Salmasius  has  practised  this  art,  Salmasius 
may  with  better  right  and  more  truth  contend  that  Milton  was  one 
of  the  two  vizored  executioners  who  cut  off  the  King's  head.  But 
come,  let  us  grant  the  schoolmaster  what  he  wants.  Let  Salmasius 
be  a  grammarian.  Why  on  that  account  should  he  not  write  of  the 
affairs  of  another  state  1  How  many  grammarians  of  old  exercised 
themselves  in  that  way  appears  from  the  fact  that  Greeks  wrote 
Latin  histories  and  Romans  Greek  histories.  Why  should  that 
which  was  lawful  of  old  to  foreigners  and  grammarians  not  be 
lawful  now  1  Milton  forbids  it,  since  from  being  a  two-penny 
schoolmaster  he  has  been  made  Secretary  of  the  Rebel  Parliament. 
Say,  Milton,  had  Salmasius  tried  to  undertake  and  defend  the  cause 
of  the  rebels,  would  you  accuse  him  of  having  done  anything  you 
would  object  to,  and  impute  what  he  had  done  as  a  reproach  to 
him  on  the  ground  of  his  being  a  grammarian  and  foreign-born  1 
Does  it  not  occur  to  your  mind,  if  you  have  any  mind  at  all,  that 
this  cause,  which  Salmasius  defends,  is  the  common  cause  of  all 
kings  1  Is  it  possible  that  you  do  not  see,  blind  though  you  are, 
that  this  business,  with  which  you  say  he  has  mixed  himself  up, 
appertains  not  only  to  the  state  to  which  he  is  an  alien,  but  also  to 
that  of  which  he  is  a  citizen  1  Salmasius,  if  you  do  not  know  the 
fact,  defended  also  his  own  king  in  that  treatise,  and  not  only  yours, 
though  you  will  not  have  him  to  be  yours ;  nay,  while  yours  and 
his,  at  the  same  time  all.  Are  not  you  the  men  who,  not  content 
with  having  beheaded  your  own  king,  are  ostentatiously  showing 
that  bloody  axe,  raised  aloft,  to  all  the  citizens  and  subjects  of  kings 
of  the  whole  world,  that  they  may  follow  your  example  1  .  .  .  First 


SALMASIUS'S    POSTHUMOUS    REPLY   TO    MILTON.         209 

you  call  Salmasius  a  stage-performer.     This  name  fits  only  yourself 
and  your  instigators.     You  are  the  comic  actor,  or  rather  the  mimic 
buffoon,  ready  with  the  slavish  stage- drollery  which    makes   you 
ridiculous  :  they  are  the  tragic  actors,  who  have  bounded  through 
that  tragedy  the  like  of  which  no  theatre  has  ever  presented  in  all 
ages  or  in  any  nation.     Then  you  call  him  a  eunuch.     Be  a  man 
yourself,  if  you  like ;  but,  had  they  been  all  eunuchs  that  used  to 
frequent  your  house,  perhaps  you  would  not  have  repudiated  your 
wife.      Do  you,  quern  olim  Itali  pro  fazmind   habuerunt,  dare  to 
object  to  any  one  that  he  is  too  little  of  a  man 1 1  .  .  .  The  parricide 
which  the  English  robbers  committed  on  the  pei*son  of  the  King  is 
nothing,  it  seems,  in  comparison  with  that  which  the   extremely 
long-eared,  or,   as    he  will   explain  it,    extremely    stupid,    Milton 
accuses  Salmasius  of  having  himself  perpetrated.     He  boasts  that 
he  has  "  horrible  news  "  to  bring  to  Salmasius  about  himself,  which, 
if  he  is  not  mistaken,  "  will  smite  with  a  more  dreadful  wound  the 
ears  of  all  grammarians  and  critics, — news,  to  wit,  of  a  parricide 
committed  among  the  Hollanders  on  the  person  of  Aristarchus  by 
the   wicked  audacity  of  Salmasius."     At  first  sight,  I  confess,  I 
stuck    when   I    read   this,    and    silently    asked   myself   who    this 
Aristarchus  was  whom  Salmasius  had  slain  by  a  horrible  parricide 
in  Holland.     I  showed  the  passage  also  to  some  friends,  who  were 
not  less  at  a  loss.     But  one  of  them  suddenly  exclaimed,  "  I  think 
I  have  just  found  out  who  that  Aristarchus  is  :  without  doubt  he  is 
the  elder   Heinsius,   who    has   written  a  book  called    Aristarchus 
Sacer,    and    whose    reputation    among   the    Dutch    Salmasius    has 
ruined."     I  laughed  when  I  heard  this.     Soon,  however,  reading 
another  page,  I  came  upon  these  words,  "  All  whom  this  unspeak- 
able   rumour    reaches    of    the   parricidal    Salmasian    barbarism." 
Then    "  Lo  ! "    said    I,    turning    to   that  awkward   interpreter    of 
Milton,  here  I  have  what  will  make  you  confess  that  I  perceived 
the  fanatical  fellow's   drift  better  than   you.      He  has  doubtless 
explained    himself.     Look   at  the   phrase  parricidialem  barbaris- 
mum    in    connection    with    the    phrase    parricidio    in    persond 
Aristarchi  a  Salmasio  admisso,  and  it  will  be  clear  that  Salmasius 
has  been  guilty   of  some  great  barbarism,  which  may  pass  for  a 
parricide  committed  on  the  person  of  the  grammarian  Aristarchus." 
As  the  person  I  was  conversing  with  appeared  still  perplexed  and 
dubious,  "  Bead,"  said  I,  "  what  follows  in  Milton,  and  you  will 
doubt  no  longer.     His  words  are,  '  What,  I  pray,  is  it  parricidii  m 
in  persond  Regis  admiltere,  or  what  is  in  persona  Regis  1     What 
Latinity  ever  so  expressed  itself?      Or  is  it  some  Pseudophilippus 
that  we  are  to  fancy,  who,  having  put  on  the  King's  mask,  com- 
mitted  I  know  not  what  act   of  parricide  among  the  English  ] ' 
You  see  now  the  acumen  of  the  long-eared  and  blear-eyed  beast, 
and   yet   won't   you    laugh  ?      He  denies  that  persona   is    Latin 
except  for  a  disguise  or  mask.     What  Latinity,  he  says,  ever  so 

1  See  ante,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  255-256. 
VOL.  VI.  P 


210  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

expressed  itself  ?  I  used  to  think  that  only  authors  spoke  Latin  ; 
but  here  he  teaches  me  that  Latinity  itself  is  a  something  that 
speaks.  It  is  evident  also  what  a  deal  of  time  he  has  wasted  in 
turnino-  over  Koman  writers,  in  whom  there  is  nothing  more 
frequent  than  to  find  persona  used  in  that  sense  in  which  it  is 
here  objected  to  in  Salmasius."  Milton,  this  excellent  inventor  of 
Latin-speaking  Latinity,  will  take  away  from  lawyers  their  personal 
actions,  which  are  in  personam,  and  will  leave  them  only  those 
which  are  in  rem.  For  he  will  say  that  the  former  are  for  things 
in  masks  and  are  granted  by  the  judge  against  such.  Splendida 
piersona  occurs  in  Celsus,  as  equivalent  to  one  of  splendid  dignity. 
This  must  be  a  splendid  something  in  a  mask.  He  who  said 
parcere  personis,  dicere  de  vitiis,  wanted  things  in  masks  to  be 
spared,  we  must  now  believe.  Persona  imperatoris,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  is  a  phrase  of  TEmilius  Probus.  It  is  the  commonest  thing 
in  '  the  world  for  lawyers  to  speak  of  persona  pupilli,  persona 
tutoris.  Mea  et  tua  persona  for  ego  et  tu  is  Customary  with  the 
Latins  :  the  Latin  rhetoricians  speak  so  constantly.  Thus,  the 
author  Ad  Herennium  has  Item  a  nostra,  ah  adversariorum,  ah 
auditorum  persona,  a  rehus  ipsis,  and,  a  little  after,  a  nostra  jwrsona 
henevolentiam  contraheni'us  si  officium  nostrum  sine  arrogantia 
laudahimus.  Cicero,  in  his  Topics,  has  Non  qualiscunque  persona 
testimonii  pondus  habet.  In  the  law-courts  of  Greece  ^poo-owa,  i.  e. 
persona,  were  taken  with  the  same  signification  for  the  parties 
litigating,  persona  rei,  jiersona  actoris,  ra  Trpoaama.  No  need  to  bring 
more  instances,  since  writers  are  full  of  phrases  of  the  sort.  .  .  . 
You  return  again,  Milton,  to  your  wonted  absurdities,  wholly  puffed 
up  as  you  are  with  such  tricks  of  evasion,  when,  in  what  follows,  you 
speak  by  a  forged  nickname  of  Salmasius  as  changed  into  the  nymph 
Salmacis.  But  who  can  be  taken  for  a  Salmacis  more  readily  than 
yourself,  qui  Italis,  cum  apud  eos  viveres,  culcita  fuisti,  et  quern  pro 
fozmina  hahuerunt,  because  they  did  not  believe  you  to  be  a  man  1 
They  praised  you  indeed  for  the  handsomeness  of  your  form,  and 
wrote  verses  to  the  effect  that  you  would  be  Angelic,  and  not 
Anglic  only,  if  your  piety  corresponded  with  your  beauty1.  "Who 
more  deserves  the  name  of  a  Salmacis  than  he  who  arrogates  to 
himself  what  is  special  to  women,  and  makes  a  boast  of  his  beauty 
as  his  single  endowment,  Avho  has  even  maligned  his  own  engraver 
in  published  verses  for  having  represented  him  as  less  beautiful  than 
he  really  thought  himself? 2  .  .  .  I  have  answered  all  the  points  of  any 
importance  in  your  preface.  I  have  omitted  nothing,  and  I  confess 
that  in  this  I  have  been  more  diligent  and  scrupulous  than  was  fit, 
or  than  was  the  duty  of  one  who  ought  to  have  seen  good  reason  to 
fear  that  on  this  account  he  would  incur  the  blame  of  many.  For 
what  need,   they  will   say,  was  there  for  dwelling  so  long  on  a 

1  Manso's   compliment  to  Milton  in       III.  p.  455. 
1638  :  see  ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  768,  and  Vol.  2  See  Vol.  III.  pp.  456—459. 


SALMASIUS's    POSTHUMOUS   REPLY  TO   MILTON.  211 

refutation  of  the  absurdities  and  trifles  of  Milton,  and  a  derisive 
exposure  of  his  ridiculous  jests  1  Good  hours  might  have  been 
better  spent,  nor  did  the  drivel  of  a  very  nasty,  very  foolish,  and 
very  senseless  creature  deserve  so  much  attention.  I  confess  they 
speak  the  truth.  But  what  should  I  do  1  My  design  has  been, 
Milton,  not  only  to  exhibit  you  as  an  object  for  general  apprecia- 
tion, but  also  to  figure  out  your  complete  ugliness,  draw  you  to  the 
full,  and  paint  you  graphically  to  the  full,  from  the  sole  of  your  foot 
to  the  crown  of  your  head  and  the  tips  of  your  nails,  so  that  all 
should  know  you  exactly  as  you  are,  from  the  qualities  of  doctrine, 
diction,  style,  temper,  morals,  talents,  scurrility,  lust  of  lying, 
imposture,  blackguardism,  impiety,  which  glare  out  everywhere  in 
your  book.  Very  often  from  some  one  corrupt  or  base  saying,  if  it  is 
opportunely  thrust  back  upon  its  author,  the  nature  of  an  unskilled 
and  impious  man  is  made  more  clear  and  patent  than  from  any 
long  exposition.  Besides,  when  I  shall  have  shown  that  this  rascal 
is  such  as  I  have  painted  him  graphically  in  his  own  colours,  I 
shall,  in  so  doing,  have  made  plain  also  what  sort  of  persons  they 
are  that  assigned  him  this  business  of  replying  for  them,  and  so 
verified  the  adage  that  the  tubs  have  found  their  proper  lettuces. 
The  defence  of  an  impious  and  nefaiious  deed  could  not  be  assigned 
by  impious  and  guilty  men  to  any  other  than  one  impious  himself. 
There  is  a  Greek  saying,  ra  cidXia  81  adXiav  npos  adXiov.  And  so, 
Milton,  it  has  been  my  pleasure  to  present  you  complete  for 
universal  recognition,  by  no  freckle  or  other  congenital  blemish 
merely,  but  in  your  whole  body. 

Salmasius  had  evidently  intended  that  his  Ad  Johannem 
MiUonum  Responsio  should  be  symmetrical  with  his  original 
Befensio  Regia,  and  with  Milton's  Pro  Pqpulo  Anglicano 
Defensio  in  answer  to  that  treatise,  and  should  consist  there- 
fore of  twelve  Chapters  in  addition  to  the  Preface.  Had  he 
carried  out  that  plan,  reviewing-  each  of  Milton's  chapters  in 
the  manner  he  had  prescribed  for  himself,  his  book  would 
have  extended  to  about  four  densely  printedyvolunies.  As  it 
is,  the  single  volume  which  he  left,  though  it  overtakes  only 
three  chapters  of  Milton's  Befensio,  and  breaks  off  abruptly  in 
the  criticism  of  the  third,  is  about  twice  as  bulky  as  Milton's 
entire  treatise,  the  preface  and  the  twelve  chapters  together. 
It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  even  in  the  year  of  the  Restora- 
tion there  was  any  royalist  scholar  in  England  sufficiently 
enthusiastic  still  on  the  subject  of  Salmasius  and  his  contro- 
versy with  Milton  to  read  through  the  whole  of  such  a 
posthumous  fragment,  so  as  to  acquaint  himself  thoroughly 

P  a 


212  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

with  the  repeated  Salmasian  maunderings  over  the  fact 
of  the  Regicide  and  over  the  doctrine  of  kingship  among 
the  Hebrews  and  in  the  New  Testament.  Where  these 
chapters  were  glanced  at,  even  cursorily,  by  University  men, 
it  must  still  have  been  for  the  little  personalities  contained 
in  them,  and  indicated  to  the  eye  by  the  vocative  Miltone, 
Miltone,  recurring  in  the  text  at  short  intervals  like  the  gleam 
of  a  needle.  But  the  substance  of  the  personalities  had  been 
given  in  the  preface ;  and  it  was  enough  for  the  general 
public  to  know  that  a  posthumous  book  of  the  great  Salmasius 
had  appeared  at  last,  punishing  Milton  as  he  deserved,  though 
unfortunately  in  Latin 1. 

Among  those  who  welcomed  the  appearance  of  Salmasius's 
posthumous  book,  and  were  glad  to  imagine  Milton  smarting 
under  it,  and  yet  bound  to  be  silent,  must  have  been  all  who 
had  themselves  suffered  in  controversy  with  Milton. — Morus 
must  have  hailed  the  book  with  delight.  That  twice-murdered 
enemy  of  Milton  was  now  in  full  possession  of  his  Protestant 
pastorate  in  Paris,  "  in  the  midst  of  the  applauses  which  his 
inimitable  manner  of  preaching  drew  to  him  from  an  extraor- 
dinary crowd  of  auditors,"  but  pursued  by  the  bad  reputation 
he  had  acquired  in  Holland,  and  which  Milton  had  blazoned 
to  the  world,  and  indeed  with  new  quarrels  on  his  hands, 
some  of  them  with  brother-clergymen  who  had  hitherto  taken 
his  part.  On  new  charges,  very  like  the  old,  he  was  again  to 
find  himself  in  the  clutches  of  synods  and  other  church  courts  ; 
"  whence,"  says  Bayle,  "he  escaped  only  as  by  fire  2."  Nearer 
than  Morus  to  the  spot  of  Milton's  present  degradation  was 
Dr.  Peter  Du  Moulin,  the  real  antagonist  of  Milton  in  the 
Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor.  The  King  had  made  good  his  promise 
of  remembering  Du  Moulin   and  his   services  ;  for,   on   Du 

1  At  the  beginning  of  Chapter  I.  there  letter  to  one  of  his  friends,  just  after  the 
is  a  rather  interesting  personal  attack  on  appearance  of  Milton's  De/ensio,  that 
the  younger  Heinsius.  He  is  brought  in  "  Milton  had  pleaded  a  very  bad  cause 
as  "  a  certain  Dutchman,  still  young,"  most  excellently."  See  ante,  Vol.  IV. 
and  of  trifling  pretensions  in  literature,  pp.  319—320.  It  is  evident  that  the 
who  had  been  a  kind  of  assessor  to  information  of  Heinsius  about  the  pro- 
Milton  in  the  Salmasian  controversy  on  ceedings  of  Salmasius  at  Stockholm, 
account  of  his  own  and  his  father's  in-  when  Milton's  Defensio  first  roused  his 
dependent  feud  with  Salmasius,  and  who  rage,  had  been  most  exact, 
had  been  impudent  enough  to  say  in  a  2  Bayle,  Article  Morus,  with  the  notes. 


OLD    ANTAGONISTS.  213 

Moulin's  petition  "  for  the  same  spiritual  estate  which  was 
"  bestowed  on  his  father  by  King  James,  viz.  a  prebend 
"  in  Canterbury,  with  the  rectory  of  Llanrhaiadar,  diocese 
"  Bangor,"  he  had  received  a  grant  of  these  preferments  in 
June  1660.  As  prebendary  of  Canterbury,  and  also  one  of  the 
King's  chaplains,  he  was  to  live  on  in  peace  and  distinction, 
with  no  other  trouble  than  that  his  still  zealous  Calvinism 
was  irritated  by  the  growth  of  Arminianism  among  the 
Restoration  clergy.  If  he  had  any  other  trouble,  it  was 
the  thought  of  his  irreclaimable  Independent  and  Oliverian 
brother,  Dr.  Lewis  Du  Moulin,  whom  the  Oxford  visitors  had 
ejected  from  his  History  professorship,  and  wrho  had  come  to 
live  in  nonconformist  obscurity  in  Westminster.  While  Dr. 
Lewis  might  keep  up  his  friendship  with  Milton,  Dr.  Peter 
might  have  the  satisfaction,  if  he  chose,  of  reprinting  his 
Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor,  or  at  least  the  poems  in  it  in  praise  of 
Salmasius  and  abuse  of  Milton.  In  fact,  he  was  now  exulting 
in  his  former  anonymous  feat  of  invective  against  Milton,  and 
taking  every  means  to  let  it  be  known  that  the  credit  belonged 
to  him  and  not  to  Morus,  though  it  had  been  convenient  for 
him  to  keep  the  secret  so  long  \  If  the  lawyer  Joseph  Jane 
or  old  Rowland  of  Antwerp  had  been  still  alive,  they  also 
might  have  had  some  recognition  now  of  their  smaller  services 
against  Milton  in  1651,  the  one  in  his  contemptible  Eikon 
Aklastos,  the  other  in  his  drivelling  Apologia  contra  Johannem 
Rolypragmaticum.  Rowland  was  probably  dead;  and  in  August 
1660  there  was  a  lease  "  to  Thomas  Jane  and  the  other  chil- 
"  dren  of  Joseph  Jane,  deceased,  of  Liskeard  Park,  Cornwall, 
"  except  the  mines  and  quarries  2."     Bramhall,  though  now 

i  Wood's    Fasti,    II.   125—128   and  formation  that  "prefixed  is  a  portrait 

195—196:    Mrs.    Green's   Calendar    of  of  K.  Charles  I.  by  E.  Gay  wood,"  and 

State  Papers  for  1660-1,  p.  14  (May),  that  "the  running  title  of  the  work  is 

and  p.  230  (August).   See  also  ante,  Vol.  E«co>i'  AKAaoros."    I  have  looked  in  vain 

V.  pp.  215—225.  for  a  copy  of  this  publication  in  the 

2  Mrs.    Green's    Calendar,   p.   212.—  British  Museum,  and  the  Bodleian  does 

Among  the  scarcest  of  the  Anti-Milton  not  seem  to  contain  one  ;  but,  from  a 

publications   seems  to  be  one  entitled  note  in  the  Addenda  to  Mitford's  Life 

"  Salmasius  his   Dissection   and  Con/u-  of   Milton    in    Pickering's    edition    of 

tation  of  the  Diabolical  Rebel  Milton  in  Milton's  Works  (I.  clxx),  I  learn  that 

hit  impious  Doctrines  of  Falsehood,  <fcc.  it  was  in  fact  a  mere  bookseller's  issue 

<{c.  against  K.  Charles  I.     Lond.  1660.  of  the  remainder  or   unsold  copies   of 

4to."     So  it  is   described   in    Bohn's  Jane's  EIkuiv'AkKootos  of  1651,  provided 

Lowndes,  Art.  Salmasius,  with  the  in-  with  a  new  title-page  and  "a  leaf  of 


214  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

Archbishop  of  Armagh  and  Primate  of  all  Ireland,  cannot 
have  forgotten  that  he  had  been  credited  by  Milton  with  the 
books  of  those  two  obscure  scribblers,  and  attacked  on  that 
account  by  John  Phillips  in  the  Hesponsio  of  1652  in  his 
uncle's  behalf.  Nor,  if  I  was  right  in  my  conjecture  that 
Gilbert  Sheldon  may  have  been  the  "  G.  S."  who,  at  the 
approaching  moment  of  the  Restoration,  wrote  The  Dignity 
of  Kingship  asserted,  in  answer  to  Milton's  Heady  and  Easy 
Way  to  establish  a  Free  Commonwealth,  can  that  divine, 
in  his  present  well-earned  bishopric  of  London,  have  been 
indifferent  to  Milton's  fate?  Sheldon,  however,  was  too  high- 
minded  a  man  to  regret  that  it  had  been  found  possible  to 
spare  one  he  had  himself  admired  even  while  denouncing  him. 
— But  Milton's  enemies  were  many,  and  few  of  them  high- 
minded.  Prynne,  I  believe,  hoped  to  lay  hold  of  him  yet ; 
nor  would  the  Scottish  Presbyterians  and  "  forcers  of  con- 
science," at  whom  Milton  had  sneered  in  his  sonnets  and 
pamphlets,  have  objected  to  rougher  treatment  of  him  than 
he  had  received.  The  pious  Rutherford,  indeed,  dying  at  St. 
Andrews,  had  his  heart  too  full  of  other  thoughts  to  remember 
old  enmities.  But  the  stout  and  more  worldly  Baillie,  Milton's 
"  Scotch  What  d'ye  call  "  of  1646,  was  not  so  forgiving. 
Coaxing  himself,  in  his  new  principalship  of  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity, to  think  as  well  of  the  Restoration  as  he  could,  he  saw 
"  the  justice  of  God  "  in  the  "  shameful  deaths  "  of  ten  of  the 
regicides,  especially  Peters  and  Harrison,  and  God's  justice 
also  in  the  disgrace  of  "the  two  Goodwins,  blind  Milton, 
Owen,  S terry,  Lockyer,  and  others  of  that  maleficent  crew." 
They  were  all  anti-Presbyterians,  though  of  different  varieties, 
and  so  Baillie  huddles  them  too-ether  1. 

There  is  something  credible  enough  in  the  story,  trans- 
mitted through  Richardson,  that  Milton,  for  some  time  after 
the  Restoration,  "  was  in  perpetual  terror  of  being  assassinated, 
though  he  had  escaped  the  talons  of  the  law,"  and  was  "  so 
dejected   that  he    would  lie   awake   whole  nights,  and   kept 

;h  1  dross  to  the  Reader,"  so  as  to  make  immediately  after  that  hook,  and  may 

the  book  pass  off  fraudulently  as   an  be  remembered,  though  here  only  in  a 

English  version   of   Salmasius's    Post-  footnote,   as   another    kick    at   Milton 

humous  Reply  to  Milton.     It  probably  when  he  was  helpless, 

came  out  in  London  in  the  end  of  16G0,  *  Baillie,  III.  413. 


MILTON    IN    HOLBORN  :    1661.  215 

himself  as  private  as  he  could1."      The  resentment  of  some 
fanatic  royalist  at  his  escape  from  the  gallows  might  easily 
have  taken  the  form  of  knocking1  the  blind  man  down  in  the 
streets  or  stabbing  him  in  his  house.     Especially  on  any  of 
those    days   of  public   tumult  and  phrenzy  of  royalism    in 
London    with    which  the  year  of  the  Restoration  ended  it 
would  have  been  dangerous  for  Milton  to  be  visible  or  within 
reach.     On  that  Wednesday,  the  30th  of  January,  1660-1, 
for  example,  which  wras  the  anniversary  of  the  execution  of  the 
Roj^al  Martyr,  and  when,  in  the    midst  of  the  humiliations 
before  Almighty  God  on  that  account,  there  was  the  dragging 
of  the  disinterred  corpses  of  Cromwell,  Bradshaw,  and  Ireton, 
to  be  gibbeted  at  Tyburn,  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  Milton 
can   have   been  in  his  house  in   Holborn.     For  it    was    up 
Holborn  that  the  mob  ran  that  morning,  howling  round  the 
hurdle  on  which  the  corpses  were  laid  ;  and  it  was  actually  in 
the    Red    Lion  Inn,    Holborn,   close   to  Milton's   house,    as 
Phillips  localises  it,  that  the  corpses  had  been  deposited,  since 
they  had  been  dug  up  in  Westminster,  with  a  view  to  that 
day's    finishing   spectacle.     Cromwell's  and  Ireton's,  having 
been  dug  up  on  Saturday,  had  been  taken  to  the  Red  Lion 
on  Monday  night ;  and  Bradshaw's  had  been  placed  there  the 
next  day  2.     The  vicinity,  mobbed  so  for  a  day  and  two  nights, 
would  not  have  been  a  safe  one  for  Milton,  had  it  occurred  to 
any  one  that  he  was  at  hand.     On  the    subsequent    general 
rejoicings   of  the   King's  coronation-day,   April   23,    and  of 
his  birth-day  and  the  anniversary  of  his  entry  into  London, 
May  29,  the  Holborn  neighbourhood  might  be  safer  ;  but,  so 
long  as  Milton  remained  in  Holborn,  it  must  have  been  advis- 
able for  him  to  keep  as  much  as  possible  within  doors. 

It  was  a  new  world  that  was  now  around  him,  the  very 
world  he  had  prophesied  in  the  last  of  his  pre-Restoration 
pamphlets.  The  news  from  Scotland  of  the  beheading  of  the 
Marquis  of  Argyle,  and  the  hanging  of  the  other  two  Presby- 
terian victims,  Guthrie  and  Govan,  only  confirmed  the  ample 

1  Richardson,  XCIV,  where  he  gives  as  Temple." 

his   authority   Dr.   Tancred    Robinson,  2  Wood's  Atli.  III.  301  (Memoir  of 

who  had  the  information  from  "  a  rela-  Ireton);    and    Mercwrins   I'Micus,   as 

tion  of  Milton's,  Mr.  Walker  of  the  quoted  ante,  p.  123. 


216  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

information  that  had  been  already  given  as  to  the  character 
of  the  new  discipline  to  which  the  three  kingdoms  were  to  be 
subjected.     On  the  great  question,  which  agitated  so  many 
minds,  of  the  setting  up  of  a  uniform  episcopacy  in  all  the 
three,    and    of   the   accommodation    of    that    episcopacy    to 
Presbyterian  consciences,  Milton's  position,  as  we  know,  was 
peculiar.      The  restoration  of  episcopacy  in  any  form    must 
have  seemed  to  him,  on  the  ground  of  the  special  nature  of 
that  system  of  ecclesiastical  government,  a  disaster   all  but 
immeasurable.     He  still  retained  the  opinions  which  he  had 
propounded  in  his  five  anti-Episcopal  pamphlets  of  1641-42, 
when  he  had  made  it  his  effort  to  dissuade  the  Long  Parliament 
from  any  trial  of  limited  episcopacy,  on  Archbishop  Usher's 
model  or  any  other,  or  from  any  conclusion  respecting  prelacy 
short  of   root-and-branch  abolition.      He  would  now,  there- 
fore, probably  have  preferred  the  continuance    of  the  broad 
non-prelatic    Church-Establishment    of  the    Protectorate,    or 
any   feasible  modification   of  it,  to  a  return   to   episcopacy, 
limited  or  unlimited  ;  and  it  must  have  been  with  something 
like  disgust  and  contempt  that  he  heard  that  so  many  of  the 
Presbyterians  of  that  English  establishment  were  trying  now 
to  float  on  the  notion  of  the  acceptability  of  a  limited  epis- 
copacy, and  especially   that  his   old    Smectymnuan    friends, 
Calamy,  Newcomen,  and  Spurstow,  had  so  far  forgotten  their 
former  selves.     But,  since  1642,  as  we  know,  he  had  moved 
on  into  theories  about  the  Church  which  made  the  particular 
constitution  of  any  Church-Establishment  no  longer  the  para- 
mount question  in  his  mind.     It  was  a  State-paid  ministry 
of  any  sort  whatever,  or  any  mixture  of  sorts,  that  he  had 
learnt  to  abominate.     And  so,  though  a  continued  Church- 
Establishment  on  Cromwell's  principle  of  the  inclusion  of  old 
Anglicans,  Presbyterians,  Independents,  and  such  Baptists  and 
other  evangelical  sectaries  as  would  accept  State-pay,  must 
have  seemed  much  more  endurable  to  him  than  the  absolutely 
Episcopal  Establishment  which  Hyde  and  the  returned  bishops 
and  Anglican  doctors  were  bringing  back,  and  although  he  may 
even  have  agreed  that  a  less  evil  would  be  that  comprehension 
of  the  old  Anglicans  and  the  Presbyterians  by  themselves 


MILTON  IN  HOLBORN:  1661.  217 

within  the  Establishment  for  which  Baxter,  Calamy,  and  the 
rest,  were  contending,  yet,  as  things  were,  he  had  his  specula- 
tive consolations.  If  the  Presbyterians  were  driven  out,  as 
they  were  likely  to  be,  after  the  numerous  Independents  and 
Baptists  already  ejected,  what  would  remain  as  the  Church- 
Establishment  of  England  would  be  the  very  worst  form  con- 
ceivable of  that  bad  article.  Then,  might  not  Presbyterians, 
swarming  outside,  and  swelling  the  crowd  of  the  already  ejected 
Independents  and  Baptists,  or  of  those  freer  Independents, 
Baptists,  and  other  opinionists,  who  had  properly  refused  to  be 
ever  inside,  learn  the  right  lesson  at  last?  Why,  in  that  case, 
should  not  all  combine  together  for  the  destruction  of  the 
Establishment  which  they  detested  in  common ;  or,  till  there 
should  be  opportunity  for  that,  why  should  not  all  combine  to 
wrest  from  the  governing  powers  that  liberty  of  conscience 
and  worship  out  of  the  Establishment  in  which  they  were  all 
equally  interested  ?  So  meditating  and  speculating,  as  I  con- 
ceive, did  Milton,  in  his  small  house  in  Holborn,  in  May  and 
June  1661,  look  forward,  with  blind  eyes  and  bold  heart,  into 
the  English  future. 


BOOK  II. 

MAY  1661— AUGUST  1667. 

HISTORY: — The  Clarendon  Administration  continued. 

Davenant's  Kevived  Laureateship,  and  the 
First  Seven  Years  of  the  Literature  of 
the  Restoration. 

BIOGRAPH Y. -—Milton's  Life  from  1661  to  1667  :  Paradise 

Lost. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE     CLARENDON     ADMINISTRATION     CONTINUED  : 
MAY    1661 AUGUST    1667. 

That  Second  Parliament  of  Charles  which  had  met  on  the 
8th  of  May  1661,  to  continue  the  work  of  the  First  or  Con- 
vention Parliament,  and  which  was  so  well  fitted  for  the 
business  by  being"  almost  wholly  composed  of  thoroughgoing 
Church  and  King  men,  was  to  suffice  for  England,  with  proro- 
gations from  time  to  time,  till  January  1678-9.  Accordingly, 
while  it  was  still  in  existence,  and  seemed  to  be  interminable, 
satirists  of  feeble  invention  amused  themselves  by  calling-  it 
The  Long  Parliament.  For  historical  purposes,  it  is  now  re- 
membered as  The  Cavalier  Parliament,  or  sometimes  as  The 
Pensionary  Parliament.  This  last  name  was  invented  in  com- 
memoration of  the  fact  that,  before  it  came  to  an  end,  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  members  were  in  the  pay  of  the  Court, 
or  of  other  interests,  directly  or  indirectly.  We  are  concerned 
in  this  chapter  only  with  the  first  six  sessions  of  the  Parlia- 
ment.    They  were  as  follows  : — 

First  Session: — May  8,  1661 — May  19,  1662  (with  recess  or  ad- 
journment from  July  30  to  Nov.  20). 
Second  Session ;— Feb.  18,  1662-3— July  27,  1663. 
Third  Session  :—  March  16,  1663-4— May  17,  1664. 
Fourth  Session: — Nov.  24,  1664 — March  2,  1664-5. 
Fifth  Session  (at  Oxford)  :— Oct.  9-31,  1665. 
Sixth  Session  .-—Sept.  21,  1666— Feb.  8,  1666-7. 

As  Hyde's  Chancellorship,  with  his  personal  ascendancy  or 
premiership,  lasted  till  August  1667,  or  six  months  beyond 


222  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  sixth  session  of  the  Parliament,  the  period  of  English 
history  comprehended  by  the  six  sessions  may  be  called  con- 
veniently The  Clarendon  Administration  continued. 

The  composition  of  this  Administration  remained  for  a 
while  substantially  what  it  had  been  a  year  before.  (See  ante, 
pp.  17-19).  Six  of  the  councillors  of  the  Restoration  year, 
however,  were  now  wearing-  the  new  titles  that  had  been 
conferred  on  them  at  the  coronation.  Hyde  himself  was  Earl 
of  Clarendon  ;  Annesley  was  Earl  of  Anglesey  ;  Howard  was 
Earl  of  Carlisle  ;  Cornwallis  was  Lord  Cornwallis ;  Holies  was 
Lord  Holies ;  and  Sir  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper  was  Lord 
Ashley.  This  last  was  now  also  a  Minister.  On  the  13th  of 
May,  1661,  he  became  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  and  Under 
Treasurer.  Neither  the  introduction  of  Ashley  into  the 
Ministry,  nor  any  other  change  in  the  Council,  affected 
Clarendon's  predominance.  He  was  still  premier,  and  it  was 
now  with  a  Cavalier  Parliament  at  his  back,  instead  of  the 
all  but  Presbyterian  Parliament  of  the  previous  year,  that  he 
was  able  to  assert  his  premiership  by  revealing  fully  his  home 
policy.  That  was,  on  the  one  hand,  to  maintain  the  Act  of 
Oblivion  and  Indemnity  as  it  had  been  passed,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  perfect  the  Restoration  by  crushing  down  all 
principles  and  relics  of  the  twenty  years  of  Revolution,  re- 
erecting  the  English  monarchy  very  much  as  it  had  been  in 
the  reign  of  Charles  the  Eirst,  and  re-establishing  also  Laud's 
absolute  high-episcopal  Church  of  England. 

His  first  difficulty,  in  the  temper  of  the  new  Parliament  in 
its  first  session,  was  to  save  the  Indemnity  Act.  The  cavaliers 
looked  back  on  the  Convention  Parliament  as  an  illegal  make- 
shift, all  whose  acts  required  revision.  The  Indemnity  Act 
in  particular  was  one  they  would  fain  have  disturbed,  in  order 
to  exact  greater  reparations  from  the  Commonweal thsmen  for 
the  benefit  of  complaining  Royalists  and  their  families.  Not 
till  July  8,  1661,  after  messages  from  the  King  that  "his 
honour  was  concerned,"  was  this  business  cleared  by  the  pre- 
sentation for  his  Majesty's  assent  of  an  Act  for  confirming 
all  the  chief  Acts  of  the  Convention  Parliament,  that  of  the 


ACTS    OF    JULY    1661.  223 

Indemnity  included.  The  two  Houses  were  then  free  to  go 
on  with  their  own  legislation,  and  the  first  results  appeared 
in  a  series  of  bills  presented  to  his  Majesty  at  their  adjourn- 
ment on  the  30th  of  July.  Among1  these,  all  assented  to 
by  his  Majesty  that  day,  were  the  following : — 

"An  Act  for  safety  and  preservation  of  his  Majesty's  person 
and  government  against  treasonable  and  seditious  piractices  and 
attempts."  By  this  Act  not  only  were  all  designs  for  the  King's 
death  or  deposition  to  be  capital,  but  it  was  to  be  punishable  to 
affirm  the  King  to  be  a  papist  or  a  heretic,  or  to  write,  print,  preach, 
or  speak  against  the  established  government,  or  to  maintain  the 
legality  of  the  Long  Parliament  or  the  Solemn  League  and  Co- 
venant, or  to  assert  a  legislative  power  in  either  or  both  Houses 
of  Parliament  without  the  King. 

"  An  Act  for  repealing  an  Act  of  Parliament  entitled  'An 
Act  for  disenabling  all  persons  in  holy  orders  to  exercise  any 
temporal  jurisdiction  or  authority! "  The  Act  so  repealed  was 
that  Act  of  the  Long  Parliament  to  which  Charles  I.  had  given  his 
assent  at  Canterbury  on  the  13th  of  February,  1641-2  (Vol  II. 
p.  351).  Bishops  were  now  to  be  restored  to  tbeir  places  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  they  or  other  clergymen  might  exercise  civil 
offices. 

"  An  Act  against  Tumidts  and  Disorders  upon  pretence  of 
preparing  or  presenting  ]>etitions  or  other  addresses  to  his  Majesty 
or  tlie  Parliament"  It  prohibited,  under  pain  of  fine  and  impri- 
sonment, the  getting  up  of  any  petition  or  remonstrance  signed  by 
more  than  twenty  persons,  unless  with  leave  from  three  justices  of 
peace  or  the  majority  of  the  grand  jury  in  counties,  or,  in  London, 
from  the  Lord  Mayor  and  Common  Council.  It  also  prohibited 
the  appearance  of  more  than  ten  persons  at  the  presentation  of  any 
petition  or  remonstrance  to  either  House  or  to  his  Majesty. 

"An  Act  declaring  the  sole  right  of  the  Militia  to  be  in  tlie 
King."  This  was  a  surrender  to  the  Crown  of  that  great  prero- 
gative which  the  Long  Parliament  had  contested,  and  their  contest 
about  which  with  Charles  I.  had  been  the  immediate  occasion  of 
the  Civil  War  in  1642  (Vol.  II.  pp.  354-355). 

"An  Act  declaring  the  ]>ains,  penalties,  and  forfeitures  imposed 
upon  the  estates  and  persons  of  certain  notorious  offenders  excepted 
out  of  the  Act  i\f  Free  and  General  Pardon,  Indemnity,  wnd 
Oblivion."  Precluded  from  disturbing  the  Indemnity  Act,  the 
Parliament  sought  a  partial  satisfaction  in  this  supplement  to  it. 
The  four  dead  regicides-in-chief  being  already  attainted,  this  Act 
confiscated  the  estates  of  the  other  twenty  dead  Regicides,  excepted 
in  the  Indemnity  Bill  but  not  yet  completely  disposed  of,  enume- 
rating them  by  name  (see  list  ante,  p.  54).  But  it  added  to  the 
list  the  six  living  regicides  whom  the  bill  had  not  made  absolute 


224  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

capital  exceptions, — to  wit,  James  Challoner,  Sir  James  Harrington, 
Sir  Henry  Mildniay,  Lord  Monson,  Robert  Wallop,  and  John 
Phelps  (see  ante,  pp.  54-55), — and  also  Sir  Arthur  Hasilrig,  who  had 
been  left,  on  general  political  grounds,  in  the  same  predicament  of 
a  delinquent  excepted,  but  not  capitally.  By  the  present  Act  the 
estates  of  those  seven  persons  also  were  to  be  absolutely  forfeited, 
while  for  the  six  regicides  among  them  there  was  a  peculiar 
addition.  They  could  not  be  hanged  now  without  breaking  the 
Indemnity  Bill,  but  they  could  be  brought  to  ignominy  and  the 
very  verge  of  being  hanged.  It  was  enacted,  therefore,  that  the 
three  of  the  six  bearing  titles  should  be  degraded  from  the  same, 
and  that  JVIildmay,  Monson,  and  Wallop,  the  only  three  of  the  six 
then  in  custody,  should  be  prisoners  for  life,  and  should  be  liable  to 
be  drawn  through  the  streets  on  sledges,  with  ropes  about  their 
necks,  to  the  gallows  at  Tyburn,  and  thence  back  to  prison. 

These  Acts  and  others,  passed  before  the  adjournment  of 
the  two  Houses  on  the  30th  of  July,  proved  the  concurrence 
of  the  Parliament  with  Clarendon's  policy  for  perfecting*  the 
Restoration.     But   no    sooner  had   it  reassembled  after  the 
adjournment  (Nov.  20,  1661),  the  bishops  then  in  their  places 
in  the  Lords,  than  the  work  was  resumed  with  fresh  energy. 
A  bill  which  had  been  brought  into  the  Commons  before  the 
adjournment  for  executing  the  nineteen  regicides  lying-  in  the 
Tower  or  elsewhere  under  capital  sentence,  but  respited  by  the 
Act  of  Indemnity  till  there  should  be  such  a  special  Act,  was 
pushed  through   that   House  successfully,   most  of  the  poor 
wretches  themselves  having-  been  brought  before  the  House  in 
the  course  of  the  debate  to  be  again  questioned  and  gazed 
at;  and,  though  this  bill  was  dropped  in  the  Lords,  doubtless 
with  Clarendon's  approval,  an  order  of  the  Commons  to  the 
Attorney-General  for  the  capital  prosecution  of  the  two  non- 
regicide  prisoners,  Vane  and  Lambert,  was  to  take  independ- 
ent effect.      But  we  may  pass  at  once  to  the   end  of  the 
first  session  of  the  Parliament  on  May  19,  1662.     They  had 
then,  with  the  King's  assent,  added  over  thirty  public  bills, 
besides  about  forty  private  bills,  to  their  produce  before  the 
adjournment ;    and   among-    the   public    bills   were   the    fol- 
lowing : — 

The  Corporations  Act  (Dec.  20,  1661)  :— Under  the  name  of  an 
Act  for  "  the  well-governing  and  regulating  of  corporations,"  this 


ACT   OF  UNIFORMITY,   ETC.  225 

was,  in  fact,  an  Act  for  ejecting  from  Town  Councils  and  other 
Corporations  all  who  were  not  of  thorough  cavalier  principles.  It 
required  all  Mayors,  Aldermen,  Recorders,  Bailiffs,  Town-Clerks, 
Common  Councillors,  and  other  civic  officers,  to  take  not  only  the 
ordinary  oaths  of  allegiance  and  supremacy,  but  also  an  oath 
renouncing  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant,  and  a  special  non- 
resistance  or  passive  obedience  oath,  in  these  terms  :  "I  do 
"  declare  and  believe  that  it  is  not  lawful,  upon  any  pretence 
"  whatsoever,  to  take  arms  against  the  King,  and  that  I  do  abhor 
"  that  traitorous  position  of  taking  arms  by  his  authority  against  his 
"  person,  or  against  those  that  are  commissioned  by  him :  so  help 
"  me  God."  Commissioners  were  to  be  appointed  to  see  to  the 
execution  of  the  Act ;  and  it  was  also  enacted  that  none  should 
be  admitted  as  magistrates  "  for  ever  hereafter "  who  had  not, 
within  a  year  before  their  election,  "  taken  the  sacrament  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  according  to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  England." 

Act  against  the  Quakers  (May  2,  1662)  : — All  Quakers  or  other 
persons  refusing  to  take  an  oath  required  by  law,  or  persuading  to 
such  refusal,  or  maintaining  by  speech  or  print  the  unlawfulness  of 
oaths,  and  in  particular  all  Quakers  meeting  for  worship  "  to  the 
number  of  five  or  more,"  were  to  be  fined  £5  for  the  first  offence, 
and  £10  for  the  second,  or,  failing  to  pay  such  fines,  were  to  be 
imprisoned  with  hard  labour  for  three  months  for  the  first  offence, 
and  six  months  for  the  second.  Offenders,  on  third  conviction, 
might  be  banished  to  the  Plantations. 

The  Act  of  Uniformity  (May  19,  1662)  : — This  famous  Act  was 
the  death-blow  at  last  to  all  those  hopes  of  a  comprehension  of 
the  Presbyterians  within  the  Established  Church  which  had  been 
kept  up  during  the  sitting  of  the  Convention  Parliament,  and  con- 
firmed by  the  King's  pledged  word  in  his  Ecclesiastical  Declaration 
of  October  1660.  In  that  Declaration  (ante,  pp.  100-103)  it 
had  been  promised  that  the  constitution  of  the  new  Church  of 
England  should  be  that  of  a  Limited  or  Moderate  Episcopacy,  with 
Presbyters  partaking  largely  in  the  spiritual  jurisdiction,  with  a 
carefully  revised  Liturgy,  and  without  extreme  pressure  of  cere- 
monies. There  had  been  ample  signs  since  then  that  the  King, 
Clarendon,  and  the  bishops,  had  trampled  that  temporary  document 
under  foot,  and  that  it  was  the  highest  possible  Episcopacy,  an 
Episcopacy  as  rigid  and  florid  as  Laud's,  that  was  to  be  imposed 
upon  England.  But  this  Act  of  Uniformity,  the  result  of  the 
deliberations  of  the  two  Houses,  exceeded  all  previous  belief.  Its 
main  enactment  ran  thus : — "  That  every  parson,  vicar,  or  other 
"  minister  whatsoever,  who  now  hath  and  enjoyeth  any  ecclesiastical 
"  benefice  or  promotion  within  this  realm  of  England  or  places 
"  aforesaid,  shall,  in  the  church,  chapel,  or  place  of  public  worship 
"  belonging  to  his  said  benefice  or  promotion,  upon  some  Lord's 
"  day  before  the  Feast  of  St.  Bartholomew  which  shall  be  in  the 
"year  of  our  Lord  God  1662,  openly,  publicly,  and  solemnly  read 

VOL.  VI.  q 


226  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  the  morning  and  evening  prayer  appointed  to  be  read  by  and 
"according  to  the  said  Book  of  Common  Prayer  [the  old  Liturgy, 
"  with  some  verbal  alterations  and  additions  made  by  the  Bishops 
"  and  Anglican  Clergy  in  Convocation],  at  the  times  thereby 
''appointed;  and,  after  such  reading  thereof,  shall  openly  and 
"  publicly  before  the  congregation  there  assembled  declare  his  un- 
feigned assent  and  consent  to  the  use  of  all  things  in  the  said 
"  Book  contained  and  prescribed,  in  these  woi'ds  and  no  more:  'I  do 
"  '  here  declare  my  unfeigned  assent  and  consent  to  all  and  every- 
" '  thing  contained  and  prescribed  in  and  by  the  book  entitled  The 
"  '  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  Administration  of  the  Sacraments, 
"  '  and  other  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Church  according  to  the 
"  '  use  of  the  Church  of  England,  together  with  the  Psalter  or  Psalms 
"  '  of  David,  printed  as  they  are  to  be  sung  or  said  in  churches,  and 
"  '  the  form  or  manner  of  making,  ordaining,  and  consecrating  of 
"  '  Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons ' :  And  that  all  and  every  such 
"  person  who  shall  (without  some  lawful  impediment,  to  be  allowed 
"  and  approved  of  by  the  Ordinary  of  the  place)  neglect  or  refuse 
"  to  do  the  same  within  the  time  aforesaid  (or,  in  case  of  such 
"  impediment,  within  one  month  after  such  impediment  removed) 
"  shall  ipso  facto  be  deprived  of  all  his  spiritual  promotions ;  and 
"  that  from  thenceforth  it  shall  be  lawful  to  and  for  all  Patrons  and 
"  Donors  of  all  and  singular  the  said  spiritual  promotions  or  of  any 
"  of  them,  according  to  their  respective  rights  and  titles,  to  present 
"  or  collate  to  the  same,  as  though  the  person  or  persons  so  offending 
"  or  neglecting  were  dead."  The  Act  then  went  on  to  provide  for 
the  acknowledgment  and  use  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  by  all 
future  ministers;  and  it  farther  enacted  that  all  clergymen  of  every 
rank,  all  heads  and  fellows  of  Colleges,  all  University  professors 
and  lecturers,  all  schoolmasters,  and  private  tutors  in  families, 
should  before  the  same  Feast  of  St.  Bartholomew  1662  subscribe  a 
formula  including,  (1)  the  Non-Resistance  or  Passive  Obedience 
Oath  prescribed  for  Civic  Officers  in  the  Corporations  Act,  (2)  An 
oath  of  Conformity  to  the  Liturgy,  and  (3)  An  oath  renouncing  the 
Covenant.  The  penalty  for  default  in  each  case  was  to  be  loss  of 
office.  Yet  farther-  it  enacted  that  all  public  preaching  by  persons 
disabled  by  this  Act  should  subject  offenders  to  three  months' 
imprisonment  for  each  offence,  and  also  that  no  one  should  be 
a  schoolmaster  or  private  tutor  in  a  family  without  "  license 
obtained  from  his  respective  Archbishop,  Bishop,  or  Ordinary  of 
the  Diocese,"  under  pain  of  three  months'  imprisonment  for  the  first 
offence,  and  the  same  and  a  fine  of  £5  for  every  subsequent  offence. 
It  enacted,  moreover,  that,  after  the  said  Day  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
or  Aug.  24,  1662,  no  one  should  be  a  minister  of  the  Church  of 
England,  or  should  administer  the  sacrament,  who  had  notjby  that 
time,  whatever  his  previous  ordination  or  calling,  received  due 
episcopal  ordination,  the  penalty  for  every  offence  to  be  £100. 
Act  Settling  tlie  Militia  in  Counties  (May  19,  1662).     In  an  Act 


MOKE    REVENGES.  227 

to  this  effect  there  were  clauses  requiring  that  every  Lieutenant  or 
Deputy-lieutenant  of  a  county,  and  every  militia  officer  or  soldier, 
should  take,  in  addition  to  the  Oaths  of  Supremacy  and  Allegiance, 
the  Passive  Obedience  Oath  imposed  by  the  Corporations  Act  and 
the  Act  of  Uniformity. 

A  new  Press  Act  (May  19,  1662)  : — By  this  Act  a  universal 
Censorship  of  the  Press  was  re-established.  Every  law-book  or 
law-pamphlet  was  to  require  the  licence  of  the  Lord  Chancellor, 
or  one  of  the  Chief  Justices,  or  the  Chief  Baron ;  books  of 
history  and  politics  were  to  be  licensed  by  one  of  the  Secretaries 
of  State ;  books  of  heraldry  by  the  Earl  Marshal ;  and  all  other 
books,  whether  of  poetry,  prose-fiction,  philosophy,  science,  or 
divinity,  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  or  the  Bishop  of  London. 
These  Licensers-in-chief  might,  of  course,  act  through  deputies. 
There  were  to  be  severe  penalties  for  press  offences,  and  powers 
of  search  for  detecting  such.  The  Act  was  to  be  in  force  for  two 
years1.  It  was  renewed,  however,  in  subsequent  Sessions,  so  as 
to  remain  an  Act  of  Charles  till  1679. 

Such  were  the  most  characteristic  enactments  of  the  second 
year  of  the  Restoration  and  of  Clarendon's  Premiership.  Of 
the  unabated  royalist  revengefulness  of  which  they  were  the 
formal  outcome  there  had  been  several  less  formal  proofs 
during  the  sitting  of  the  Parliament. — In  September  1661, 
by  authority  of  a  royal  warrant  to  Dr.  Earle,  Dean  of 
Westminster,  dated  the  9th  of  that  month,  and  signed  by 
Secretary  Nicholas,  the  bodies  of  about  twenty  persons  who 
had  been  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey  since  1641  were  dug 
up  and  thrown  promiscuously  into  "  a  pit  in  St.  Margaret's 
churchyard  adjoining."  Among  them  were  the  bodies  of 
John  Pym,  Admiral  Blake,  Admiral  Dean,  Dr.  Isaac  Dorislaus, 
Colonel  Humphrey  Mackworth,  Thomas  May,  the  poet  and 
historian,  Dr.  Twisse,  the  prolocutor  of  the  Westminster 
Assembly,  and  Stephen  Marshall,  the  Smectymnuan.  The 
bodies  of  four  women,  named  in  the  same  warrant,  were  taken 
from  their  graves  at  the  same  time  and  buried  in  the  same 
pit.  One  was  the  body  of  "  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cromwell,"  the 
Lord  Protector's  venerable  mother,  who  had  been  buried  in 
the  Abbey  four  years  before  himself;  the  others  were  the 
bodies    of    "  Mrs.    Desborough,"    Cromwell's    sister,    u  Anne 

1  Statutes  at  Large,  with  references  to  Lords  and  Commons  Journals,  and  to  Pari. 
Hist 

Q  2 


228  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Fleetwood,"  apparently  an  infant  grand-daughter  of  his,  and 
"  Mrs.  Bradshaw,"  probably  the  wife  of  President  Bradshaw. 
Among-  "the  Cromwellian  bodies,"  as  Wood  calls  them,  so 
dug-  up,  the  omission  of  that  of  Lady  Claypole,  Cromwell's 
favourite  daughter,  can  hardly  have  been  accidental.  Her 
body  was  permitted  to  remain  in  the  chapel  of  Henry  VII, 
where  it  had  been  buried  in  August  1658. — Equally  sympto- 
matic in  another  way  had  been  the  hanging,  drawing,  and 
quartering,  on  the  26th  of  December,  1661,  of  John  James,  a 
preacher  of  the  "  Seventh-Day  Baptist "  denomination,  for 
what  was  called  treasonable  language  in  the  pulpit.  They 
wanted  an  example  from  among  such  preaching  sectaries,  and 
had  dragged  this  poor  man,  as  suitable  for  the  purpose,  out  of 
his  conventicle  in  one  of  the  city  alleys,  where  detectives  had 
been  catching  his  words.  His  wife  having  gone  with  a  peti- 
tion for  him  to  the  king,  his  Majesty's  reply,  on  learning  her 
errand,  was  "  O  !  Mr.  James  !  he  is  a  sweet  gentleman  " ; 
and,  on  going  a  second  time,  she  had  again  been  turned  away. — 
Then,  on  the  27th  of  January,  the  anniversary  of  the  sentence 
of  death  on  King  Charles,  Lord  Monson,  Sir  Henry  Mildmay, 
and  Robert  Wallop,  the  three  regicide  judges  in  the  Tower 
whose  lives  had  been  spared  by  the  Indemnity  Act,  and  who 
had  been  doomed  only  to  perpetual  imprisonment,  were  duly, 
according  to  the  Act  of  July  30,  carted  from  the  Tower  to 
Tyburn,  and  thence  back,  with  the  ropes  round  their  necks. 
It  was  intended  that  the  ceremony  should  be  periodical  so 
long  as  the  criminals  should  be  alive. — But,  not  long  after, 
London  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  a  real  and  completed 
execution  of  three  others  of  the  regicides.  Barkstead,  Corbet, 
and  Okey,  fugitives  since  the  Restoration,  had  been  caught  in 
Holland  by  the  activity  of  Sir  George  Downing,  now  resident 
for  Charles  there,  as  he  had  formerly  been  for  Cromwell. 
Having  traced  them  to  Delft  under  false  names,  he  had  pro- 
cured an  order  from  the  States  for  their  arrest.  In  such 
cases  of  reluctant  extradition  it  was  usual  for  the  States 
to  save  their  conscience  by  giving  private  warning  to  the 
offenders,  with  time  to  escape  ;  but  Downing  was  too  quick. 
Having   gone   himself  to   Delft,   he   had   seized   the    three 


THE   NEW    QUEEN.  229 

together  in  the  same  room,  "  sitting-  by  a  fireside,  with  a  pipe 
of  tobacco  and  a  cup  of  beer,"  and,  though  with  some  demur 
among  the  Dutch,  had  shipped  them  home  in  a  frigate.  Taken 
on  sledges  from  the  Tower,  Barkstead  eating  something,  Okey 
sucking  an  orange,  and  Corbet  reading  a  book,  they  were 
hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered  at  Tyburn  on  Saturday,  the 
19th  of  April,  1662.  There  seems  to  have  been  some  pity 
for  them,  and  Downing's  part  in  the  matter  did  not  increase 
his  popularity.  It  was  remembered  that  at  one  time  he  had 
"  owed  his  bread  "  to  Okey,  having  begun  life  in  England 
as  a  chaplain  in  Okey's  dragoon  regiment ;  and  so  "  all  the 
world."  Pepys  tells  us,  "  takes  notice  of  him  for  a  most 
ungrateful  villain  for  his  pains."  But  he  was  a  prosperous 
gentleman,  M.P.  for  Morpeth  in  the  Parliament,  his  Majesty's 
envoy  in  Holland,  and  had  the  Earl  of  Carlisle's  sister  for  his 
wife1. 

The  Portuguese  Infanta,  Catharine  of  Braganza,  had  arrived 
in  England  just  before  the  prorogation  of  the  Parliament, 
conveyed  from  Lisbon  by  the  Earl  of  Sandwich.  Charles  met 
her  at  Portsmouth  ;  where  they  were  married,  according  to  the 
English  service,  by  Sheldon,  Bishop  of  London,  on  the  21st 
of  May,  1662,  having  been  previously  married,  according  to 
Romish  rites,  by  the  Abbe  Lord  Aubigny,  a  kinsman  of  the 
King.  Thence  they  came,  on  the  29th,  Charles's  birthday, 
to  Hampton  Court,  where  they  lived  in  state  till  the  end  of 
August,  the  new  Queen  forming  her  first  acquaintance  with 
English  ways,  and  undergoing  in  particular  the  dreadful 
discipline  of  being  compelled,  though  after  tears,  protests, 
faintings,  sulkings,  and  mad  little  rages,  to  receive  Mrs. 
Palmer.  That  lady,  however,  was  Mrs.  Palmer  no  longer. 
She  was  Countess  of  Castlemaine,  a  patent  having  been  made 
out  in  the  preceding  December  for  creating  her  husband  Earl 
of  Castlemaine  and  Baron  of  Limerick  in  the  Irish  peerage. 
The  new  Earl,  congratulating  himself  on  the  King's  marriage, 

1  Colonel  Chester's  Westminster  Abbey  Pepys,  Jan.  27, 1661-2,  and  April  17  and 

Registers,  pp.  521 — 523  (warrant  tor  dis-  19, 1662  ;  Mercurius  Fublicus  of  March 

interring  the  Cromwellian  bodies,  with  6 — 13  and  March  13—20,  1661-2,  and  of 

notes   to  the  several  names)  ;  Wood's  April  10 — 17  and  April  17 — 24,  1602  ; 

Fasti,  I.  371 — 372  and  II.  153;  Neal,  Sibley's  Graduates  of  Harvard  Univer- 

IV.  477 — 484  (Supplement  by  Toulinin) ;  sity,  I.  28—53  (Memoir  of  Downing). 


230         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

wished  to  be  reconciled  to  his  wife  ;  but,  as  the  arrangement 
did  not  suit,  they  again  parted  company.  On  the  15th  of 
July  she  removed  from  London  to  Richmond,  to  be  near 
Hampton  Court.  She  had  already  been  there,  and  had 
been  presented  by  the  King"  to  the  Queen  for  the  first 
time,  within  a  day  or  two  after  their  arrival  in  the  palace. 
The  first  outbreak  had  been  then,  but  six  weeks  had  tamed 
the  spirit  of  the  poor  little  foreigner.  She  was  a  very 
little  lady,  of  dark  complexion,  and  rather  flat  and  broad 
form,  "not  very  charming,"  and  with  an  upper  tooth  too 
projecting,  but  altogether  with  a  good,  modest,  and  innocent 
look,  "and  some  wit  and  sense."  Charles's  account  of  his 
first  impression  of  her  was  that  "  he  thought  they  had 
brought  him  a  bat."  The  Portuguese  ladies  she  had  brought 
with  her,  old  and  young,  were  sad  frights l. 

While  the  King  and  the  new  Queen  were  spending  their 
honeymoon  at  Hampton  Court,  with  no  lack  of  brilliant 
company,  there  was  the  trial  of  Vane  and  Lambert  in  London. 
It  began  on  the  2nd  of  June.  The  principle  on  which  they 
were  tried  was  that  Charles  II.  had  been  King  de  facto,  as 
well  as  de  jure,  from  the  moment  of  his  father's  death,  and 
that  therefore  their  actings  through  the  Commonwealth  had 
been  high  treason ;  and  the  conduct  of  the  trial,  even  on  this 
"  senseless  sophistry,"  as  Hallam  calls  it,  was  grossly  unfair. 
Vane  behaved  with  great  boldness,  while  Lambert  was 
studiously  submissive.  On  the  11th  both  were  found  guilty. 
It  depended  then  on  the  King  whether  he  would  keep  his 
promise  given  to  the  two  Houses  of  the  Convention  Parlia- 
ment in  answer  to  their  joint  petition  of  Sept.  5,  1660.  The 
petition   had   been   that,    if  Vane   and    Lambert    should    be 


1  Pepys  in  several  passages  between 
May  and  September  1662  ;  Clarendon, 
1085—1092  ;  Burnet,  I.  298—300,  with 
note  by  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth.  In  the 
Appendix  to  Vol.  XII.  of  Dr.  Lingard's 
History  of  England  (2nd  edition)  there 
is  printed  an  extract  from  a  letter  of 
Charles  to  Clarendon  among  the  Lans- 
downe  MSS.  on  the  subject  "  of  making 
my  Lady  Castlemaine  of  my  wife's 
bedchamber."  It  is  very  characteristic, 
and  reminds  one  of  a  boar  showing  his 


tusks.    "  If  you  will  oblige  me  eternally, 

make  this  business  as  easy  to  me  as  you 

can,  of  what  opinion  soever  you  are 

of;  for  I  am  resolved  to  go  through 

'  with  this  matter,  let  what  will  come 

'of  it,  which  again  I  solemnly  swear 

'  before  Almighty  God  .  .  .  And  whoso- 

'ever  I  find  to   be   my  Lady  Castle- 

'maine's  enemy  in  this  matter,  I   do 

'  promise   upon   my   word    to   be    his 

'  enemy  as  long  as  I  live." 


ST.  BARTHOLOMEW  SUNDAY,  1662.        231 

attainted j  yet  his  Majesty  would  be  pleased  to  remit  "  execu- 
tion as  to  their  lives  " ;  and  the  King's  answer  stands  recorded 
in  the  Lords'  Journals  of  Sept.  8  in  these  terms,  "  The  Lord 
"  Chancellor  reported  that  he  had  presented  the  petition  of 
"  both  Houses  to  the  King  concerning-  Sir  Henry  Vane  and 
"  Colonel  Lambert,  and  his  Majesty  grants  the  desires  in  the 
"  said  petition."  The  King-  had  now  changed  his  mind. 
Having  heard  of  the  bold  behaviour  of  Vane  at  the  trial,  he 
had  written  to  Clarendon  from  Hampton  Court  on  the  7th 
of  June,  commenting  on  the  same,  and  adding,  "  If  he  has 
"  given  new  occasion  to  be  hanged,  certainly  he  is  too 
"  dangerous  a  man  to  let  live,  if  we  can  honestly  put  him  out 
"  of  the  way."  Honestly  or  not,  they  did  put  him  out  of 
the  way.  The  sentence  pronounced  on  him  on  the  11th  was 
that  of  hanging,  disembowelling,  quartering,  &c,  at  Tyburn  ; 
but,  on  the  intercession  of  his  relatives,  this  was  commuted 
into  beheading  on  Tower  Hill.  On  the  14th  of  June  his 
head  was  there  struck  off,  after  he  had  made  a  long  and  un- 
daunted speech,  amid  interruptions  from  drums  and  trumpets 
posted  under  the  scaffold.  He  was  fifty  years  of  age.  Lambert, 
who  was  about  eight  years  younger,  was  to  live  for  thirty 
years  more 1. 

The  fatal  clay  of  St.  Bartholomew  was  Sunday,  August  24, 
1662.  Everybody  knows  what  happened  then.  About  2000 
of  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England,  or  considerably  over 
one-fifth  of  the  entire  body,  found  themselves  ejected  from 
their  livings  because  they  had  not  complied  with  the  con- 
ditions of  the  Act  of  Uniformity ;  while  about  500  more,  who 
had  either  already  been  ejected  on  independent  grounds  since 
the  Restoration,  or  had  been  engaged  as  preachers  in  training 
for  livings,  found  themselves  silenced,  and  incapacitated  for 
the  clerical  profession.  The  following  table  exhibits  the 
ascertained  or  calculated  proportions  of  the  sufferers,  ejected 
and  silenced  together,  in  the  different  parts  of  the  kingdom  : — 

London,  Westminster,  and  Oxford  University    ...     56 

Southwark 119      Cambridge  University  .     .     46 

1  Burnet,  I.  277—280  ;   Hallam,  II.       nals  of  Sept.   5  and  8,  1660 ;   Pepys, 
325 — 328  ;  Lords  and  Commons  Jour-       June  14,  1662. 


232 


LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 


Bedfordshire 16 

Berkshire 31 

Buckingham  shire      ...  34 

Cambridgeshire    ....  19 

Cheshire 54 

Cornwall 50 

Cumberland 30 

Derbyshire 46 

Devonshire 142 

Dorsetshire 67 

Durham 29 

Essex 133 

Gloucestershire    ....  60 

Hampshire 59 

Herefordshire 18 

Hertfordshire 35 

Huntingdonshire ....  9 

Kent 85 

Lancashire 97 

Leicestershire 47 

Lincolnshire 52 


Middlesex 36 

Norfolk 78 

Northamptonshire     .     .     .  61 

Northumberland  ....  44 

Nottinghamshire       ...  40 

Oxfordshire 27 

Rutlandshire 8 

Shropshire 50 

Somersetshire 104 

Staffordshire 56 

Suffolk 105 

Surrey 28 

Sussex 77 

Warwickshire 45 

Westmoreland      ....  9 

Wiltshire    .:....  66 

Worcestershire     ....  42 

Yorkshire 144 

Wales 93 


Total  .     .  2447 x 


The  wrench  to  English  society  represented  by  this  table 
must  have  been  terrible  at  the  time.  It  was  not  only  the  dis- 
s^ttlement  of  so  many  families,  the  breaking  of  old  links,  the 
exchange  of  a  customary  certainty  of  livelihood  for  the  un- 
certainty of  any  substitute  that  might  be  provided  by  free 
personal   exertion   or   by  voluntary  contributions    from    im- 


1  Compiled  from  Calamy's  Noncon- 
formists' Manual,  methodized  by  Samuel 
Palmer,  edition  of  1802  in  three  volumes 
octavo.  There  is  an  Appendix  there  of 
twenty-five  more  who  were  silenced, 
raising  the  total  to  2472.  This  includes, 
however,  Independents,  Baptists,  and 
others  who  had  been  ejected  before  St. 
Bartholomew's  Day,  and  also  a  small 
percentage  who  afterwards  conformed 
and  went  back.  The  Index  to  the 
volumes  enumerates  the  ejected  at  about 
2300,  of  whom  in  round  numbers  2000 
are  usually  debited  to  St.  Bartholomew's 
day  itself.  There  are  memoirs  or  notices 
of  most  of  the  ejected  and  silenced  in 
the  volumes,  with  lists  of  the  writings 
of  a  great  many  of  them,  still  remem- 
bered more  or  less  in  the  Nonconformist 
world.  The  list  of  the  more  eminent 
includes  Joseph  Alleine,  Dr.  Samuel 
Annesley,  Simeon  Ashe,  Dr.  William 
Bates,  Richard  Baxter,  Edward  Bowles, 
William  Bridge,  Thomas  Brooks,  Dr. 


Cornelius  Burges,  Edmund  Calamy, 
senr.,  Edmund  Calamy,  junr.,  Joseph 
Caryl,  Thomas  Case,  Daniel  Cawdrey, 
Stephen  Charnock,  Samuel  Clarke,  Dr. 
John  Conant,  Samuel  Cradock,  William 
Dell,  Thomas  Doolittle,  John  Flavel, 
Dr.  Thomas  Goodwin,  John  Goodwin, 
Thomas  Gouge,  William  Greenhill, 
Richard  Heath  (Milton's  friend  and 
pupil),  Philip  Henry  (father  of  Matthew 
Henry),  Oliver  Heywood,  John  Howe, 
Arthur  Jackson,  Henry  Jessey,  Dr. 
Henry  Langley,  Samuel  Lee,  Nicholas 
Lockyer,  Dr.  Thomas  Manton,  Dr.  In- 
crease Mather,  Matthew  Newcomen, 
Philip  Nye,  Dr.  John  Owen,  John  Oxen- 
bridge,  Matthew  Poole,  Vavasour  Powell, 
John  Ray  (the  naturalist),  Dr.  Gilbert 
Rule,  Dr.  Lazarus  Seaman,  Dr.  William 
Spurstow,  Dr.  Edmund  Staunton,  John 
Tombes,  Dr.  Anthony  Tuckney,  John 
Wesley  (grandfather  of  John  Wesley), 
Dr.  Henry  Wilkinson,  Daniel  Williams. 


ST.  BARTHOLOMEW  SUNDAY,  1662.         233 


mediate  adherents  and  a  sympathetic  public.     In  comparing 
the    great    English    Church -disruption    of   1662    with    any 
similar,  though  smaller,  secession  or  ejection  from  an  Estab- 
lished  Church   in  the    British   Islands,   this   has   to    be    re- 
membered.    In  these  later  cases  there  have  been  organization 
and  calculation  of  funds  beforehand,  with  freedom  of  personal 
activity  afterwards,  and  of  appeal  for  voluntary  assistance  and 
support.     No   such  thing  then.     The    trade  of  teaching  to 
which   some  of  the    ejected    might    naturally   have   betaken 
themselves  was  foreclosed  against  them  by  the  very  Act  that 
had  ejected  them  ;  continued  preaching  in  any  public  manner 
to  voluntary  congregations  of  adherents  was  at  the  peril  of 
all ;    organization  for  their  support  collectively,  or  open  col- 
lection of  money  for  any  of  them,  would  have  been  treated 
as  sedition  and  defiance  of  the  law.     This  explains  much  in 
the  contemporary  accounts  of  the  hardships  that  then  began. 
"  Hundreds  of  able  ministers,  with  their  wives  and  children," 
says  Baxter,  "  had  neither  house  nor  bread.  .  .  .  The  people's 
"poverty  was  so  great  that  they  wrere    not   able    much  to 
"  relieve  their  ministers.     The  jealousy  of  the  State  and  the 
"  malice  of  their  enemies  were  so  great  that  people  that  were 
"  willing  durst  not  be  known  to  give  to  their  ejected  pastors, 
"lest  it    should    be    said   that   they   maintained    schism,  or 
"  were  making  collections  for  some  plot  or  insurrection.  .  .  . 
"  Some  of  them   thought  that  it  was  their  duty  to  preach 
"  publicly  in  the  streets  or  fields  while  the  people  desired  it, 
"  and  not  to  cease  their  work  for  fear  of  men,  till  they  lay  in 
"jails  or  were  banished.     Others  thought  that  a  continued 
"  endeavour  to  benefit  their  people  privately  would  be  more 
"  serviceable  to  the  Church  than  one  or  two  sermons  and  a 
"jail,  at  such  a  time  when  the  multitudes  of  sufferers,  and 
"  the  odious  titles  put  upon  them,  obscured  and  clogged  the 
"benefit  of  sufferings."     All  other  contemporary  authorities 
tell  the  same  tale  as  Baxter.     "  Though  they  were  as  frugal 
"  as  possible,"  says  one,  "  they  could  hardly  live.     Some  lived 
"on  little  more  than  brown  bread  and  water;  many  had  but 
"  eight  or  ten  pounds  a  year  to  maintain  a  family,  so  that  a 
"  piece  of  flesh  has  not  come  to  their  tables  in  six  weeks'  time  ; 


234  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  their  allowance  could  scarce  afford  them  bread  and  cheese. 
"  One  went  to  plough  six  days,  and  preached  on  the  Lord's 
"  day.     Another  was  forced  to  cut  tobacco  for  a  livelihood  J." 

But  the  consequences  of  the  St.  Bartholomew  to  English 
society  were  not  exhausted  within  the  lives  of  the  immediate 
sufferers.  It  is  from  that  date  that  there  has  come  down, 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  now  understand  it,  the  great  division 
of  the  English  people  into  The  Church  of  England  and 
The  Nonconformists.  There  had  been  Nonconformity,  both 
name  and  thing",  in  various  fashions,  long  before;  but  now 
the  word  acquired  a  definite  significance.  All  who  had 
remained  adherents  of  the  State  Church  in  August  1662  on 
the  terms  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity  of  the  preceding  May, 
and  all  that  might  succeed  them  in  that  adherence,  were  and 
were  to  be  The  Church  of  England  ;  and  all  that  had  not 
so  adhered,  or  might  in  future  not  so  adhere,  were  and  were 
to  be  The  Nonconformists.  Nay,  the  subdivisions  of  each 
body  were  then  established  very  much,  as  they  have  lasted 
since.  The  necessity  and  obligation  of  Diocesan  Episcopacy ; 
the  necessity  and  obligation  of  Episcopal  ordination  for  all 
the  clergy ;  the  use  of  the  Liturgy  and  a  defined  ritual  in 
worship ;  acceptance  of  State-control  in  the  Church ;  avowed 
recognition  of  monarchical  government  in  the  Stuart  line  as 
of  divine  right  or  nearly  so,  with  commensurate  reprobation 
of  the  Commonwealth  and  of  the  memory  of  Cromwell ; 
profession  also  of  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience,  or  the 
duty  of  non-resistance  to  the  Crown  in  any  contingency 
whatsoever : — these,  indeed,  were  now  the  principles  of  the 
Church  of  England,  standing  on  legal  record,  and  to  which 


1  Baxter,  I.  384— 390;  Neal, IV. 380— 
390  (with  quotations  from  a  tract  called 
( Conform  1st  Plea  for  the  Nonconformists) ; 
Burnet,  I.  312-322.— An  endless  ques- 
tion between  the  Church  of  England 
and  the  Nonconformists,  not  uninterest- 
ing historically,  is  the  question  which 
was  the  worse  persecution,  affected 
the  greater  number,  and  caused  most 
misery, — the  ejection  of  Puritan  minis- 
ters in  mass  after  the  Restoration,  re- 
presented in  Calamy's  Nonconformists' 
nual,  orthe  priorejection  of  so  many 


of  the  old  Church  of  England  clergy  at 
various  times  during  the  twenty  years 
of  Puritan  ascendancy,  represented  in 
Walker's  Sufferings  of  the  Clergy.  The 
question  involves  reciprocal  challenges 
of  the  accuracy  of  Calamy's  statistics 
on  the  one  side  and  of  Walker's  on  the 
other.  See  ante,  Vol.  III.  pp.  28—30, 
Vol.  IV.  p.  571,  and  Vol.  V.  pp.  52—53 
and  pp:  61 — 64  ;  and  compare  Hallam's 
Constit.  Hist.  (10th  edit.),  II.  164—166 
and  II.  340 — 342,  for  a  calm  estimate. 


ST.  BARTHOLOMEW  SUNDAY,  1662.         235 

all  within  the  Church  officially  were  pledged  in  common.  But 
there  were  diversities  of  temper,  diversities  of  prior  belief 
and  education,  different  degrees  of  conscientiousness,  and  con- 
sequent differences  in  the  interpretation  of  the  oaths  and 
standards  that  had  been  accepted  ;  and  so,  then  as  now,  the 
Church  of  England  Clergy,  though  all  massed  together  in 
a  Church  constituted  on  the  principles  of  a  very  high 
Episcopacy,  were  seen  to  distribute  themselves  into, — (1)  High 
Churchmen,  approving  of  the  principles  of  the  constitution,  and 
thinking  none  others  right;  (2)  Latitudinarians,  or  Broad 
Churchmen,  accepting  the  constitution  as  convenient,  or  on 
the  whole  the  best,  though  they  would  not  themselves  have 
pushed  for  it  by  any  such  means  as  the  ejection  of  the 
Presbyterians  and  Independents;  and  (3)  Low  Churchmen, 
consisting  mainly  of  Presbyterians  who  had  conformed  from 
hard  necessity,  reconciling  themselves  to  Episcopacy  rather 
than  starve,  and  trying  to  retain  their  Calvinism.  The 
distribution  of  the  Nonconformists,  of  course,  was  into  (1) 
The  Presbyterians,  (2)  The  Independents  prober,  (3)  The  Baptists, 
(4)  The  Miscellaneous  Sectaries,  among  whom  The  Quakers 
were  now  by  far  the  most  considerable  both  for  numbers  and 
for  courage.  Whether  the  Roman  Catholics  were  to  be 
classed  with  the  Nonconformists  generally,  and  whether 
among  the  sectaries  in  that  body,  were  questions  of  specu- 
lative politics.     Practically,  they  stood  apart. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  year  1662,  Clarendon,  looking 
about  him,  must  have  been  contented,  on  the  whole,  with 
the  success  so  far  of  his  policy  for  perfecting  the  Restoration. 
The  success,  in  some  respects,  had  outgone  his  own  expecta- 
tions and  efforts.  In  recollection  of  the  King's  promises 
from  Breda  and  subsequent  declarations,  he  had  thought 
himself  bound,  on  several  occasions  through  1661  and  1662, 
to  do  something  towards  retaining  the  Presbyterians,  or  some 
of  them,  within  the  Church.  Even  while  the  Act  of 
Uniformity  was  passing  through  the  Lords,  he  had  favoured 
the  proposal  of  a  clause  for  enabling  the  King  to  suspend  it, 
or  temper  its  application  in  practice.     These,  however,  seem 


236  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

to  have  been  mere  hesitations  in  the  interest  of  good  faith ; 
and,  when  the  zeal  of  the  bishops  and  High  Church  party 
had  swept  away  the  notion  of  any  concession  whatever  to  the 
Presbyterians,  Clarendon  seems  to  have  felt  himself  relieved 
from  a  coil  of  difficulties.  In  the  Continuation  of  his  Life 
he  even  suppresses  the  mention  of  his  latest  efforts  towards 
a  compromise  with  the  Presbyterians,  and  adopts  the  high- 
handed policy  with  them  as  having  been  truly  and  heartily 
his  own  from  the  first.  "  It  is  an  unhappy  policy,  and  always 
"  unhappily  applied,"  he  says,  "  to  imagine  that  that  classis  of 
"  men  can  be  recovered  and  reconciled  by  partial  concessions." 
Again,  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity  he  says,  "  The  Chancellor 
"was  one  of  those  who  would  have  been  glad  that  the  Act 
"  had  not  been  clogged  with  many  of  those  clauses  which  he 
"  foresaw  might  produce  some  inconveniences ;  but,  when  it 
"  was  passed,  he  thought  it  absolutely  necessary  to  see 
"  obedience  paid  to  it  without  any  connivance."  Accordingly, 
he  had  been  greatly  troubled  when  he  found  that  the  King 
had  been  so  "  irresolute  "  as  to  yield  to  the  importunacy  of 
the  Presbyterian  petitioners,  and  promise  them,  after  the  Act 
had  passed,  that  its  operation  should  be  suspended ;  and, 
though,  at  a  conference  on  the  subject  with  the  King  at 
Hampton  Court,  he  had  said  that  he  "  should  not  dissuade  his 
Majesty  from  doing  what  he  had  promised,"  he  had  been  glad 
when  the  contrary  opinion  prevailed,  and  the  King  had 
declared  himself  willing  to  see  the  law  take  its  course.  All 
that  had  been  done  in  Church  and  State  to  the  end  of  1662 
had  therefore,  we  repeat,  been  Clarendon's  own,  or  substantially 
Clarendonian \ 

There  had  by  this  time  been  some  changes  in  the  Privy 
Council  and  Ministry  round  Clarendon.  It  had  been  a  gain 
to  him  that  the  Act  of  July  30, 1661,  readmitting  the  bishops 
to  the  House  of  Lords  and  ecclesiastics  generally  to  civil 
offices,  had  enabled  the  King  to  call  Archbishop  Juxon  and 
Bishop  Sheldon  into  the  Council.  Juxon  was  old  and  feeble ; 
but  Sheldon's  energy  had  made  itself  felt,  and  was  to  be  felt 

1  Clarendon,  1075—1082 ;  Christie's  Life  of  Shaftesbury,  I.  262—264. 


MINISTERIAL   CHANGES.  237 

still  more  after  August  1663,  when,  by  the  death  of  Juxon, 
he  was  to  be  promoted  from  the  bishopric  of  London  to  the 
primacy.  Again,  Viscount  Say  and  Sele  having  died  in 
April  1662,  the  office  of  Privy  Seal  had  gone  to  Lord  Roberts, 
to  compensate  him  for  the  Lord  Deputy  ship  of  Ireland,  his 
tenure  of  which  had  been  annulled  by  the  re-appointment  of 
Ormond,  Nov.  2,  1661,  to  his  former  dignity  of  the  Lord 
Lieutenancy  of  Ireland  complete.  In  the  same  month  Prince 
Rupert,  who  was  henceforth  to  reside  mainly  in  England, 
and  the  versatile  and  sumptuous  Duke  of  Buckingham,  had 
both  been  brought  into  the  Council  together.  None  of  these 
changes,  all  made  before  the  King's  marriage,  had  indicated 
any  desire  on  the  King's  part  to  check  Clarendon's  premier- 
ship or  to  thwart  his  policy.  The  same  cannot  be  said  of 
some  appointments  by  the  King  now  to  be  mentioned.  In 
October  1662,  old  Sir  Edward  Nicholas,  Clarendon's  faithful 
adherent,  having  been  induced  to  retire  from  his  Secretary- 
ship of  State,  with  ^10,000  as  a  compensation,  the  person  ap- 
pointed to  succeed  him  was  Sir  Henry  Bennet,  wrho  had  been 
Charles's  envoy  in  Spain  and  his  companion  in  his  remarkable 
visit  to  that  country  in  1659.  About  the  same  time  Sir 
Charles  Berkeley,  hitherto  Comptroller  of  the  Household,  and 
a  prodigious  favourite  with  Charles  and  the  Duke  of  York, 
notwithstanding  his  infamous  conduct  in  the  matter  of  the 
duke's  marriage  with  Clarendon's  daughter,  was  promoted  to 
the  Treasurership  of  the  Household,  left  vacant  by  the  death 
of  Lord  Cornwallis  in  the  preceding  January,  and  the  Comp- 
trollers/dp went  to  Sir  Hugh  Pollard,  M.P.  for  Devonshire1, 
There  was  a  significance,  unfavourable  for  Clarendon,  in  these 
appointments.     But  this  requires  explanation. 

It  was  from  no  mere  "  irresoluteness  "  that  the  King  had 
hesitated  about  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  proposed  to 
suspend  it  in  favour  of  the  Presbyterians.  It  was  because  he 
had  a  secret,  though  indolent,  policy  of  his  own,  distinct  from 
Clarendon's. 

Though  it  had  been  made  penal  by  Act  of  Parliament  to 

1  Particulars  and  dates  gathered  from       son's  Political  Index,  De  Brett's  Peerage, 
Clarendon,  British  Chronologist,  Beat-       and  Anthony  Wood. 


£33  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

say  that  Charles  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  we  are  able  now  to 
defy  the  Act  of  Parliament.  Charles  had  come  into  England 
a  Roman  Catholic,  and  had  remained  such  all  the  while  that 
his  Prime  Minister  had  been  re-establishing-  in  his  name  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  England.  No  need  to  go 
back  upon  the  question  when  and  where  Charles  was  con- 
verted to  Roman  Catholicism,  or  upon  the  question  how  far 
Clarendon,  who  had  again  and  again  proclaimed  to  the  world 
the  King's  exemplary  constancy  to  the  Protestant  religion, 
had  voluntarily  refrained  from  too  minute  inquiry.  The  very 
necessity  for  a  Parliamentary  enactment  against  calling  the 
King  a  Papist  shows  what  was  the  public  gossip,  and 
Clarendon  had  better  means  of  information  than  the  public. 
But  Clarendon  cannot  have  known,  Clarendon  would  have  to 
shoot  himself  had  he  known,  the  full  state  of  the  case.  This 
was  that  Charles  was  not  only  a  Roman  Catholic,  but  had 
since  his  Restoration  been  cherishing  that  design  of  bringing 
the  British  Islands  back  with  himself  to  the  Church  of  Rome 
which  had  been  pressed  upon  him  by  Catholic  powers  abroad 
while  his   Restoration  seemed  possible  only  by  their  means. 

When  back  in  England  miraculously  by  other  means,  he 

seems,  indeed,  to  have  dismissed  the  idea  from  his  mind  for 
a  while,  and  to  have  revelled  in  the  luxury  of  being  King 
anyhow,  on  Clarendonian  principles  or  not,  with  abundance 
of  money  and  pleasure  and  no  trouble.  Nor  was  he  ever 
likely  to  make  himself  a  martyr,  or  even  a  labourer,  for 
Roman  Catholicism  or  for  any  other  religion.  But  he  had 
been  turning  matters  over  in  his  mind  in  a  careless  and  yet 
tenacious  way,  and  with  other  advices  than  Clarendon's.  His 
liking  for  the  society  of  Roman  Catholics,  English  and  Irish, 
which  had  never  been  quite  disguised,  had  become  more  and 
more  apparent.  The  Earl  of  Bristol,  whom  he  had  been  obliged 
to  dismiss  from  his  Privy  Council  while  abroad,  because  the  Earl 
had  made  too  great  haste  to  profess  his  Roman  Catholicism 
to  the  Pope  and  all  the  world,  had  never  ceased  to  be  in  his 
confidence.  Indeed,  while  the  negotiation  for  the  King's 
marriage  with  the  Portuguese  Infanta  had  been  going  on, 
the  Earl,  in  consequence  of*  a  sudden  whim  of  the  King  that 


CRYPTO-CATHOLICISM   OF   THE    COURT.  239 

he  might  do  better  than  have  the  Portuguese  wife  they  had 
selected  for  him,  had  been  sent  on  a  private  mission  to  Parma, 
to  report  on  the  personal  attractions  of  two  princesses  there, 
who  had  been  highly  recommended  to  Charles  by  the  Spanish 
ambassador.    Back  from  this  bootless  mission,  he  had  resumed 
his    place    about    Charles   before    the   arrival    of    the    plain 
Portuguese  lady  who  had  been   deemed  most  eligible,   after 
all,  for  the  Queenship1. — Even  with  the  bat  from  Portugal 
for  Queen,  instead  of  one  of  the  Parmese  beauties,  the  condition 
of  things  at  Charles's  Court  from  August  1662  onwards  had 
been  peculiarly  favourable  for  the  resuscitation  in  his  mind  of 
the  idea  of  exchanging  his   crypto-Catholicism  for  an  open 
profession  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.     His  new  Queen  had 
her  chapel,   her  priests,  and  confessors;    his  mother,  Queen 
Henrietta-Maria,  who  had  come  over  again  from  France,  to 
make  the  acquaintance   of  the   new  Queen,  and  to   try  how 
long  she  could  stay  in  England,   had   also   brought  Roman 
Catholic  priests  and  servants  in  her  train ;    the  number   of 
avowed  Roman  Catholics  at  Court,  and  the  conveniences  for 
Roman  Catholic  worship  there,  had  been  largely  increased. 
And  so,   though   conversions  among  the  Protestants  of  the 
Court  were  not  yet  much  heard  of,  the  state  of  mind  which  we 
have  called  crypto-Catholicism,  consisting  in  a  secret  inclina- 
tion to  Roman  Catholicism  and  a  willingness  to  go  over  to  it 
openly  if  there  should  ever  be  sufficient  occasion,  had  come 
greatly  into  fashion.    There  were  now  many  crypto-Catholics 
at  Court  besides  Charles  himself.    Lady  Castlemaine  was  one  ; 
Bennet  was  another  ;  Berkeley  was  another ;  indeed,  the  faction 
that  gathered  nightly  in  Lady  Castlemaine's  apartments,  where 
Clarendon  and  Southampton  disdained  to  be  seen,  may  be  de- 
scribed as  the  crypto-Catholic  faction. — There  was  a  meaning, 
therefore,  in  the  introduction  of  Bennet  into  the  ministry  as 
Secretary  of  State  instead  of  Nicholas,  and  in  the  promotion 
of  Berkeley  in  the  household  in  October  1662.     They  were 
signs  that  the  King  was  then  strengthening  the  crypto-Ca- 
tholic interest,  and  building  it  up  about  him,  for  some  reason 

1  Clareudon,  1039, 1042,  and  1070. 


240  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  opposition  or  counterpoise  to  the  policy  of  Clarendon.  So 
much  Clarendon  could  and.  did  perceive.  He  may  have 
guessed  more,  but  can  hardly  have  known  all. 

In  the  same  month  of  October  1662  in  which  the  crypto- 
Catholic    Bennet    was   made    Secretary    of   State,    a   certain 
Richard    Bellings,   a   Roman   Catholic   gentleman   who    had 
played  an  important  part  in  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic  con- 
federacy,  was  despatched   to    Rome  by  Charles  on  a   secret 
mission.     This  was  with  Clarendon's  cognisance,  and  with  his 
approval,  so  far  as  he  understood  the  purpose.     That  was  to 
obtain  from  Pope  Alexander  VII.  a  cardinal's  hat  for  Charles's 
kinsman,  the  Abbe  Lord  Aubigny,  who  had  performed  the 
Roman  Catholic  ceremony  of  his  marriage  with  the  Queen 
and  was  now  the  Queen's  almoner.     To  forward  this  object, 
Bellings  carried  with  him  letters  from  the  King  himself  to  the 
Pope,  and  to  cardinals  Chigi  and  Barberini,  letters  from  the 
Queen  and  the  Queen-mother  to  another  cardinal,  and  also, 
it  would  seem,  letters  from  Clarendon   to   several  cardinals, 
all  in  the    same    strain.     They  solicited  the  cardinalate  for 
Aubigny,  partly  in   acknowledgment  of  the  indulgence  the 
King   had    shown   to   the   English    Roman    Catholics    since 
his  restoration,    partly  as    a  means    and    reason    for   farther 
benefit  and  protection   to  the  King's  Roman  Catholic   sub- 
jects.    The  negotiation  was  to  be  conducted  with  the  utmost 
secrecy,  and  Bellings  was  to  seem  to  be  in  Rome  only  on  busi- 
ness of  his  own.     But  underneath    the  secret   there  was  a 
deeper  secret,  which  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  Clarendon 
had  penetrated.     If  Bellings  should  succeed  in  his  application 
for  the  cardinalate  for  Aubigny,  but  not  otherwise,  he  was  to 
open  a  larger  negotiation.     It  was  for  nothing  less  than  the 
reconciliation  of  Charles  and  his  subjects  collectively  to  the 
Church  of  Rome  on  certain  proposed  terms.     The  terms  were 
contained  in  a  profession  of  faith,  and  an  explanatory  paper 
of  twenty-four  articles,  to  be  submitted  to  the  Pope.     It  has 
been   ascertained    that    Bellings,   without    waiting    for    the 
success  of  his  smaller  negotiation,  did  open  the  larger,  and 
that,  when  he  returned   to  England,   early  in  1663,   it  was 
with  a  courteous  explanation  from  the  Pope  of  the  reasons 


king's  tolekation  edict.  241 

why  lie  could  not  oblige  Charles  by  making  Lord  Aubigny 
a  cardinal,  and  with  a  request  from  his  Holiness  for  farther 
information  on  the  other  subject,  the  proposed  terms  of  the 
readmission  of  Charles  and  his  subjects  to  Catholicity  not 
having  been  satisfactory  in  all  points.  In  fact,  the  mission 
of  Bellinji's  bad  failed 1. 

Before  Charles  knew  that  it  had  failed,  however,  he  had 
taken  a  crypto-Catholic  step  at  home,  in  calculated  con- 
nexion with  his  overtures  to  the  Pope.  Might  not  the 
position  of  Roman  Catholics  in  England  be  much  improved 
meanwhile,  and  might  not  the  establishment  of  Roman 
Catholicism  in  England  be  facilitated,  by  accustoming  the 
country,  first  of  all,  to  a  toleration  of  the  Roman  Catholics, 
not  separately,  as  if  by  special  favour  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
religion,  but  on  the  principle  of  a  broad  and  generous 
liberalism  which  should  include  the  Presbyterians  and  other 
Protestant  Nonconformists  ?  By  the  Act  of  Uniformity  and 
its  sequel  on  St.  Bartholomew's  day,  the  vast  body  of  the 
English  Presbyterians  were  now  in  such  a  miserable  condition 
that  indulgence  on  any  terms  would  surely  be  welcomed  by 
them  as  a  boon.  The  question  of  their  comprehension 
within  the  Established  Church  was  wholly  at  an  end.  The 
one  and  only  question  for  Presbyterians  now,  as  for  all 
other  Nonconformists,  was  that  of  liberty  or  toleration  out  of 
the  State-Church.  Were  the  penal  clauses  of  the  Act  of 
Uniformity,  silencing  their  ministers  and  breaking  up  their 
congregations,  to  remain  in  force,  or  might  there  not  even 
yet,  by  the  King's  grace  or  otherwise,  be  such  an  indulgence 
for  Presbyterians,  and  for  other  peaceable  Nonconformists,  as 
should  enable  them  to  remain  in  England  with  some  comfort, 
instead  of  emigrating,  as  many  of  them  proposed,  to  Holland 
or  America?    It  was  of  this  despair  among  the  Presbyterians 

1  The   more   startling   facts    in    this  pamphlet  (which  somehow   has    failed 

paragraph  were  first    made   public  in  to  produce  in  my  niiml  an  impression  of 

1863,  from  documents  in  the  archives  of  absolute  authenticity  in  all  points)  was 

the  Jesuit  Society  at  Rome,  by  Father  given  in  the  Genileman's  Magazine  for 

Giuseppe  Boero,  in  a  pamphlet  of  eighty  Jan.  1866.     The  mere  fact  that  Bellings 

pages,  'entitled  Tstoria  della  Conversione  had  gone  to  Rome,  and  also  the  minor 

alia  Chiesa  Catlolica  de  Carlo  II.,  Re  purpose  of  his  mission,  transpired  easily 

d'Inghilterra,  cavata  da  seritture  auten-  enough  at  the  time,  notwithstanding  his 

tichc  ed  originali.     An  abstract  of  the  efforts  at  secrecy. 

VOL.  VI.  R 


242  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  so  many  other  sects  under  the  pressure  of  the  Act  of 
Uniformity,  this  passion  among"  them  for  some  relief,  that 
Charles  and  his  Roman  Catholic  and  erypto-Catholic  ad- 
visers determined  to  avail  themselves  for  their  own  objects. 
It  would  be  doing-  them  wrong*  to  suppose  that  they  had 
no  feeling  for  the  Presbyterians  and  other  Protestant  Non- 
conformists on  their  own  account.  Roman  Catholicism, 
though  it  cannot  acknowledge  the  theory  or  the  sentiment 
of  religious  liberty  where  it  is  itself  absolute,  has  always 
learnt  something  of  both  wherever  it  has  been  itself  under 
oppression,  and  has  then,  often  for  a  long  while  together, 
distinguished  itself  by  using  the  language  and  the  arguments 
of  religious  liberalism,  with  real  belief,  and  for  the  general 
benefit.  There  is  evidence  also  that  Charles  was  ashamed 
at  the  non-performance,  the  actual  violation,  of  his  promises 
from  Breda  of  a  general  liberty  of  conscience  when  he  should 
be  restored^  and  out  of  humour  with  that  relentless  high- 
church  rigidity  of  Clarendon  and  the  English  bishops  which 
had  compelled  him  to  appear  as  a  promise-breaker.  Not  the 
less  is  it  certain  that  the  profession  of  religious  liberalism 
with  which  he  astonished  his  subjects  in  the  end  of  1662  was 
in  calculated  connexion  with  his  negotiation  with  the  Pope, 
and  was  motived  by  the  same  desire  for  the  advancement  of 
Roman  Catholicism  and  its  ultimate  establishment. 

According  to  Burnet,  the  matter  first  took  shape  at  a  private 
meeting  of  the  chief  Roman  Catholics  in  London  in  the  Earl 
of  Bristol's  house,  where  the  Earl  himself  moved,  and  Lord 
Aubigny  seconded,  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  it  would  be 
the  best  policy  for  the  English  Roman  Catholics  to  "  bestir 
themselves "  for  a  toleration  of  all  Nonconformists.  Burnet 
adds  that  Bennet,  though  absent,  was  in  the  secret,  and 
that,  though  Bristol  appeared  as  the  manager,  the  plot  "had 
a  deeper  root  and  was  designed  by  the  King  himself."  At 
all  events,  on  the  26th  of  December  1662,  after  more  or 
less  of  discussion  in  the  Council,  there  went  forth,  "  from  our 
Court  at  Whitehall,"  a  Royal  Declaration  embodying  what 
had  been  agreed  on.  The  Declaration  might  have  been  fitly 
entitled  Declaration  of  a  New  Home  Polio?/,  for  it  enumerated 


king's  tolekation  edict.  243 

the    criticisms  to  which  his  Majesty  observed  that  his  Go- 
vernment  hitherto  had  been  exposed,  and,  while  replying  to 
those  criticisms,  promised  more  attention  in   future  to  such 
matters  as  care  of  the  public  morals,  retrenchment  of  expenses, 
and  the  promotion  of  trade  and  industry.     Essentially,  how- 
ever, the  document  was  a  Declaration  of  a  Neio  Ecclesiastical 
Policy,  or  a  Declaration    of  a    General  Religious    Toleration. 
Referring"  to  his  Majesty's  promises  from  Breda  of  indulgence 
for  religious  dissent,  and  pointing-  out  that  the  delay  in  the 
performance  of  those  promises  had  arisen  from  the  necessity 
of  giving  precedency  to  the  great  subject  of  the  Constitution 
of  the    Church  Establishment,  it   continued :    "  That  being 
"  done,  we  are  glad  to  renew  to  all  our  subjects  concerned  in 
"  those  promises  of  indulgence  this   assurance,  That,  as  for 
"  what  concerns  the  penalties  upon  those  who,  living  peace- 
"  ably,  do  not  conform  to  the  Church  of  England,  through 
"  scruple  or  tenderness  of  misguided  conscience,  but  modestly 
"  and  without  scandal  perform  their  devotions  in  their  own 
"  way,  we  shall  make  it  our  special  care,  as  far  as  in  us  lies, 
"  without  invading   the   freedom    of  Parliament,   to    incline 
"  their  wisdom,  at  the  next  approaching  sessions,  to  concur 
"  with  us  in   making  some  Act  for  that  purpose  that  may 
"  enable  us  to  exercise  with  a  more  universal  satisfaction  that 
"  power  of  dispensing*  which  we  conceive  to  be  inherent  in 
"  us."     To  obviate  any  alarm  that  the  purpose  of  the  Decla- 
ration might  be  specially  to  benefit  the  Roman  Catholics,  it 
is  expressly  stated  that  his  Majesty  meant  to  be  less  liberal 
to  them  than  to   the   Protestant  Nonconformists.     Acknow- 
ledging the  great  services  rendered  by  many  Roman  Catholics 
both  to  his  father  and  to  himself,  he  would  not  indeed  "  ex- 
clude them  from  all  benefit  from  such  an  Act  of  Indulgence"; 
but  "  they  are  not  to  expect  an  open  toleration,"  and  Par- 
liament must  devise  something  in  their  favour  of  less  amount 
than  that 1. 

This  Declaration,  even  had  no  intention  lurked  in  it  more 
than  appeared    on    the   surface,  would  have  been  a  distinct 

1  Burnet,  I.  333-338  ;  Pari.  Hist.  257—259  ;  Neal,  IV.  400-401. 

It  2 


244         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

challenge  of  the   policy  of  Clarendon.      It  had  gone   forth 
against  his  will,  if  not  against  his  protest ;  and  it  represented 
a  coalition  against  him  of  Roman  Catholics,  crypto-Catholics, 
and   such   Protestant    liberals   as    Buckingham   and   Ashley, 
all  agreeing  to  attack  his  Premiership  by  the  demand  of  a 
toleration  for  Nonconformists.     Clarendon  was  fully  aware  of 
this,  and  also  of  the  resource  of  strength  on  which  he  might 
depend  even  against  such  a  coalition.     It  lay  in  that  "  next 
approaching  sessions "  of   Parliament  to  which    the  King's 
Declaration,   while   maintaining  a  dispensing  power   in   the 
execution  of  ecclesiastical   statutes  to  he   part  of  the   royal 
prerogative,  had    practically  appealed    the    whole    question. 
That  "  sessions,"  the  Second  Session  of  the  Parliament,  met  on 
the  18th  of  February  1662-3,  when  the  Declaration  was  not 
two  months  old.     Clarendon  did  not  then  need  to  take  up 
the  challenge   for  himself.      It   was   taken    up    by   the  two 
Houses  for  him.     The  history  of  the  session,  from  the  day  of 
its  meeting  to  its  prorogation  on  the  27th  of  July,  may  be 
summed  up  in  the   statement  that  Parliament  rejected  and 
baffled    the    crypto-Catholic    policy   of    the    King,    Bristol, 
Bennet,  and  the  rest,   supported    though  it  was   by  Ashley 
and    other   liberals,   and   maintained    and   re-proclaimed    the 
no-toleration   policy   of  Clarendon,    ecmally  against    Roman 
Catholics  and  against   Protestant  Nonconformists.     The  de- 
tails  are  not  uninteresting. 

The  King,  in  his  opening  speech,  recommended  to  them 
the  toleration  policy  of  his  Declaration  with  unusual  earnest- 
ness, though  with  the  usual  assurance  that  he  had  no  inten- 
tion  of  favouring  Popery,  and  that   in  the   sincerity  of  his 
personal  Protestantism  and  Church-of-Englandism  he  would 
not  yield  to  any,  "  not  to  the  bishops  themselves."     Then,  on 
the  23rd  of  February,  Lord  Roberts,  who  had  been  selected 
for  the  duty  as  an  orthodox  Presbyterian  and  beyond   sus- 
picion, brought  a  bill  into  the  Upper  House  for  giving  effect 
to  the  Declaration  by  enabling  his  Majesty  to  dispense  with 
the  Act  of  Uniformity  and  other  ecclesiastical  statutes  so  far 
as  to  grant  licences  at  his  pleasure  to  peaceable  Protestant 
Nonconformists  for  the   exercise  of  their   religion.     At  once 


Bristol's  attack  on  clarendon.  245 

the  opposition   both  to  the  Declaration  and  to  the  proposed 
Act  was  resolute  and  triumphant.     There  was  a  remonstrance 
from  the  Commons  to  the  King*,  Feb.  27,  to  the  effect  that 
it  was  "  in   no  sort  advisable  that  there  be  any  indulgence 
"  to  such   persons  who  presume  to  dissent  from  the  Act  of 
"  Uniformity  "  ;  and  Lord  Roberts's  Bill  in  the  other  House 
perished  in  committee  after  vehement  denunciations  of  it  by 
Clarendon  and  Southampton.     The   King-  and  his  associates 
were  foiled  even  on  the  question  of  a  toleration  of  the  Pres- 
byterians or  other  Protestant  Nonconformists.     But  this  was 
not  all.     Though  in  Lord  B-oberts's  bill  the  dispensing  power 
asked  had  been  expressly  for  Protestant  Nonconformists  only, 
Roman  Catholics  to  have  no  benefit  from  it,  the  Houses,  with 
that  sure  instinct  which  guides  public  bodies,  had  divined  the 
drift,  and   had  taken  alarm.     On  the   31st  of  March  there 
was  a  petition  from  the  two  Houses  to  his  Majesty,  repre- 
senting the  ominous  increase  of  Jesuits  and  Roman  Catholic 
priests  in  the  kingdom,  and  begging  him  to  issue  his  pro- 
clamation for  expelling  all  such,  except  those  permitted  to  be 
about  the  Queen  by  her  marriage  contract,  and  those  allowed 
by  law  to  attend  on  foreign  ambassadors.     To  this  also  the 
King  had  to  yield.      In   short,   the  crypto-Catholic   policy, 
designed  for  the  benefit  of  the  Roman  Catholics,  had  roused 
the  Parliament,  the  Church,  and  the  nation  at  large,  to  a  most 
violent  animosity  against   that  particular  class   of  Noncon- 
formists, and  the  Clarendonian  policy  had  been  confirmed  as 
well  against  them  as  against  the  Presbyterians  and  Protestant 
sectaries. 

The  King  had  been  immeasurably  offended  by  Clarendon's 
opposition  to  Lord  Roberts's  Bill,  and  had  told  him  so. 
The  whole  Court  knew  the  fact,  and  regarded  Clarendon's 
reign  as  over.  "  It  seems  the  present  favourites  now,"  writes 
Pepys  on  the  15th  of  May  1663,  "  are  my  Lord  Bristol,  Duke 
"  of  Buckingham,  Sir  H.  Bennet,  my  Lord  Ashley,  and  Sir 
"  Charles  Berkeley ;  who,  among  them,  have  cast  my  Lord 
"  Chancellor  upon  his  back,  past  ever  getting  up  again."  It 
was  Bristol  that  stepped  forth  from  the  rest  to  ensure  this 
perpetual  prostration  of  the  man  whom  so  many,  for  various 


246  LIFE   Or   MILTON    AND    HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

reasons,  agreed   in  disliking*.     On  the  10th  of  July  he  pre- 
sented to  the  Lords,  in  his  own   single   name,  a  series   of 
articles  of  impeachment  for  high  treason  against  Clarendon. 
They  were  most  extraordinary  articles,  containing-  a  jumble 
of  mutually  conflicting  accusations.     On  the  one  hand,  much 
was  founded  on  reported  discourses  of  Clarendon,  arrogating 
to  himself  the  credit  of  being  the  one  unflinching  champion 
of  Protestant  orthodoxy  against  the  King's  Popish  tendencies. 
Clarendon  had  said  to  several  persons  of  the  Privy  Council 
';  that  his  Majesty  was  dangerously  corrupted  in  his  religion 
"  and  inclined  to  Popery,"  and  "  that  persons  of  that  religion 
"  had  such  access  and  such  credit  with  him  that,  unless  there 
"  were  a  careful  eye  had  unto  it,  the  Protestant  religion  would 
':  be   overthrown   in  this  kingdom."     In   particular,   on    the 
removal  of  Nicholas  from  the  Secretaryship  of  State  to  make 
way  for  Bennet,  Clarendon  had  been  heard  to  say  "  that  his 
Majesty  had  given  <^J10_,000  to  remove  a  zealous  Protestant, 
that  he  might   bring  in  a  concealed  Papist."     So  constant 
was  Clarendon's  talk  in  this  strain  that  it  had  become  the 
common   saying  of  his  partisans  "  that,  were  it  not  for  my 
Lord   Chancellor's    standing    in    the    gap,   Popery  would  be 
introduced  into  this  kingdom."     Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  who 
but  this   self-proclaimed  champion  of  Protestant  orthodoxy, 
Bristol  asked,   had  been  the   King's    chief  adviser   and    in- 
stigator in  all  those  acts  and  proceedings  that  looked  most 
like  an  intention  to  bring  in  Popery,  and  on  which  the  charge 
of  such  an  intention  on  the  part  of  his  Majesty  was  most 
plausibly  founded?      Here    Bristol,    in    his    impeachment    of 
Clarendon  before  the  Lords,  only  reverted  to  an  insinuation 
he  had  already  made  in  a  previous  speech,  which  he  had  been 
allowed  to  deliver  to  the  Commons  on  a  matter  personal  to 
himself  and  belonging  to  the  jurisdiction  of  that  House.     "  It 
'•  is  true,  Mr.  Speaker,"  he  had  then  said,  "lama  Catholic 
"  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  but  not  of  the  Court  of  Rome  :   no 
;'  negotiator  there  of  Cardinals'  caps  for  his  Majesty's  sub- 
';jects  and  domestics;  a  true  Roman  Catholic  as  to  the  other 
"  world,  but  a   true  Englishman    as  to  this."     In  the    im- 
peachment  this  insinuation  was  developed    more    distinctly. 


Bristol's  attack  ox  clarendon.  247 

Bellings  and  his  mission  to  Rome  to  obtain  a  Cardinal's  hat 
for  Lord  Aubigny  were  openly  mentioned ;  the  transaction 
was  denounced  as  un-Protestant  and  un-English ;  and  the 
whole  blame  of  it  was  laid  at  the  doors  of  Clarendon.  It  was 
he  that  had  induced  the  King'  to  it,  "  contrary  to  his  own 
"reason  and  resolutions";  it  was  he  that  had  written  letters 
to  several  Cardinals  and  sent  them  by  Bel  lings,  promising 
"  exemption  to  the  Roman  Catholics  of  England  from  the 
penal  laws  in  force  against  them  ; "  it  was  he  that  had  thus, 
in  a  manner,  acknowledged  the  Pope's  ecclesiastical  sove- 
reignty in  the  English  realm.  All  this  Bristol  offered  to 
prove  against  Clarendon,  with  many  special  acts  of  corruption 
or  tyranny  in  his  administration,  insolencies  to  the  King  of 
various  sorts,  and  an  intolerable  general  presumptuousness  of 
speech  and  behaviour.  Clarendon,  who  tells  us  that  he 
replied  on  the  spot,  gives  only  a  brief  summary  of  what  he 
said.  He  made  light,  it  appears,  of  the  application  to  the 
Pope  for  a  Cardinal's  hat  for  Lord  Aubigny,  not  denying 
that  he  had  taken  part  in  that  application,  but  representing 
that  it  was  hardly  worth  talking  about,  and  that,  for  the  rest, 
the  mission  of  Bellings  had  been  merely  to  convey  a  message 
to  the  Pope  from  the  Queen  on  a  little  matter  of  interest  to 
herself  and  to  Portugal.  He  also  distinctly  declared  "  that 
the  King  had  neither  writ  to  the  Pope  nor  to  any  other 
person  in  Rome."  With  the  other  evidence  we  have,  it  is 
difficult  to  avoid  the  belief  that  Clarendon  was  here  dis- 
sembling- in  his  own  interest  and  in  the  Kind's.  Though  he 
did  not  know  all  that  was  implied  in  the  mission  of  Bellings, 
he  must  have  known  more  than  it  was  convenient  to  acknow- 
ledge. Bristol,  who  probably  knew  all,  and  had  the  King, 
as  well  as  Clarendon,  at  his  mercy,  seems  to  have  known  that 
Clarendon's  knowledge  was  but  half-knowledge,  and  therefore 
to  have  thought  it  safe,  and  in  the  King's  interest,  to  speak 
out  boldly  about  Bellings's  mission,  on  that  side  of  it  on 
which  he  could  inculpate  Clarendon.  Indeed,  the  whole  of 
Bristol's  impeachment,  though  extravagant  and  audacious, 
is  instructive.  It  fits  in  with  facts  that  are  known,  and 
blurts  out  facts  that  would  not  have  been  known  otherwise. 


248  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

Probably  all  the  sayings  it  attributes  to  Clarendon  had  been 
actually  uttered  by  him.  All  in  all,  though  it  was  a  strange 
and  unusual  impeachment,  it  was  uncomfortable  for  Clarendon 
by  its  frankness ;  and  it  remained  to  be  seen  how  the  Lords 
would  deal  with  it. 

The  Lords  were  as  loyal  to  Clarendon  personally  as  they 
had  been  to  his  policy.  They  threw  out  Bristol's  paper  on 
the  legal  ground  that  a  charge  of  high  treason  could  not  be 
originated  by  one  peer  against  another  in  the  House  of  Peers, 
and  also  because  all  Bristol's  charges  together,  even  if  they 
were  true,  did  not  amount  to  treason.  Bristol  was  at  the  same 
time  disowned  by  the  King,  who  had  in  vain  tried  to  dissuade 
him  from  that  form  of  attack  on  Clarendon,  and  who,  when 
a  copy  of  the  impeachment  was  sent  him  by  the  Lords,  had 
replied  that  "  to  his  own  certain  knowledge  "  some  of  the 
charges  were  untrue,  and  that  the  paper  contained  "  scan- 
dalous reflections"  against  himself,  and  was  a  libel  upon 
his  government.  The  defeated  accuser  had  to  retire  from 
the  Court  in  disgrace,  as  one  who  had  overreached  himself 
and  blundered ;  and,  at  the  prorogation  of  the  Parlia- 
ment on  the  27th  of  July  1663,  Clarendon  had  risen 
from  his  temporary  prostration,  and  was  again  in  the  as- 
cendant 1. 

An  event  of  the  year  worth  noting  by  itself  had  been  the 
marriage,  at  Whitehall  on  the  20th  of  April,  of  the  King's 
natural  son,  the  sprightly  "  Mr.  James  Crofts,"  to  Anne  Scott, 
the  rich  young  orphan  Countess  of  Buccleuch.  In  antici- 
pation of  this  event,  he  had  been  created  Duke  of  Monmouth 
some  time  before ;  and,  after  the  marriage,  when  he  assumed 
his  wife's  surname  of  Scott,  and  gave  her  in  exchange  the 
title  of  Duchess  of  Monmouth,  he  and  she  were  created 
jointly  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Buccleuch  also.     They  were  a 


1  Pari.    Hist.   IV.   253—289  ;    Lords  dates  Lord  Roberts's  Bill  and  his  own 

Journals  of  Feb.  and  March,  1662-3  ;  opposition  to  it  by  more  than  a  year 

Clarendon,  1129—1131 ;  Christie's  Life  and  a  half,  making  the  Bill  come  in  the 

of  Shaftesbury,  I.  Appendix  VI.  (Lord  fourth  session  of  the   Parliament,    in- 

Roberts's  Dispensing  Bill,  printed  for  stead  of  the  second.     Hence  much  con- 

the  first  time  from   the   Rolls    of  the  fusion  in  his  account  of  the   debates 

House  of  Lords) ;  Pepys  of  date  given  ;  on  it. 
Burnet,  I.   338—340.  'Clarendon   mis- 


THE    CONVENTICLES   ACT,   ETC.  249 

very  young  couple  indeed.     He  was  but  fourteen  years  of  age, 
and  she  was  two  years  younger1. 

Through  the  third  and  fourth  sessions  of  the  Parliament, 
carrying  us  from  March  16, 1663-4,  to  March  2,  1664-5,  there 
was  still  no  effective  disturbance  of  Clarendon's  supremacy. 
Bristol  and  the  crypto -Catholics,  with  Ashley,  Buckingham, 
and  Lord  Roberts,  continued  to  intrigue  against  him  ;  the 
Scottish  Earl  of  Lauderdale,  an  enemy  of  Clarendon's  from 
the  first,  had  joined  his  counsels  with  those  of  the  English 
intriguers  ;  and  Clarendon  and  his  pompous  ways  were  more 
and  more  the  theme  of  jest  in  the  Castlemaine  soirees,  and 
in  Charles's  other  festivities.  Buckingham  was  great  on  those 
occasions  ;  but  Tom  Killigrew,  of  the  Bedchamber,  the  King's 
jester-in-chief,  outshone  Buckingham.  With  a  bellows  hung 
in  front  of  him  for  a  purse,  and  preceded  by  a  companion 
carrying  the  shovel  for  a  mace,  he  would  imitate  the  Chan- 
cellor's walk  and  voice  before  Charles,  Lady  Castlemaine,  and 
the  rest,  to  absolute  perfection.  Nevertheless  the  Chancellor, 
quite  well  aware  of  these  uproarious  jocosities  at  his  expense 
in  companies  which  Ms  virtue  and  sense  of  decorum  would 
not  allow  him  to  visit,  held  his  own  politically,  and  was  still 
indispensable  to  Charles.  Such  new  home-legislation  as  there 
could  be  in  Parliament  was  still  Hig-h-Church  and  Claren- 
donian.     Two  Acts  of  the  third  session  deserve  notice : — 

Act  Repealing  the  Act  of  Feb.  16,  1640-1  for  Triennial  Parlia- 
ments (April  5,  1664)  : — The  repeal  was  on  the  ground  that  the 
said  Act  of  the  Long  Parliament  was  "  in  derogation  of  his 
Majesty's  just  rights  and  prerogative  inherent  to  the  imperial  crown 
of  this  realm  "  ;  but  the  present  Act  was,  by  his  Majesty's  assent, 
to  be  a  new  and  more  proper  guarantee  that  for  the  future  there 
should  never  be  an  interval  of  more  than  three  years  at  the  utmost 
between  one  Parliament  and  another. 

The  Conventicles  Act  (May  17,  1664) : — The  speech  of  Sir  Edward 
Turner,  the  Speaker  of  the  Commons,  in  presenting  this  Act  for  his 
Majesty's  assent,  gives  a  convenient  summary  of  the  reasons  for  it 
and  of  its  provisions.  After  explaining  to  his  Majesty  how  busy 
they  had  been  on  questions  of  revenue  and  supply  for  his  Majesty, 
the  Speaker  proceeded  thus  : — "  Whilst  we  were  intent  upon  these 

1  Pepys  of  date,  and  De  Brett's  Peerage  under  BuccL'itch. 


250  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

"  weighty  affairs,  we  were  often  interrupted  by  petitions,  and  letters, 
"  and  motions,  representing  the  unsettled  condition  of  some  countries 
"  [counties  or  districts]  by  reason  of  Fanatics,  Sectaries,  and  Non- 
"  conformists.  They  differ  in  their  shapes  and  species,  and  accord- 
"  in<dy  are  more  or  less  dangerous  ;  but  in  this  they  all  agree, — 
"  they  are  no  friends  to  the  established  govei*nment  either  in  Church 
"  or  State  ;  and,  if  the  old  rule  hold  true,  Qui  Ecclesice  contradicit 
"  non  est  padficus,  we  have  great  reason  to  prevent  their  growth 
"  and  to  punish  their  practice.  To  this  purpose,  we  have  prepared 
"  a  Bill  against  their  frequenting  of  Conventicles,  the  seed-plots 
"  and  nurseries  of  their  opinions,  under  pretence  of  religious 
"  worship.  The  first  offence  [of  being  in  a  Conventicle,  or  meeting 
of  more  than  five  persons  in  addition  to  members  of  a  family, 
for  any  religious  purpose  not  in  conformity  with  the  Church  of 
England]  we  have  made  punishable  only  Avith  a  small  fine  of  £5 
"  or  three  months'  imprisonment,  and  £10  for  a  peer.  The  second 
"  offence  with  £10  or  six  months'  imprisonment,  and  £20  for  a 
"  peer.  But  for  the  third  offence,  after  a  trial  by  a  jury  at  the 
"  general  quarter-sessions  or  assizes,  and  the  trial  of  a  peer  by  his 
"  peers,  the  party  convicted  shall  be  transported  [for  seven  years] 
"  to  some  of  your  Majesty's  foreign  plantations,  unless  he  redeem 
"  himself  by  laying  down  £100. 

'  Immedicabile  vulnus 
'  Ense  rescindendum,  ne  pars  sincera  trahatur.' ' 

The  Act  was  to  come  into  operation  on  the  1st  of  July  1664,  and 
was  to  be  in  force  for  three  years,  dated  from  the  end  of  the  next 
session  of  Parliament. 

As  if  to  prove  that  Clarendon  was  still  the  accredited  chief 
minister,  and  secure  in  that  place,  it  was  within  a  month  after 
the  passing-  of  this  Conventicles  Act  that  there  was  the  royal 
gift  to  him  of  a  site  for  a  great  town-mansion.  It  was  in  the 
then  nearly  vacant  Piccadilly,  in  the  spot  between  the  present 
Berkeley  Street  and  the  present  Bond  Street,  and  exactly 
fronting  St.  James's  Palace.  The  grant  was  dated  June  13, 
1664 ;  and,  in  the  interval  between  the  third  session  of  Parlia- 
ment and  the  fourth,  Clarendon,  whose  quarters  were  still  in 
Vt  orcester  House  in  the  Strand,  had  begun  the  building  of  a 
great  house  on  the  new  spot,  to  be  called  Clarendon  House,  and 
was  taking  Evelyn  and  other  friends  to  see  the  foundations 
and  consulting  them  about  the  plans  and  the  probable  expense. 
Lord  Berkeley  had  begun  a  new  house  on  the  one  side  of  it, 
and  Lord  Burlington'  another  on  the  other  side ;  and  the  talk 


FOREIGN    AFFAIRS.  251 

of  the  town  was  about  the  three  rising  mansions  in  Piccadilly, 
but  especially  about  the  Chancellor's,  when  the  fourth  session 
of  the  Parliament  met,  Nov.  24,  1664.  The  engrossing1  busi- 
ness  of  that  short  session,  ending"  March  2,  1661—  5,  was  the 
conduct  of  a  War  with  the  Dutch,  which  had  been  foreseen 
in  the  previous  session  and  had  already  been  practically 
begun 1. 

In  foreign  politics  the  transactions  of  the  Restoration 
government  hitherto  had  been  few.  Although  there  had  been 
an  immediate  stop  by  the  Restoration  to  the  languishing  war 
with  Spain  bequeathed  from  the  Protectorate,  the  subsequent 
Treaty  with  Portugal,  in  connexion  with  the  King's  marriage 
with  the  Portuguese  Infanta,  had  involved  England  to  some 
extent  in  the  special  war  of  Portugal  against  Spain  for  the 
assertion  of  Portuguese  independence.  By  the  same  treaty, 
Tangier  on  the  African  coast,  opposite  to  Gibraltar,  and 
Bombay  in  the  East  Indies,  had  been  ceded  to  the  English 
King,  as  part  of  the  marriage  portion  of  the  Infanta.  The 
importance  of  Tangier  to  England  had  been  much  exaggerated, 
for  a  particular  reason.  The  acquisition  might  cover,  it  was 
hoped,  the  ignominy  ot  the  sale  of  Dunkirk.  The  English 
were  still  proud  of  that  conquest  of  Cromwell's  on  the 
Continent ;  and,  though  there  would  have  been  much  cost  and 
inconvenience  in  retaining  it,  the  surrender  of  it  to  France, 
and  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  surrender,  were  re- 
membered with  shame.  Since  October  1662,  when  Charles, 
treating  the  town  as  his  own  property,  had,  after  long 
haggling  with  Louis  XIV  as  to  the  price  at  which  he  would 
sell  it,  accepted  and  pocketed  500,000  pistoles,  people  had 
been  asking  how  the  money  had  been  squandered.  Clarendon 
was  held  mainly  responsible;  and  the  Londoners,  to  signify 
their  opinion  that  he  had  not  sold  Dunkirk  without  benefit  to 
himself,  had  nicknamed  the  new  house  he  was  building 
Dunkirk  House.  For  the  rest,  till  1661,  there  had  been  nothing 
between  England  and  any  of  the  foreign   powers    but    the 

1  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  289—317;  Burnet,  Cunningham's   Handbook  of   London, 

I     1 1.".,  with  note  there  by  Speaker  On-  Art.  Clarendon  Souse  ;  Evelyn's  Diary, 

slow;    Clarendon,    1129;    Statutes    at  Oct.   15,   1001,   and  Pepys's,   Feb.  20, 

Large,  10  Car.  II.  cap.  1  and  cap.  4  ;  1601-5. 


252  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ordinary  diplomacies,  as  represented  in  the  residence  of  foreign 
ministers  in  London,  and  the  residence  of  English  ambassadors 
and  envoys  at  the  various  courts  abroad.  The  Earl  of  St.  Albans 
was  ambassador  at  Paris  ;  Sir  George  Downing  was  minister 
at  the  Hague  ;  agents  of  less  note  were  in  other  capitals  ;  and 
in  July  1663  the  Earl  of  Carlisle  had  been  despatched  on 
a  special  mission,  as  ambassador  extraordinary  to  Muscovy, 
Sweden,  and  Denmark,  taking  Andrew  Marvell  with  him  as  his 
secretary.  Marvell  had  therefore  been  absent  from  his  place 
in  the  Parliament  through  the  whole  of  the  third  session  ; 
but  he  and  the  Earl  were  back  in  January  1664—5.  in  time  to 
take  part  in  the  fourth,  and  be  in  the  midst  of  the  excitement 
of  a  great  naval  war  1. 

The  commercial  rivalry  between  England  and  Holland  had 
been  rendering  the  relations  between  the  two  States  more  and 
more  precarious  since  Cromwell's  death,  and  for  some  time 
there  had  been  irritating  differences  between  the  merchants  of 
the  English  Africa  Company  and  those  of  the  Dutch  Africa 
Company  as  to  their  respective  rights  of  trade  on  the  African 
coast.  Beset  by  complaints  from  the  English  merchants,  and 
having  other  reasons  for  a  rupture  with  the  Dutch,  one  of 
which  was  supposed  to  be  the  desire  of  the  Duke  of  York  to 
prove  his  abilities  as  Lord  High  Admiral,  Charles  and  his 
Government  had  at  length  I'esolved  on  a  war.  The  country 
being  very  willing,  and  Parliament  in  its  third  session  having 
declared  its  readiness  to  support  the  King  to  any  extent 
against  the  Dutch,  the  war  had  been  actually  in  progress  in 
an  irregular  way  since  May  1664.  The  Dutch  were  captur- 
ing English  vessels  and  attacking  English  settlements  in 
Africa  and  the  West  Indies ;  Admirals  Lawson  and  Holmes 
were  at  sea,  fighting  the  Dutch  and  making  reprisals ;  the 
City  had  lent  the  King  ^200,000  ;  there  had  been  the  equip- 
ment of  a  great  new  fleet  at  Portsmouth,  to  be  commanded 
by  the  Duke  of  York,  with  Prince  Rupert  and  the  Earl  of 

1  Clarendon,  1105 — 1107  ;  Burnet,  I.  Marvell's  Works,  p.  xlviii,  with  reprint 

294—297  ;  Pepys,  Sept.  30  and  Oct.  26,  in  that  edition  (II.  100—185)  of  a  large 

1661,  Nov.  21, 29,  and  30, 1662,  April  28,  part  of  an  account  of  the  Earl  of  Car- 

1663,  and  June  1,  1664 ;  Dr.  Grosart's  lisle's  embassy,  published  in  1669. 
Memorial  Introduction  to  his  edition  of 


WAR   WITH   THE   DUTCH.  253 

Sandwich  under  him.  Still  negotiations  had  been  going  on 
wearily,  Downing  negotiating  at  the  Hague,  Dutch  envoys 
negotiating  in  London,  and  Louis  XIV,  who  declined  the 
solicitations  of  Charles  to  join  with  him  against  the  Dutch, 
offering  his  services  as  mediator.  Not  till  the  fourth  session 
of  the  Parliament  had  actually  met  could  war  be  formally 
certain.  Then  there  was  no  doubt.  On  the  25th  of  November 
1664,  the  second  day  of  the  session,  there  was  a  vote  of 
^2,500,000  to  the  King  for  war-expenses.  Preparations  were 
then  redoubled  at  the  dockyards  ;  on  the  22nd  of  February 
1664-5  war  was  formally  declared ;  and  on  the  2nd  of  March 
Parliament  was  prorogued,  that  there  might  be  attention  to 
nothing  else  than  the  expected  battles.  Clarendon  and 
Southampton,  who  had  all  along  opposed  the  war,  had  given 
additional  offence  both  to  the  King  and  the  Duke  of  York  on 
that  account.  The  gossip  at  Court,  according  to  Pepys,  was 
that  "  the  King  do  hate  my  Lord  Chancellor,  and  that  they, 
"  that  is  the  King  and  Lord  Fitzharding,  do  laugh  at  him  for 
"  a  dull  fellow,  and  in  all  this  business  of  the  Dutch  war  do 
"  nothing  by  his  advice,'  hardly  consulting  him.  Only  he  is 
"  a  good  minister  in  other  respects,  and  the  King  cannot  be 
'•'  without  him ;  but,  above  all,  being  the  Duke's  father-in- 
"  law,  he  is  kept  in  ;  otherwise  Fitzharding  were  able  to  fling 
"  down  two  of  him."  The  Fitzhardinge  so  spoken  of  is  the 
person  we  have  seen  hitherto  only  as  Sir  Charles  Berkeley, 
Comptroller,  and  then  Treasurer,  of  the  Household.  The  fond- 
ness both  of  the  King  and  the  Duke  for  their  "  dear  Charles," 
as  they  called  this  reprobate,  was  boundless  ;  he  had  been 
made  Viscount  Fitzhardinge  in  the  Irish  peerage  ;  and  now,  as 
he  was  to  accompany  the  Duke  to  sea,  he  was  created  also  an 
English  peer,  with  the  title  of  Earl  of  Falmouth.  At  the 
same  time  Secretary  Sir  Henry  Bennet  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  as  Lord  Arlington.  These  promotions  were  distinctly 
prejudicial  to  Clarendon  and  annoyed  him  much,  as  did  also 
the  appointment  of  Lord  Ashley  to  the  treasurership  of  the 
prizes  that  might  be  taken  in  the  war,  with  responsibility  for 
his  accounts  to  the  King  only.  Clarendon's  remonstrances 
against  this  last  appointment  were  in  vain.     Ashley  seems  to 


254         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

have  o-one  heartily  with  the  Duke  of  York,  Albemarle,  Bristol, 
Buckingham,  and  the  great  majority  of  the  Council  and 
Ministry,  in  promoting  the  war  ;  but  Clarendon's  own  account 
is  that  the  two  men  who  did  most  to  bring  about  the  war 
were  Bennet  and  Mr.  William  Coventry,  this  latter  known 
as  the  able  M.P.  for  Yarmouth,  and  as  Navy  Commissioner 
and  Naval  Secretary  to  the  Duke  of  York.  Coventry  also 
went  with  the  Duke  to  sea.  Albemarle,  whose  sea-experience 
might  have  made  him  a  better  commander  of  the  fleet  than 
the  Duke,  remained  in  London,  taking  the  Duke's  place  at 
the  head  of  the  Admiralty  1. 

And  now,  for  some  months,  the  names  in  all  men's  mouths 
were  those  of  admirals  and  sea-captains.  Where  was  the 
Duke,  where  was  Prince  Rupert,  where  was  the  Earl  of 
Sandwich ;  where  were  Admirals  Lawson,  Ayscough,  Sir 
William  Penn,  and  others ;  what  was  the  last  news  of  the 
Dutch  Ruyter,  the  Dutch  Opdam,  and  the  Dutch  Van 
Tromp?  Of  the  answers  that  came,  in  the  shape  of  reports 
of  sea-fights  here  and  there,  we  need  take  no  account  before 
June  8,  1665.  It  was  on  that  day  that  Pepys,  going  to  the 
Cockpit,  found  Albemarle  "  like  a  man  out  of  himself"  with 
joy  at  the  news  of  a  great  victory  over  the  Dutch  off  Lowes- 
toft on  the  3rd,  and  received  into  his  own  hands  the  yet 
unopened  letter  of  Mr.  Coventry  announcing  the  particulars. 
The  Duke,  Prince  Rupert,  Lord  Sandwich,  and  Mr.  Coventry 
himself,  were  all  well  ;  but  the  Earl  of  Falmouth,  Lord 
Muskerry,  and  Mr.  Richard  Boyle,  had  been  "  killed  on 
"  board  the  Duke's  ship,  the  Royal  Charles,  with  one  shot, 
"  their  blood  and  brains  flying  in  the  Duke's  face,  and  the 
"  head  of  Mr.  Boyle  striking  down  the  Duke,  as  some  say." 
There  had  been  killed  also  the  Earls  of  Marlborough  and 
Portland,  with  Rear- Admiral  Sansome,  and  two  captains  ;  and 
Admiral  Lawson  and  others  had  been  severely  wounded.  But 
then,  on  the  other  hand,  Opdam,  the  Dutch  chief  admiral, 
had  been  blown  up  with  his, ship;  other  Dutch  admirals 
had  been  killed  ;  the  loss  of  the  Dutch  in  men  was  estimated 

'Clarendon,  1102— 1104,1116— 1121,       nals,  Nov.  25,   1661;   Pepys,  Dec.    15, 
1127—1129,  and  li:J3  ;  Commons  Jour-       1U64,  and  thence  onwards  to  April  1665. 


WAR   WITH   THE   DUTCH.  255 

at  8000  as  against  about  700  on  the  English  side ;  twenty- 
four  Dutch  ships  had  been  taken,  and  the  rest  were  in  flight, 
with  the  English  fleet  in  hot  pursuit.  Such  was  the  first 
news ;  and  within  a  few  days  (June  16)  the  Duke,  Prince 
Rupert,  Mr.  Coventry,  and  others  of  the  conquerors,  were 
back  in  Whitehall,  receiving  the  congratulations  of  the 
courtiers,  and  "  all  fat  and  lusty,  and  ruddy  by  being  in  the 
sun."  Thanksgivings  for  the  victory  were  ordered  in  London 
and  over  the  kingdom,  and  a  medal  was  struck  in  honour  of 
the  Duke  as  the  victor-in-chief,  with  his  bust  on  one  side, 
and  on  the  other  the  date  "June  3,  1665  "  and  the  motto 
"  Nee  minor  in  terris"  And,  in  fact,  chiefly  on  land  henceforth 
was  the  Duke  to  show  his  prowess.  Subsequent  reports  had 
considerably  abated  the  first  conceptions  of  his  victory,  and 
of  his  merits  in  the  chief  command,  especially  in  the  matter  of 
the  pursuit  of  the  routed  Dutch  ;  and,  though  no  one  denied 
that  he  had  given  ample  proof  of  his  personal  courage,  there 
was  some  surprise  when  it  became  known  that  his  one  per- 
formance off  Lowestoft  was  to  be  all,  and  that  it  was  judged 
expedient  that  the  life  of  the  heir-apparent  to  the  throne 
should  not  be  again  exposed  to  Dutch  cannon-shot.  This 
resolution  seems  to  have  been  taken  before  the  26th  of  June ; 
on  which  day,  at  the  Duke's  request,  Mr.  Coventry  was  sworn 
a  member  of  the  Privy  Council  and  knighted.  This  also  was 
an  anti-Clarendonian  appointment,  the  intention  being  that, 
while  the  Duke,  in  resuming  his  home  charge  of  the  Admiralty, 
should  have  the  benefit  still  of  Coventry's  secretarial  services, 
the  King  should  have  the  benefit  also  of  Coventry's  knowledge 
and  ability,  in  opposition  to  the  Chancellor,  at  the  Council 
Board.  On  the  4th  of  July  it  was  distinctly  announced  that 
neither  the  Duke  nor  Prince  Rupert  was  to  return  to  the 
fleet,  and  that  Pepys's  honoured  friend  and  patron,  the  Earl  of 
Sandwich,  was  to  assume  the  supreme  command,  with  Sir 
George  Ayscough  and  Sir  Thomas  Teddiman  immediately 
under  him,  Sir  William  Penn  as  his  vice-admiral,  and 
Sir  Thomas  Allen  as  his  rear-admiral.  As  the  Earl's  part 
in  the  great  battle  off  Lowestoft  had  been  underrated,  and  he 
had  failed  moreover  in  an  attempt  on  Aug.  3  to  seize  two 


256 


LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 


splendid  Dutch  vessels  in  the  neutral  Danish  port  of  Berghen, 
it  was  a  pleasure  to  his  friends  to  hear  of  two  actions,  un- 
doubtedly his  own,  on  the  3rd  and  12th  of  September,  in  which 
he  captured  altogether  forty-five  war-ships  and  merchantmen, 
some  of  them  rich  prizes1. 

Pleasure  !  There  was  no  pleasure,  in  London  at  least,  that 
month.  The  Plague,  which  had  been  in  the  city  since  the 
beginning  of  the  year,  and  had  been  spreading  and  growing 
more  and  more  fearful  through  the  months  of  sea-fighting  with 
the  Dutch,  had  then  reached  its  very  worst.  From  April  30, 
1665,  when  Pepys  had  written  in  his  diary,  "  Great  fears  of  the 
"  sickness  here  in  the  city,  it  being  said  that  two  or  three 
"  houses  are  already  shut  up  :  God  preserve  us  all  !  "  the 
progress  of  the  red-spot  pestilence  had  been  registered  by  him, 
day  after  day,  and  week  after  week,  with  terrific  fidelity.  On 
June  7  he  had  written  :  "  The  hottest  day  that  ever  I  felt  in 
"  my  life.  This  day,  much  against  my  will,  I  did  in  Drury 
"  Lane  see  two  or  three  houses  marked  with  a  red  cross  upon 
"  the  doors,  and  '  Lord  have  mercy  upon  us '  writ  there." 
Again,  on  June  29,  "  To  Whitehall,  where  the  Court  full  of 
"  waggons  and  people  ready  to  go  out  of  town."  The  mortality 
by  plague  that  month  within  the  bills  had  reached  590;  the 
King  and  the  Court  had  left  Whitehall  two  days  before  for 


]  Pepys,  June  8,  16,  23,  28,  July  4, 
and  thence  to  Sept.  14, 1665  ;  Burnet,  I. 
375—382,  with  long  footnote.  The  story 
in  Burnet  is  that  the  Duke  of  York, 
when  the  main  battle  off  Lowestoft  was 
over,  and  all  that  remained  was  to  pur- 
sue the  residue  of  the  Dutch  fleet,  left 
the  deck  of  his  ship  about  11  o'clock  at 
night  to  take  some  rest,  having  given 
strict  orders  to  call  him  when  they  got 
up  with  the  Dutch,  but  that,  after  some 
time,  his  bed-chamber  man,  Brouncker, 
came  on  deck,  "  as  from  the  Duke,  and 
.•-aid  the  Duke  ordered  the  sail  to  be 
slackened,"  which  order  Sir  William 
Penn,  though  surprised  at  it,  obeyed. 
The  footnote,  which  is  Speaker  Onslow's, 
corroborates  Burnet  by  reporting  evi- 
dence given  before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  April  17, 1668,  save  that  Cap- 
tain Harman,  and  not  Penn,  appears 
there  as  the  officer  who  slackened  sail 
on  the  Duke's  supposed  order.  The  in- 
quiry was  for  the  purpose  of  proving 
that  the  Duke  had  given  no  such  order, 


and  that  Brouncker  and  Harman  were 
responsible  between  them.  Brouncker 
had  certainly  given  the  order  most  posi- 
tively as  from  the  Duke,  and  the  hypo- 
thesis in  the  Duke's  favour  was  that 
Brouncker  had  invented  the  order,  out 
of  care  for  his  own  life  and  the  Duke's. 
Burnet's  belief,  however,  from  informa- 
tion he  had  received,  was  that  the  deaths 
of  Falmouth  and  the  others  before  his 
eyes  had  made  such  a  strong  impression 
upon  the  Duke  that  he  thought  with 
himself  in  his  cabin  that  one  battle  was 
enough  and  shrank  from  a  second.  At 
all  events,  as  he  favoured  Harman  much 
after  the  battle,  and  retained  Brouncker 
in  his  service  till  1667,  his  anger  at  their 
joint  blunder  cannot  have  been  very 
deep.  For  the  whole  story,  see,  in  ad- 
dition to  Burnet's  text,  with  the  footnote, 
as  cited,  Pepys's  Diary,  under  dates  Oct. 
21, 1667,  and  April  17,  18,  19,  and  21, 
1668.  Pepys's  view  seems  to  have  been 
the  same  as  Burnet's. 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  IN  LONDON.  257 

Salisbury  ;  all  that   could   leave  town   were   hurrying'  away. 
In  country  towns  and  villages,  to  the  distance  of  thirty,  forty, 
or  even  a  hundred,  miles  from  London,   there  was  dreadful 
alarm  at  this  migration  among  them  from  the  plague-stricken 
city;  every  outward-bound  passenger  or  waggon  along  a  high 
road  was  suspected  ;  goods  from  London  were  shunned ;  and 
doors  were  shut  against  strangers.     Though  the  plague  did 
appear  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  London  and  the  vicinity 
continued  to  be  its  principal  habitat.     "  Lord  !  the  number  of 
"  houses  visited  which  this  day  I  observed  through  the  town 
"  quite  round  in  my  way  by  Long  Lane  and  London  Wall," 
wrote  Pepys  on  the  6th  of  July ;  then,  on  the  18th,  "I  was  much 
"  troubled  this  day  to  hear  at  Westminster  how  the  officers  do 
"  bury  the  dead  in  the  open  Tuttle-fields,  pretending  want  of 
"  room  elsewhere  ";  and,  on  the  26th,  "  Sad  news  of  the  death 
"  of  so  many  in  the  parish  of  the  plague  :   forty  last  night, 
"  the  bell  always  going."      That  month  the  total  mortality 
by  the  plague  had  risen  to  4129.     The  number  of  houses  shut 
up  was  past  counting ;  they  were  carrying  corpses  along  the 
streets  at  all  hours ;  there  were  pest-houses  for  the  reception 
of  bodies,   and   pest-pits  for  their  promiscuous  burial.      But 
in  August  the  mortality  rose  to  20,046,  and  the  ghastliness 
was  in  proportion.     "  Lord  !   how  sad  a  sight  it  is  to  see  the 
"  streets  empty  of  people,   and  very  few  upon  the  Change," 
wrote  Pepys  on  the  16th  of  that  month  :  "jealous  of  every 
"  door  that  one  sees  shut  up,  lest  it  should  be  the  plague  ;  and 
"about    us  two   shops  in  three,  if  not  more,  generally  shut 
up  " ;  and,  on  the  30th,  "  Lord !  how  everybody  looks,  and 
"  discourse  in  the  street  is  of  death  and  nothing  else,  and  few 
"  people  going  up  and  down,  that  the  town  is  like  a  place 
"  distressed  and  forsaken."     In  September  the  deaths  recorded 
were    26,230,   and  it  was  believed  that  these  were  not  all. 
There  were  no  boats  on  the  river  ;  grass  was  growing  in  the 
streets  ;  there  was  but  a  remnant  of  the  popidation  left ;  and 
still  every  week  the  silent  houses  were  yielding  6000  or  7000 
more  red-spotted  corpses,  and  the  pest-carts  were  going  their 
rounds  with  the  hideous  bells.     Nearly  all  people  of  means 
had  by  this    time  deserted    both    London  and  Westminster, 
VOL.  vi.  s 


258  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

physicians  and  clergymen  included.  The  brave  Monk  bad 
remained  in  town,  doing  all  be  could,  and  also  the  brave 
Arcbbisbop  Sheldon.  Not  a  few  of  the  silenced  Noncon- 
formist ministers,  who  had  hitherto  obeyed  the  law  by  refrain- 
ing- from  every  appearance  of  public  preaching,  now  openly 
broke  the  law,  and  took  possession  of  the  forsaken  pulpits.  It 
was  thought  that  surely  at  such  a  time  the  distinction  between 
Conformity  and  Nonconformity  might  be  disregarded1. 

Not  so.  At  the  short  Fifth  Session  of  the  Parliament,  from 
Oct.  9  to  Oct.  31,  held  at  Oxford,  for  the  convenience  of  the 
King  and  Court  on  account  of  the  plague,  the  supply  of  an  addi- 
tional <i£l, 250,000  to  the  King  for  the  expenses  of  the  Dutch 
War  was  not  the  only  business.  There  emanated  from  the 
two  Houses  and  the  King  in  this  session  the  following  Act : — 

The  Five  Miles  Act  (Oct.  31,  1665): — This  was  an  Act  increas- 
ing most  severely  the  stringency  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity.  The 
preamble  having  stated  that  divers  of  the  Nonconformist  ministers 
and  preachers  had  not  only  continued  to  preach  in  unlawful  con- 
venticles, but  had  "  settled  themseves  in  divers  corporations, 
"  sometimes  three  or  more  of  them  in  a  place,  thereby  taking  an 
"  opportunity  to  distil  the  poisonous  principles  of  schism  and 
"  rebellion  into  the  hearts  of  his  Majesty's  subjects,"  it  was  now 
enacted  that  no  Nonconformist  ex-minister  or  teacher,  of  what 
denomination  soever,  who  had  not  taken  the  oath  of  passive 
obedience,  should,  "  unless  only  in  passing  upon  the  road,"  come 
within  five  miles  of  any  city,  or  towu-corporate,  or  borough  sending 
members  to  Parliament,  or  within  the  same  distance  of  any  parish 
or  place  where  he  had  formerly  preached  or  taught,  under  a  penalty 
of  £40  for  every  offence.  It  was  also  enacted  generally  that  no 
person  whatever,  of  either  sex,  that  did  not  take  the  said  passive 
obedience  oath,  and  frequent  divine  service  as  by  law  established, 
should  "  teach  any  public  or  private  school,  or  take  any  boarders  or 
"  tablei's,  that  are  taught  or  instructed  by  him  or  herself,  or  any 
"  other,"  the  penalty  for  each  offence  in  this  case  to  be  also 
£40. 

The  chief  promoters  of  this  horrible  Act  were  Clarendon, 
Archbishop  Sheldon,  and  Dr.  Seth  Ward,  Bishop  of  Salisbury. 
It  was  opposed  by  Lord  Ashley,  Lord  Wharton,  and  others, 

1  Pepys,  of  dates,  and  generally  from  are  from  the  Bills  of  Mortality,  as  I 
April  to  October  1665  ;  Baxter,  Part  III.  find  them  quoted  in  Engl.  Encyc,  Art. 
1 — 2.    The  numbers  of  deaths  monthly       Pestilence. 


THE   FIVE   MILES    ACT.  259 

among-  whom  was  the  Earl  of  Southampton  ;  but  there  is  no 
record  of  any  division  upon  it  in  the  journals  of  either  House. 
In  the  Commons  Journals  of  Oct.  27,  however,  there  is  the 
record  of  a  division  on  a  proposed  bill  of  a  still  more  tremen- 
dous character,  to  which  the  rig-id  Uniformity  men  had  been 
roused  by  the  opposition  to  the  Five  Miles  Act.  It  was 
nothing-  less  than  a  Bill  for  making  the  Passive  Obedience 
Oath  compulsory  on  the  nation  universally.  It  was  thrown 
out  only  by  57  votes  to  51.  The  Five  Mies  Act  by  itself 
brought  misery  enough.  Imagine  its  operation.  It  required 
the  many  hundreds  of  ministers  already  under  ban  for  their 
nonconformity,  and  struggling  for  their  livelihoods  in  various 
ways,  to  leave  the  large  towns  and  small  towns  where  they  had 
naturally  settled  because  there  alone  could  they  find  chances 
of  livelihood,  to  leave  also  the  parishes  where  they  were  known, 
and  where  their  children,  at  worst,  would  have  a  right  to 
poor-law  relief,  and  to  remove  themselves  and  their  families, 
at  expenses  they  could  not  meet,  to  obscure  villages,  or  petty 
non-corporate  places,  among  farmers  and  strangers,  where 
they  could  have  no  employment  and  no  friends.  "  By  this 
Act,"  says  Baxter,  "  the  case  of  the  ministers  was  so  hard  that 
"  many  thought  themselves  necessitated  to  break  it,  not  only 
"  by  the  necessity  of  their  office,  but  by  a  natural  impossibility 
"of  keeping  it  unless  they  should  murder  themselves  and  their 
"  families."  The  result  to  the  Government  and  the  Church 
was  that  they  netted  a  few  more  conformists,  and  had  to  ply 
the  penalty  of  imprisonment  more  widely  and  vigorously 
among  those  that  remained  stubborn.  Cargoes  of  Quakers 
and  others  had  already  been  exported  to  the  black  ends  of  the 
earth  1. 

In  London  the  deaths  from  plague  in  October  had  sunk  to 
14,373  ;  in  November  they  were  3449  only  ;  and  in  December 
they  were  below  1000.  The  total  mortality  by  plague  within 
the  year  as  given  in  the  bills  had  been  68,596.  The  plague 
still  lingered  in  the  city,  and  was    more  severe  than  before  in 

1  Lords   and   Commons   Journals  of  in  the  Country,  of  date  1675,  reprinted 

Oxford  Session  of  Parliament ;  Statutes  in    Appendix   to   Pari.    Hist.  Vol.   IV. 

at  Large  (for  Fir     MtTes  Act)  ;  Letter  (attributed  to  Locke  and  printed  in  his 

from  a  Person  of  Quality  to  his  Friend  Works,  but  not  his) ;  Baxter,  III.  3 — i. 

S  % 


260  LIFE    OF    MILTON    A.ND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

such  places  as  Deptford,  Greenwich,  and  Deal ;  but  people  had 
begun  to  be  reassured,  and  London  was  again  full  K 

The  Dutch  War,  the  Plague,  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  the 
Five  Miles  Act,  followed  people  into  the  year  1666.  The 
Dutch  War  was  complicated,  indeed,  from  January  1665-6, 
by  the  fact  that  Louis  XIV,  and  Denmark  with  him,  had  dis- 
tinctly taken  the  part  of  the  Dutch.  From  that  date  the  war 
was  nominally  a  war  of  England  single-handed  against  the 
United  Provinces,,  France,  and  Denmark  together ;  and  it  was 
only  because  Louis  XIV  had  very  prudent  notions  as  to  the 
proper  amount  of  actual  French  interference  that  the  fighting 
through  1666  was  still  mainly  between  the  English  and  the 
Dutch.  The  Earl  of  Sandwich,  not  having  given  perfect  satis- 
faction in  the  naval  command,  had  been  sent  on  an  embassy  to 
Spain ;  and  the  Duke  of  Albemarle  and  Prince  Rupert  were 
now  the  joint  admirals  of  the  English  fleet.  On  June  1-4 
there  was  a  four  days'  battle  off  the  North  Foreland,  Albe- 
marle with  fifty-four  sail  having  engaged  a  Dutch  fleet  of 
eighty  under  Ruyter,  but  with  De  Witt  also  on  board,  and 
having  doggedly  maintained  the  fight  alone  till  the  fourth 
day,  when  Prince  Rupert  came  to  his  help.  Though  the 
result  was  announced  as  a  victory  for  the  English,  there  had 
been  great  mismanagement  on  Prince  Rupert's  part,  and  the 
damage  to  the  English  fleet  had  been  enormous.  There  was 
more  success  in  another  battle  on  the  25th  and  26th  of  July, 
when  the  Dutch  were  driven  into  their  own  harbours.  For  a 
week  or  two  the  English  sailed  along  the  Dutch  coasts  in 
triumph  ;  and  on  the  8th  and  9th  of  August  a  detachment, 
under  Rear- Admiral  Holmes,  after  destroying  about  160  Dutch 
merchantmen  off  Uly,  landed  in  Schelling  and  set  fire  to  the 
chief  town  in  that  island,  doing  damage  to  the  Dutch  esti- 
mated at  a  million  sterling. 

The  thanksgivings  for  this  mercy  were  scarcely  over  when 
the  Londoners  had  to  attend  to  a  fire  of  their  own.  It  broke 
out,  between  one  and  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  Sunday, 
the  2nd  of  September,  in  the  house  of  a  baker  in  Pudding 

1  Authorities  as  before. 


THE   GREAT    FIRE    OF   LONDON.  261 

Lane;  and,  with  the  aid  of  a  high  wind,  it  spread  and  raged 
uncontrollably  till  Wednesday  the  5th.  or  Thursday  the  6th, 
consuming  400  streets,  or  13,200  dwelling-houses,  besides 
the  City  Gates,  the  Exchange,  Guildhall,  the  Custom  House, 
Sion  College,  and  other  public  structures,  and  eighty-nine 
churches,  including  St.  Paul's.  A  space  of  436  acres,  or  two- 
thirds  of  the  entire  city,  extending  from  the  Tower  to  the 
Temple,  and  from  the  river  nearly  to  Smithfield  and  London 
Wall,  was  left  in  ruins.  Attempts  have  been  made  to  estimate 
the  destruction  of  property  at  so  many  millions  of  money; 
but  of  the  consequent  misery  for  many  a  day  among  the  dis- 
housed  and  impoverished  myriads  of  the  population  there  can 
be  no  adequate  measure.  The  Great  Plague  of  1665,  and 
the  Great  Fire  of  1666,  in  which  the  last  lingerings  of 
that  pestilence  were  burnt  out,  will  be  remembered  for  ever 
together  in  the  history  of  London. 

The  Fire,  following  so  close  on  the  Pestilence,  had  made 
an  unusual  impression  upon  the  King.  He  had  gone  about 
daily  while  the  flames  were  raging,  giving  orders  for  blowing 
up  houses  and  encouraging  the  workmen,  and  "  had  been 
"  heard  during  that  time,"  says  Clarendon,  "  to  speak  with 
"great  piety  and  devotion  of  the  displeasure  that  God  was 
"provoked  to.  And  no  doubt  the  deep  sense  of  it  did  raise 
"many  good  thoughts  and  purposes  in  the  royal  breast." 
Clarendon  acknowledges  they  were  but  temporary,  and  that 
people  were  soon  scandalized  by  reports  of  brutal  jests  at 
Court  about  the  great  fire  itself,  and  by  other  proofs  of  the 
continued  "profaneness  and  atheism"  that  surrounded  Charles. 
Evelyn  and  Pepys  also  agree  in  noting  the  increase  of  public 
disgust  with  the  manners  and  morals  of  the  Court  immediately 
after  the  Great  Fire.  "  Our  prodigious  ingratitude,  burning 
lusts,  dissolute  Court,  profane  and  abominable  lives,"  are  the 
strong  words  of  the  decorous  Evelyn  on  the  day  of  fast  and 
humiliation  ordered  on  the  occasion  :  and  five  days  later 
Pepys  writes,  "  Colvill  tells  me  of  the  vieiousness  of  the 
Court,  the  contempt  the  King  brings  himself  into  thereby, 
his  minding  nothing."  Lady  Castlemaine  and  others  wrere 
now  a  little  in  the  background,  and  the  talk  was  chiefly  of  the 


262  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

renewed  assiduities  of  the  King*  to  the  beautiful,  but  wary, 
Miss  Stewart,  and  of  the  amours  of  the  Duke  of  York  with 
Sir  John  Denham's  wife,  and  of  the  Duchess  of  York  with 
Henry  Sidney,  the  brother  of  Algernon.  Meanwhile,  the  Sixth 
Session  of  the  Parliament  having-  met  (Sept.  21),  to  add  its 
energies  to  those  of  the  Council  for  the  relief  of  the  sufferers 
by  the  fire,  and  for  the  reparation  of  the  calamity,  it  was 
astonishing  to  see  with  what  rapidity  workmen  began  opera- 
tions among  the  smoking  ruins,  and  with  what  activity  archi- 
tects and  surveyors  were  planning  a  new  London  that  should 
surpass  the  old  *. 

On  the  8th  of  February  1666-7,  while  the  ruins  of  the 
Great  Fire  were  still  smoking  here  and  there,  the  Parliament 
was  again  prorogued.  During  the  four  months  and  a  half 
of  their  sixth  session,  besides  one  or  two  Acts  relating  to  the 
rebuilding  of  London  and  to  taxation  for  the  purpose,  they  had 
passed  an  Act  for  raising  an  additional  supply  of  ^?l, 800,000, 
by  poll-tax  and  otherwise,  for  the  expenses  of  the  Dutch  war, 
and  also  a  Bill,  which  had  occasioned  very  violent  discussion, 
prohibiting,  in  the  interest  of  English  farmers,  the  importa- 
tion of  cattle  from  Ireland  and  from  abroad.  They  had  also 
exacted  from  his  Majesty  another  proclamation  for  the  banish- 
ment of  Roman  Catholic  priests  and  Jesuits,  and  a  promise 
generally  for  more  strict  execution  of  the  laws  for  religious 
uniformity.  Altogetner,  a  good  deal  of  dissatisfaction  had 
been  exhibited  in  the  two  Houses  with  the  state  of  public 
affairs,  and  especially  with  the  profligate  waste  on  the  King's 
mistresses  and  favourites  of  the  money  voted  for  the  war.  A 
Bill  had  been  introduced  in  the  Commons  for  the  investigation 
and  future  audit  of  war  accounts ;  and,  when  it  had  been 
signified  that  the  King  would  resent  this  as  an  invasion  of 
his  prerogative,  there  had  been  threats  of  bringing  Lady 
Castlemaine  into  Parliamentary  view.  There  had  been 
sharp  language  in  the  King's  speeches  in  giving  assent  to 
Bills,  and  he  had  parted  with  the  Parliament  on  worse  terms 
than  on  any  previous  prorogation2. 

1  PePy-s,  through  the  year,  and  sped-       1185—1189. 
ally  in  June  and  July,  and  from  Sept.  2  2  Pari.  Hist.   IV.   332—360  ;   Pepys, 

to  Oct.  15  ;  Evelyn,  Oct.  10  ;  Clarendon,       Dec.    12,  1666,  and  Feb.  8,   1666-7.— 


CLARENDON   WANING.  263 

Clarendon,  about  this  time,  had  made  a  great  impression  on 
Mr.  Pepys,  who  observed  him  more  particularly  at  meetings 
of  the  Tangier  Committee,  of  which  they  were  both  members. 
"  I  am  mad  in  love  with  my  Lord  Chancellor,"  says  Pepys : 
"  he  do  comprehend  and  speak  out  well,  and  with  the  greatest 
"  easiness  and  authority  that  ever  I  saw  a  man  in  my  life.  I 
"  did  never  observe  how  much  easier  a  man  do  speak  when  he 
"  knows  all  the  company  to  be  below  him  than  in  Mm  ;  for, 
"  though  he  spoke  excellent  well,  yet  his  manner  and  freedom 
"  of  doing  it,  as  if  he  played  with  it,  and  was  informing  only 
"  all  the  rest  of  the  company,  was  mighty  pretty."  To  all 
appearance,  indeed,  Clarendon  was  now  at  the  summit  of  his 
grandeur.  His  great  new  mansion  in  Piccadilly  had  been 
finished,  or  all  but  finished,  just  before  the  Great  Fire;  and 
he  had  entered  into  possession  of  it,  perfectly  satisfied  with 
its  magnificence,  though  rather  troubled  at  finding  that  the 
outlay  upon  it  was  three  times  what  he  had  originally  con- 
templated, or  nearer  ^60,000  than  ^20,000.  "  To  the  Lord 
"  Chancellor's  house,  the  first  time  I  have  been  therein," 
writes  Pepys  on  the  22nd  of  April  1667;  "and  it  is  very 
"  noble,  and  brave  pictures  of  the  present  nobility." 

But  Clarendon's  influence  was  waning  fast.  Since  the 
Oxford  session  of  the  Parliament,  his  intercourse  with  the 
King  had  become  less  and  less  confidential  ;  Lady  Castlemaine 
and  her  clique  had  gradually  laughed  out  of  the  King's  mind 
whatever  of  awe  or  respect  for  the  Chancellor's  character  and 
abilities  had  remained  there ;  and  his  own  occasional  remon- 
strances with  Charles  on  his  debauched  life,  only  wearisome 
at  first,  had  become  intolerable.  Then,  at  the  Council  Board, 
there  had  been  less  and  less  of  deference  to  his  opinion.  In 
the  business  of  the  Dutch  war,  Arlington,  Ashley,  and  Sir 
William  Coventry  had  been  the  chief  managers,  in  associa- 
tion with  Albemarle  and  the  Duke  of  York ;  and  Clarendon 
observed  that  Sir  William  Coventry  in  particular,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  authority  he  had  acquired  in  naval  matters,  had 
begun  to  presume  in  all  matters  whatsoever.     The  King',  for 

Pepys   distinctly  notes  the   continued       burnt  city  to  as  late  as  March  16, 1666-7, 
smoking  of  parts   of  the   ruins  of  the       more  than  six  months  after  the  fire. 


264  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

example,  having-  complained  to  Clarendon  of  the  squibs  and 
pasquils   about   himself,    and   about   Lady   Castlemaine   and 
other  ladies,  that  were  in  circulation  in  London,  fabricated 
chiefly  in  coffee-houses,  and  Clarendon  having'  agreed  with  the 
King  that  such  licence  of  speech  was  atrocious  and  must  be 
put  down,  and  having  suggested  that  the  best  method  would 
be  either  an  instantaneous  closing  of  all  the  coffee-houses  of 
London  or  the  dispersion  of  spies  among  them  to  listen  to  the 
conversations   and  inform   against    offenders,    Coventry  had 
turned  the  notion  into  such  ridicule  at   the  Council    Board 
that  the  King,  to  Clarendon's  chagrin,  had  seen  fit  to  let  the 
coffee-houses   alone.      But,    besides    Arlington,    Ashley,    and 
Coventry,  there  was  now  in  the  Privy  Council  and  Ministry 
another  person  hostile  to  Clarendon.     This  was  Sir  Thomas 
Clifford,  M.P.   for  Totness,  a  bold  and  high-spirited  young 
man,  and,  like  Arlington,  a  crypto-Catholic.     On  the  death  of 
Sir  Hugh  Pollard  in  November  1666,  he  had  been  chosen,  at 
Arlington's  instance,  to  succeed  that  knight  in    the    Comp- 
troller ship  of  the  Household,  with  a  seat  at  the  Privy  Council. 
A  still  heavier  blow  came  in  May  1667.     On  the  16th  of  that 
month  the  Earl  of  Southampton  died.     Next  to  the  Duke  of 
Ormond,  he  had  been  the  firmest  of  Clarendon's  friends  and 
the  most  powerful  prop  of  his  administration  ;  and,  as  Ormond 
had  been  mainly  absent  in  Ireland  in  the  duties  of  his  Lord- 
Lieutenancy  since  1662,  it  was  on  Southampton  rather  than 
on  Ormond  that  Clarendon  had  been  leaning,  for  advice  and 
sympathy,  for  some  years   past.      Who  should  succeed  the 
earl  in  the  great  post  of  Lord  High  Treasurer  ?    To  Clarendon's 
discomfiture,  the  King  and  the  Duke  of  York  decided  not  to 
fill  up  the  post  at  all,  but  to  put  the  Treasury  into  the  hands 
of  five  Commissioners.     These  were  to  be  Albemarle,  Ashlej^, 
Coventry,  Clifford,  and  Sir  John  Duncombe,  a  country  gentle- 
man,   known  hitherto    only    as  M.P.  for  St.   Edmundsbury. 
From  that  moment  the  Clarendon  administration  may  be  said 
to  have  been  completely  disintegrated.     But  the  Chancellor 
would  not  yet  recognise  the  fact.       He  had   confidence   in 
himself;  and,  though  he  knew  that  he  had  given  offence  to 
both  Houses  of  Parliament  by  his  conduct  and  speeches  in  the 


THE   DUTCH    IN   THE   THAMES.  265 

recent  session,  he  had  faith  still  in  his  Parliamentary  following. 
His  fall;  however,  was  in  preparation.  It  was  to  come,  more 
immediately,  from  the  Dutch  War 1. 

With  an  additional  jf'l, 800,000  voted  for  the  war,  hut  not 
vet  in  hand,  with  a  vast  deht  owing-  in  arrears  to  the  sailors 
and  in  other  forms,  with  credit  already  shattered,  and  with 
all  possibilities  of  raising-  money  stopped  at  any  rate  by  the 
paralysis  of  London  banking  and  commerce  after  the   Fire, 
the  King  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  war  must  end. 
Louis  XIV,  having  his  own  reasons  for  desiring  peace  at  the 
moment,  was  most  willing  to  assist  Charles  in  this  design, 
not  only  by  a  secret  treaty  between  themselves  withdrawing 
France  from  the  war,  but  also  by  persuading  the  Dutch  to 
consent  to  negotiation.       The  demand  of  Charles  was  that 
there  should  be  a  cessation  of  hostilities  during-  such  neg-otia- 
tion.     The  great  De  Witt,  the  head  of  the  war-party  among 
the  Dutch,  though   unable  to  resist  the  peace-party  in  the 
States  altogether,  and  obliged  to  go  with  them  in  the  main 
matter    of   a   treaty,    succeeded    in    avoiding   the    proposed 
condition.     Accordingly,  when  Lord  Holies  and  Mr.  Henry 
Coventry  arrived  at  Breda  on  the  14th  of  May  as  plenipoten- 
tiaries for  England  to  treat  with  the  Dutch  negotiators,  there 
was  no  armistice  and  none  could  be  obtained.     They  might 
treat  as  rapidly  as  possible  and  so  bring  the  war  to  a  close, 
but   meanwhile  the    war    existed.     Now,  the   treaty  was   a 
complex  and  intricate  one,  involving  questions  about  rights 
and  possessions  in  the  East   Indies,  the  West   Indies,    and 
North  America,  which  could  not  be  settled  in  a  week  or  two. 
This  was  what  De  Witt  had  foreseen.     He  had  sworn  revenge 
for  the  burning  of  the  Dutch  shipping  in  their  own  harbours, 
and  the  ravaging  of  the  Island  of  Schelling-,  in  the  preceding 
August ;  and  the  opportunity  had  come. 

To  save  expense,  the  English  Council,  by  the  advice 
chiefly  of  Sir  William  Coventry,  and  against  the  will  of  the 
Duke  of  York,  had  laid  up  all  their  large  vessels  in  dock, 
trusting  that  two    squadrons   of  smaller  vessels  would  be  a 

1  Clarendon,  1190-1224,  and  1277  ;  Pepys,  Oct.  13,  1666,  and  April  22, 1667. 


266         LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

sufficient  protection  ;  and,  though  some  fortifications  of  the 
Thames  and  Medway  had  been  ordered,  there  was  such  mutiny 
among  the  unpaid  sailors  and  labourers  that  little  or  nothing 
of  the  kind  had  been  done.     It  was  in  this  condition  of  things 
that  Ruyter  and  Cornelius  de  Witt,  with  a  fine  and  orderly 
fleet  of  seventy  sail,  arrived  for  their  revenge.     They  were  off 
the  Nore  on  the  10th  of  June,  sending  before  them,  up  the 
river,  to  London  and  beyond,  panic  and  confusion  indescrib- 
able.    "  Everybody  was  flying,  none  knew  why  or  whither." 
The  questions   were   whether  it   was  an   invasion   that  was 
intended,  or  a  general  pillage  of  the  coasts  of  the  Thames,  or 
an  occupation  and  sack  of  London.     Monk,  who  alone  kept 
his  head  so  as  to  be  of  much  use,  and  who  probably  guessed 
the  enemy's  intentions  better  than  the  rest,  was  down    the 
river   "  in  his   shirt,"  about  Gravesend,    Sheerness,   and  the 
mouth  of  the  Medway,  extemporising  batteries,  moving  ships 
of   resistance,    sinking   others    to    choke    the    channel,    and 
driving  out  of  his  way  "  a  great  many  idle  lords  and  gentle- 
"  men,"  who  had  accompanied  him  u  with  their  pistols  and 
"  fooleries."     On  the  11th  and  12th  and  13th  the  main  inten- 
tion of  the  Dutch  became  apparent.     While  one  part  of  their 
fleet  was  left  in  the  Thames  itself,  as  if  for  Gravesend  and 
London,    another   advanced    up  the   Medway,    levelled  with 
a  few  broadsides  the   unfinished  fortifications  of  Sheerness, 
broke  down  or  evaded  the  boom  and  other  obstructions  guard- 
ing the   unrigged  English  ships  that  lay  in  the    river,  and 
deliberately  set  fire  to  all  the  ships  they  found  there,  reserving 
only  as   a  trophy  the   half-burnt  hull   of  the  Royal  Charles 
herself,  the  sacred  ship  that  had  brought  Charles  to  England 
and  had   once    been    Cromwell's    Naseby.      Meanwhile    the 
panic  had  not  ceased.     Orders  were  out  inland  for  raising  the 
militia;  there  had  been  beating  of  drums  in  London,  calling 
the  train-bands  to  arms,  with  money  to  victual  themselves  for 
a  fortnight,  under  pain  of  death  ;  citizens  were  packing  up 
their  valuables  and  sending  them  into  the  country ;  there  had 
been  talk  of  a  removal  of  the  Court  to  Windsor.     But  the 
Dutch  had  done  all  they  meant  to  do  in   the  Thames  and, 
Medway.     Generously  disdaining  mere  sack  and  pillage  of  the 


POPULAR   INDIGNATION.  267 

towns  at  their  mercy,  they  sailed  down  the  river  again  with 
the  Royal  Charles  in  tow,  and  contented  themselves  for  the  rest 
with  attempts  on  some  other  English  ports,  where  there  were 
ships  to  burn,  and  with  a  blockade  of  the  Thames,  which 
deprived  the  Londoners  of  coal  from  Newcastle  for  some 
weeks  and  put  them  to  severe  straits  for  fuel 1. 

The  popular  indignation  was  ungovernable.  While  private 
politicians,  like  Evelyn,  were  saying  that  "  those  who  advised 
"  his  Majesty  to  prepare  no  fleet  this  spring  deserved — I 
"  know  what,"  and  while  Coventry  and  others  thus  pointed 
at  were  in  corresponding  alarm,  the  mob  wreaked  its  wrath 
more  promiscuously  in  outcries  against  Charles  and  his 
mistresses,  and  the  shame  of  the  unpaid  wages  of  the  sailors, 
and  in  recollections  of  Oliver.  "  In  the  evening  comes  Mr. 
"  Povy  about  business,"  Pepys  writes  on  the  22nd  of  June  ; 
"  and  he  and  I  to  walk  in  the  garden  an  hour  or  two,  and  to 
"  talk  of  State  matters.  He  tells  me  his  opinion  that  it  is 
"  out  of  possibility  for  us  to  escape  being  undone,  there  being 
"  nothing  in  our  power  to  do  that  is  necessary  for  the  saving 
"  us :  a  lazy  Prince,  no  Council,  no  money,  no  reputation  at 
"  home  or  abroad."  Again  on  the  12th  of  July  he  writes  : 
"  It  was  computed  that  the  Parliament  had  given  the  King 
"  for  this  war  only,  besides  all  prizes,  and  besides  the 
"  ,^200,000  which  he  was  to  spend  of  his  own  revenue  to 
"  guard  the  sea,  above  ^5,000,000  and  odd  ^100,000  ;  which 
"  is  a  prodigious  sum.  It  is  strange  how  everybody  do  now- 
"  a-days  reflect  upon  Oliver  and  commend  him,  what  brave 
"  things  he  did,  and  made  all  the  neighbour  princes  fear  him  ; 
"  while  here  a  prince,  come  in  with  all  the  love  and  prayers 
"  and  good  liking  of  his  people,  who  have  given  greater  signs 
"  of  loyalty  and  willingness  to  serve  him  with  their  estates 
"  than  ever  was  done  by  any  people,  hath  lost  all  so  soon 
"  that  it  is  a  miracle  what  way  a  man  could  devise  to  lose  so 
"  much  in  so  little  time." 

Above  all,  the  fury  ran  against  Clarendon.     On  the  14th 

1  Clarendon.  1210—1220  and  1224—       Painter,  p.  271  of  Grosart's  editio.i  of 
1226  ;  Pepys  and  Evelyn  through  June       Marvell's  Works,  Vol.  I. 
1667  ;    Marvell's  Last  Instructions  to  a 


268  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOEY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

of  June,  just  when  the  Dutch  fleet  had  sailed  down  the 
river,  the  moh  attacked  Clarendon  House,  cutting  down  the 
young  trees  in  front  of  it,  breaking  the  windows,  and  leaving 
a  gibbet  painted  on  the  gate,  with  this  inscription  : — 

"  Three  sights  to  be  seen, — 
Dunkirk,  Tangier,  and  a  barren  Queen." 

In  utter  contempt  of  the  mob,  the  grave  Chancellor  sat  on 
among  his  books  and  pictures,  and  let  the  fury  pass.      No 
one  who  knew  him,  he  says,  could  suppose  that  the  mishap 
in  the  Thames  and  the  Medway  could  be  laid  to  his  charge. 
He  had  but  acquiesced  in  that  policy  of  a  reduction  of  the 
fleet  to  two  light  defensive  squadrons  which  he  had  heard 
recommended  at  the  Council  Board  by  the  best  professional 
authorities ;  and,  as  to  the  river-fortifications,  how  could  he 
have  given  any  advice  about  them,  "  being  so  totally  unskil- 
"ful  in  the  knowledge  of  the  coast  and  the  river  that  he 
"  knew   not  where  Sheerness   was,   nor    had    ever  heard  the 
"  name  of  such  a  place  "  till  he  had  listened  to  Monk  and 
the  rest  discoursing  about  it  ?    In  fact,  for  the  prime  minister, 
as  for  the  King,  the   important  question   now  was  whether 
there   should  be   an    extraordinary  meeting  of    the   Parlia- 
ment.    The  Kino-  had  been  told  that  this  was  essential  in  the 
emergency ;  and,  though  the  Parliament  had  been  prorogued 
to  the  10th  of  October,  and  it  was  held  unconstitutional  to 
summon  a  prorogued  Parliament  again  before  the  exact  day 
to  which  it  had   been  prorogued,  means  had  been  taken  to 
overcome  that  objection.     Mr.  Prynne,  who   was  thought  a 
great  authority  in  such  matters,  had  been  brought  privately 
to  the  King,  to  assure  him  "  that  upon  any  extraordinary 
occasion  he  might  do  it."     Mr.  Prynne  was  now  a  nobody 
with  either  the  King  or  the  nation,  having  been  first  gagged 
with  the  Keepership  of  the  Records  at  a  salary  of  ^J500  a 
year,  "  purposely  to  employ  his  head  from  scribbling  against 
the    State    and   Bishops/'   and  then    tamed   farther    by  two 
public  reprimands   in  the   House,  one  on   the   15th  of  July 
1661   for  an   incautious  pamphlet,  and  one  on  the  13th   of 
May  1664  for  tampering  with  the  wording  of  a  bill  after  it 
had  been  committed.     His   advice  now,  however,   was  con- 


THE    FALL   OF    CLAKENDON.  269 

venient.  Clarendon,  on  the  other  hand,  argued  earnestly  in 
Council  against  convoking  the  Houses  again  at  that  moment, 
not  only  because  the  proceeding  would  be  unconstitutional, 
but  because  it  would  be  inconvenient.  He  was  imprudent 
enough,  in  his  passion,  he  tells  us,  to  advise  rather  the  levying 
of  men  and  means  by  prerogative  "as  in  the  late  civil  war," 
or,  if  a  speedy  meeting  of  Parliament  were  deemed  absolutely 
necessary,  then  the  dissolution  of  the  present  Parliament 
and  the  calling  of  another.  Summonses,  nevertheless,  went 
out  for  an  extraordinary  meeting  of  the  two  Houses,  to  "  con- 
sider of  weighty  affairs  "  arising  from  the  unexpected  invasion 
of  the  kingdom  "  during  a  treaty  of  peace." 

On  the  day  appointed,  Thursday,  July  25,  the  two  Houses 
were  assembled  in  sufficient  numbers.  The  message  from  the 
King  was  that  he  deferred  meeting  them  till  Monday  the 
29th.  The  Lords  at  once  adjourned,  but  the  Commons  first 
passed  a  unanimous  resolution,  "  That  his  Majesty  be  humbly 
"  desired,  by  such  members  of  this  House  as  are  of  his  Privy 
"  Council,  that,  when  a  peace  is  concluded,  the  new-raised 
"  forces  be  disbanded."  On  the  29th  his  Majesty  met  the 
two  Houses,  and  informed  them  that,  as  a  peace  had  been 
concluded  at  Breda,  their  farther  sitting  was  unnecessary, 
and  they  might  return  to  their  homes,  not  to  meet  again  till 
the  10th  of  October,  as  by  the  formal  prorogation.  They 
obeyed  unwillingly,  especially  the  Commons,  but  not  till 
threats  had  been  heard  against  Clarendon  for  his  recent 
advice  of  a  dissolution.  Peace  had  actually  been  concluded 
at  Breda  at  last  on  the  21st  of  July,  by  three  separate 
treaties,  one  with  the  United  Provinces,  one  with  France,  and 
one  with  Denmark.  The  conditions  for  England  were  more 
favourable  than  might  have  been  expected. 

"  The  public  no  sooner  entered  into  this  repose  than  the 
"  storm  began  to  arise  that  destroyed  all  the  prosperity,  ruined 
"  the  fortune,  and  shipwrecked  all  the  hopes  of  the  Chancellor, 
"  who  had  been  the  principal  instrument  in  providing  that 
"  repose."  The  words  are  Clarendon's  own.  To  the  end  of  his 
life  he  seems  to  have  retained  his  amazement  at  what  fol- 
lowed.    First,  and  suddenly,  came  the  death  of  his  wife.     She 


270  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY  OF    HIS   TIME. 

was  his  second  wife,  but  married  to  him  as  long  ago  as  1634, 
and  "  the  mother  of  all  his  children,  and  his  companion  in  all 
"  his  banishment,  and  who  had  made  all  his  former  calamities 
"  less  grievous  by  her  company  and  courage."  She  was 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  August  17,  "  at  the  foot  of  the 
steps  ascending  to  King  Henry  VII's  chapel." .  The  widower 
sat  alone  in  his  splendid  house,  where  he  was  honoured  by  his 
Majesty  a  few  days  afterwards  with  a  visit  of  condolence. 
But  a  few  days  after  that  his  son-in-law  the  Duke  of  York 
came  with  a  message  from  his  Majesty  that  it  was  highly 
desirable  on  various  grounds,  but  especially  for  his  own  safety, 
that  he  should  resign  the  Chancellorship.  "  The  Chancellor 
"  was  indeed  as  much  surprised  with  this  relation  as  he  could 
"  have  been  at  the  sight  of  a  warrant  for  his  execution." 
He  refused  to  resign  the  seals  till  he  should  have  another 
interview  with  his  Majesty,  with  an  explanation  of  reasons  on 
both  sides.  The  King  was  graciously  pleased  to  signify  that, 
as  the  Chancellor  was  in  mourning,  he  would  come  again  to 
Clarendon  House  for  the  purpose.  Meanwhile  the  Duke  of 
York  remained  manfully  faithful  to  his  father-in-law,  and 
the  Duchess  of  York,  Archbishop  Sheldon,  and  others,  were 
imploring  his  Majesty  to  reconsider  his  decision.  At  moments 
it  appeared  that  they  had  succeeded.  The  King  did  not  go 
to  Clarendon  House  after  all,  but  appointed  his  own  chamber 
in  Whitehall  for  a  private  conference  with  the  Chancellor. 
Thither  Clarendon  went  at  ten  o'clock  on  Monday  the  26th, 
and  had  a  discourse  with  the  King  for  two  hours.  The  King 
seemed  firm  in  his  resolution,  spoke  of  certain  information  he 
had  of  an  intended  impeachment  of  Clarendon  by  Parliament 
when  it  met  again,  professed  his  anxiety  for  the  Chancellor 
on  this  account,  and  reminded  him  of  the  fate  of  Strafford. 
The  Chancellor  appealed  to  his  Majesty  whether  "  throwing 
off  an  old  servant,  who  had  served  the  Crown  in  some  trust 
for  near  thirty  years,"  would  be  to  his  honour  or  advantage. 
He  distinguished  his  case  from  Strafford's,  said  he  had  no  fears 
from  Parliament  for  himself,  and  besought  his  Majesty,  in  his 
own  interest,  not  to  be  "  dejected  with  the  apprehension  of 
"  the  formidable  power  of  the  Parliament,  which  was  more  or 


THE    FALL    OF    CLARENDON.  271 

"  less,  or  nothing,  as  he  pleased  to  make  it,1'  adding  that  "  it 
"  was  yet  in  his  Majesty's  own  power  to  govern  them,  but, 
"  if  they  found  it  was  in  theirs  to  govern  him.  nobody  knew 
"  what  the  end  would  be."  Thereupon  he  made  "  a  short  re- 
lation "  of  the  history  of  Richard  II,  but  unfortunately,  "  in  the 
warmth  of  this  relation,"  found  an  opportunity  to  mention  a 
certain  "  lady,"  with  cautions  and  reflections  that  might  better 
have  been  avoided.  The  King  gloomed,  and  "  rose  without 
saying  anything;"  and  the  interview  came  to  an  end.  As 
Clarendon  was  going  away  through  the  private  garden,  it 
was  full  of  people,  he  says,  and  he  saw  Lady  Castlemaine, 
Lord  Arlington,  and  Mr.  Baptist  May,  keeper  of  the  privy 
purse,  "looking  together  out  of  her  open  window  with  great 
gaiety  and  triumph."  Pepys  tells  the  same  story,  with  the 
difference  that  Lady  Castlemaine  was  in  bed  when  the 
Chancellor  left  the  palace,  though  it  was  twelve  o'clock,  but 
"  ran  out  in  her  smock  into  her  aviary  looking  into  Whitehall 
Garden,"  where,  her  woman  having  brought  her  a  dressing- 
gown,  she  "  stood  blessing  herself  at  the  old  man's  going 
away,"  and  chatting  with  the  gallants  that  came  up.  Two  or 
three  days  of  uncertainty  yet  passed  ;  but  on  Friday  the  30th 
of  August  Secretary  Morrice  came  with  a  warrant  under  the 
sign-manual  requiring  Clarendon  peremptorily  to  deliver  up 
the  great  seal.  He  did  so  "  with  all  the  expressions  of 
duty,"  and  heard  afterwards  that,  when  Secretary  Morrice 
took  the  seal  to  the  King,  Mr.  Baptist  May  fell  upon  his 
knees,  and  kissed  his  Majesty's  hand,  telling  him  he  was  now 
really  king,  which  he  had  never  been  before  *. 

Clarendon  remained  in  London  till  the  Parliament  did 
meet  and  an  impeachment  against  him  for  high  treason  was 
actually  in  process.  At  length,  on  the  29th  of  November, 
he  obeyed  the  King's  orders  by  withdrawing  hurriedly  to 
France.  Thither  he  was  pursued  by  an  Act  of  Parliament 
banishing  him  for  life.     He  had  left  in  England  four  sons, 


1  Clarendon,  1211—1212  and  1229—  851—852;  Commons  Journals,  July  15. 

1236 ;  Evelyn,  June  28  and  July  27—28,  1661  and  May  13,  1664  ;  Colonel  Ches- 

1667  ;   Pepys,  June  14  and   Aug.  27,  ter's   Westminster  Abbey  Registers,  p. 

1667;   Lords   and   Commons  Journals,  166,  with  note. 
July  25—29,  1667 ;   Wood's  Ath.  III. 


272  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

besides  the  Duchess  of  York  and  one  other  daughter.  Of  his 
eio-ht  o-rand-children  of  the  blood-royal  six  had  been  born 
before  his  exile,  of  whom  only  three  survived.  One  of  these, 
a  boy,  was  to  die  in  infancy,  as  were  two  daughters  yet  to  be 
born ;  but  the  two  infant-girls  he  had  seen  and  dandled  were 
to  live  to  be  Queen  Mary  II.  and  Queen  Anne  of  England. 
One  of  the  accusations  against  him  was  that  he  had  been  too 
prescient  of  this  sovereign  destiny  for  his  grand-children. 
Had  he  not  provided  a  childless  Queen  for  Charles ;  and, 
when  this  might  have  been  remedied  by  a  divorce  of  that 
Queen,  and  the  marriage  of  Charles  with  the  wary  and 
eligible  Miss  Stewart,  had  he  not  contrived,  in  this  very  year 
1667,  the  sudden  marriage  of  Miss  Stewart  with  the  Duke 
of  Richmond  ?  It  is  certain  that  some  such  notions  did 
mingle  at  last  with  Charles's  other  reasons  for  throwing  him 
overboard,  and  that  Clarendon  did  not  think  it  beneath  him 
to  protest  to  Charles  himself  his  innocence  in  the  matter 
of  Miss  Stewart's  marriage.  The  main  thought  he  must 
have  carried  with  him  into  his  exile  was  that  he  had  been 
the  great  instrument  of  the  restoration  of  the  dynasty  of  the 
Stuarts  in  the  British  Islands,  and  had,  in  a  ministry  of  seven 
years,  brought  the  Church  and  State  of  England  as  near  to 
his  ideal  of  perfection  as  the  materials  would  permit.  In 
this  thought,  and  in  the  writing  of  the  continuation  of  his 
History,  to  explain  the  facts  to  posterity,  flowingly  and  without 
dates,  but  with  all  the  confidence  of  impeccability  and  all  the 
mastery  of  a  man  of  genius,  he  seems  to  have  been  happy 
enough.  He  never  saw  England  again,  but  died  at  Rouen, 
Dec.  9,  1674. 


CHAPTER  II. 

davenant's  revived  laureateship  and  the  fiest  seven  years 
of  the  literature  of  the  restoration. 

At  the  Restoration,  Sir  William  Davenant,  who  had  been 
poet-laureate  to  Charles  I.  after  the  death  of  Ben  Jonson  in 
1637,  resumed  his  nominal  presidency  in  the  English  world 
of  letters  by  becoming'  poet-laureate  to  Charles  II.  He  was 
then  fifty-four  years  of  age,  and  he  was  to  hold  the  place 
till  his  death,  April  7th,  1668,  at  the  age  of  sixty-two. 
Davenant's  resumed  Laureateship,  therefore,  almost  exactly 
coincides  with  the  period  of  Clarendon's  Premiership  ;  and 
the  fact  may  be  conveniently  remembered.  Clarendon  him- 
self, indeed,  would  have  resented  any  such  association  of  his 
name  in  the  annals  of  England  with  that  of  the  popular 
and  play-writing  knight.  Long  ago,  when  they  were  begin- 
ning life  together  in  London,  Hyde,  slightly  the  younger 
man  of  the  two,  had  been  one  of  Davenant's  greatest  admirers, 
and  had  contributed  a  few  lines  to  be  prefixed  to  Davenant's 
first  published  play,  in  which  it  was  predicted  that  the  play 
and  Davenant's  muse  generally  would  "  outlive  pyramids." 
But  the  lives  of  the  two  since  then  had  greatly  altered  their 
relations  to  each  other ;  and  Hyde,  as  the  statesman  for 
Charles  I.  through  the  Civil  Wars  and  for  Charles  II.  through 
his  exile,  had  ceased  to  think  of  himself  and  Davenant  as 
in  any  way  commensurable.  Accordingly,  we  have  seen 
his  contemptuous  estimate  of  Davenant  in  his  account  of 
Davenant's  mission  from  Paris  in  1646,  on  the  part  of  Queen 
Henrietta  Maria,  to  persuade  the  captive  Charles  I.  at  New- 

VOL.  VI.  T 


274  LIFE    OP    MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

castle  to  make  peace  with  his  subjects  by  abandoning  Episco- 
pacy. "An  honest  man  and  a  worthy,  but  in  all  respects 
inferior  to  such  a  trust,"  says  Clarendon  of  Davenant  in  that 
connexion,  with  an  implied  sneer  at  Davenant's  profession  of 
stage-poet  and  stage-manager.  The  sneer  may  have  included 
something  more.  For  Davenant's  most  unrespectable  dis- 
tinction, mentioned  whenever  his  name  was  mentioned,  and 
celebrated  in  squibs  and  epigrams  about  him  for  the  last 
twenty  years,  was,  as  all  the  world  knows,  his  want  of  nose. 

"  They  flew  on  him,  like  lions  passant, 
And  tore  his  nose,  as  much  as  was  on  't  V 

Nevertheless,  Davenant  had  as  good  claims,  in  the  eyes  of 
Charles  II.  and  his  courtiers,  to  be  the  first-  Laureate  of  the 
Restoration  as  Clarendon  had  to  be  its  first  Premier.  He 
had  been  a  staunch  Royalist,  both  at  home  and  in  exile,  both 
in  camp  and  in  council ;  he  had  twice  been  a  prisoner  and  in 
danger  of  the  scaffold  for  his  Royalist  activity ;  and,  though 
of  late  years  he  had  been  living  in  London  by  Cromwell's 
indulgence,  proprietor  of  an  opera-house  for  musical  and  semi- 
dramatic  entertainments,  he  had  not  purchased  indulgence  by 
any  recantation  of  his  allegiance  to  the  Stuarts 2.  No  one 
could  grudge  to  Will.  Davenant  the  recovery  of  his  Laureate- 
ship,  or  any  farther  honours  it  might  bring. 

Davenant  was  not  to  contribute  very  largely  to  the  litera- 
ture of  his  own  revived  Laureateship.  Author  already  of 
about  a  dozen  comedies,  tragedies,  and  tragi-comedies,  and 
of  several  masques,  all  written  before  the  Civil  Wars,  and 
author  also  of  a  poem  called  Madagascar  (1648)  and  of 
Gondibert,  an  Heroic  Poem  (1651),  besides  other  occasional 
short  poems  of  various  dates,  he  was  to  rest,  in  the  main,  on 
his  acquired  reputation.  The  performance  of  which  he  was 
proudest  was  his  Gondibert,  a  vast  unfinished  epic,  or  romance 
of  imaginary  and  unimaginable  Lombard  heroes  and  heroines, 
told  in  twenty  cantos  of  four-line  stanzas.     The  poem,  the 

1  See  ante,  Vol.  III.  pp.   503—504  ;  lamium  upon  the  marriage  of  the  Lady 
and  Clarendon's  History,  p.  606.  Mary,  daughter  to  his  Highness,  with 

2  He  had  written,  however,  and  pub-  the  Lord  Viscount  Falconbridge,  to  be 
lished,  in  the  end  of  1657,  an  "  Epitha-  sung  to  recitative  music." 


SIR    WILLIAM    DAVENANT.  275 

greater   part    of  which    had    been    written    in   Paris,    when 
Davenant  was  constantly  in  the  society  of  Hobbes,  and  which 
had  been  examined,  corrected,  and  approved  by  Hobbes,  "  in 
parcels  ere  it  arrived  at  its  contexture,"  had  originally  been 
published  with  a  long  preface,  addressed  to  Hobbes,  expound- 
ing the  author's  ideas  of  Heroic  Poetry  in  general,  and  the 
novelty  and  depth  of  his  intentions  in  this  specimen  of  it  in 
particular.     Hobbes  had  acknowledged  the  honour  in  a  cha- 
racteristic letter,  in   which,   though  confessing    that   poetry 
was  not  his  special  province,  he  had  propounded  his  views  of 
poetry  confidently   enough,  criticised  the  ancient  poets  and 
modern  poetical  tendencies,  and  praised  Gondilert.     "  I  never 
"  yet  saw  poem,"  he  tells  Davenant,  "  that  had  so  much  shape 
"  of  art,  health  of  morality,  and  vigour  and  beauty  of  expres- 
"  sion,   as    this  of  yours ;  and,   but    for  the    clamour  of  the 
"  multitude,   that    hide  their    envy  of  the   present  under  a 
"  reverence  of  antiquity,  I  should  say  further  that  it  would 
"  last  as  long  as  the  iEneid  or  the  Iliad."     That  he  had  not 
read  the  poem  carelessly  is  proved  by  his  references  to  the 
parts  of  it  that  had  struck  him  most.     "  To  show  the  reader," 
he  says,  "  in  what  place  he  shall  find  every  excellent  picture  of 
"  virtue  you  have  drawn  is  too  long,  and  to  show  him  one 
"  is  to  prejudice  the  rest ;  yet  I  cannot  forbear  to  point  him 
"  to  the  description  of  love  in  the  person  of  Birtha  in  the 
"  seventh  canto  of  the  Second  Book.     There  has  been  nothing 
"  said  upon    that   subject,  neither   by   the    ancient    nor   the 
"  modern   poets,   comparable  to  it."     One    turns  with  some 
interest  to  the  canto  mentioned,  to  see  what  kind  of  verse 
pleased  the  old  philosopher  so  much,  and  finds  this  description 
there  of  Birtha,  the  daughter  of  the  wise  seer  and  physician 
Astragon  : — 

'•  To  Astragon  heaven  for  succession  gave 

One  only  pledge,  and  Birtha  was  her  name; 
Whose  mother  slept  where  flowers  grew  on  her  grave; 
And  she  succeeded  her  in  face  and  fame. 

Her  beauty  princes  durst  not  hope  to  use, 
Unless,  like  poets,  for  their  morning  theme; 

And  her  mind's  beauty  they  would  rather  choose, 
"Which  did  the  light  in  beauty's  lanthorn  seem. 

T  2 


276  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

She  ne'er  saw  courts,  yet  courts  could  have  undone 
With  untaught  looks  and  an  unpractised  heart ; 

Her  nets  the  most  prepared  could  never  shun, 
For  nature  spread  them  in  the  scorn  of  art. 

She  never  had  in  busy  cities  been ; 

Ne'er  warmed  with  hopes,  nor  yet  allayed  with  fears; 
Not  seeing  punishment,  could  guess  no  sin  ; 

And,  sin  not  seeing,  ne'er  had  use  of  tears. 

But  here  her  father's  precepts  gave  her  skill, 
"Which  with  incessant  business  filled  the  hours ; 

In  spring  she  gathered  blossoms  for  the  still, 
In  autumn  bei'ries,  and  in  summer  flowers." 

Such,  at  the  best,  was  the  epic  muse  of  Davenant,  eulogised 
publicly  not  only  by  Hobbes  ten  years  ago,  but  also  by  others 
then  and  since,  such  as  Waller  and  Cowley.  But  Gondibert 
bad,  not  unnaturally,  had  its  detractors.  It  had  been  the 
subject  of  some  clever  criticism  by  wags  who,  careless  of 
Hobbes  and  his  backing,  could  not  endure  an  epic  so  utterly 
without  any  real  backbone  of  interesting  story  and  so  mono- 
tonously elegiac  in  its  sing-song.  They  were  quite  right. 
Eminent  modern  critics  have  had  a  word  of  praise  for  Gondi- 
bert. Sir  Walter  Scott,  for  example,  says  that  it  "  very  often 
exhibits  a  majestic,  dignified,  and  manly  simplicity,"  and 
Hailam  allows  it  the  credit  "  due  to  masculine  verse  in  a  good 
metrical  cadence."  But,  while  passages  of  it  may  be  read  with 
a  feeling  that  such  praise  is  deserved,  any  attempt  to  read 
the  poem  continuously  ends  in  gentle  stupefaction.  Hence, 
though  Gondibert  remained,  in  a  very  literal  sense,  Dave- 
nant's  piece  de  resistance  among  his  contemporaries,  his  real 
popularity  depended  more  on  the  recollection  of  his  plays, 
masques,  and  miscellaneous  poems.  On  that  evidence,  a  very 
important  place  must  even  yet  be  assigned  to  Davenant  among 
the  English  dramatists  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  His  comedies 
and  tragedies  produced  in  that  reign  may  rank  fairly  above 
those  of  Shirley,  and  next  to  those  of  Massinger  and  Ford. 
His  subjects  are  generally  of  the  same  kind  as  theirs,  and 
sometimes,  like  theirs,  frightfully  repulsive  ;  there  is  the  same 
outrageous  licence  occasionally  in  the  situations  and  phrase- 
ology ;    each    play  is  rather  a  run   of  tumid  dialogue   than 


SIR   WILLIAM    DAVENANT.  277 

a  definite  invention  of  real  plot  and  character ;  but  there  is 
undoubted  power,  both  humorous  and  poetical,  with  a  remark- 
able inheritance  of  that  language  cf  light,  elevated,  profuse, 
and  careless  ideality  which  we  recognise  as  the  Elizabethan. 
The  following  is  a  characteristic  passage  from  one  of  his 
comedies  : — 

The  Life  of  Country  Ladies  imagined  by  Town  "Wits. 

Thwack.     Poor  country  madams,  th'  are  in  subjection  still. 
The  beasts,  their  husbands,  make  'em  sit  on  three 
Legg'd  stools,  like  homely  daughters  of  an  hospital, 
To  knit  socks  for  their  cloven  feet. 

Elder  Pal.     And,  when  their  tyrant  husbands,  too,  grow  old, 
As  they  have  still  th'  impudence  to  live  long, 
Good  ladies,  they  are  fain  to  waste  the  sweet 
And  pleasant  seasons  of  the  day  in  boiling 
Jellies  for  them,  and  rolling  little  pills 
Of  cambric  lint  to  stuff  their  hollow  teeth. 

Lucy.     And  then  the  evenings,  warrant  ye,  they  spend 
With  Aiother  Spectacle,  the  curate's  wife; 
"Who  does  inveigh  'gainst  curling  and  dyed  cheeks, 
Heaves  her  devout  impatient  nose  at  oil 
Of  jessamine,  and  thinks  powder  of  Paris  more 
Profane  than  th'  ashes  of  a  Romish  martyr. 

Lady  Ample.     And  in  the  days  of  joy  and  triumph,  Sir, 
Which  come  as  seldom  to  them  as  new  gowns, 
Then,  humble  wretches  !  they  do  frisk  aud  dance 
In  narrow  parlours  to  a  single  fiddle, 
That  squeaks  forth  tunes  like  a  departing  pig. 

Lucy.     "Whilst  the  mad  hinds  shake  from  their  feet  more  dirt 
Than  did  the  cedar  roots  that  danced  to  Orpheus. 

Lady  Ample.     Do  they  not  pour  their  wine  too  from  an  ewer, 
Or  small  gilt  cruise,  like  orange-water  kept 
To  sprinkle  holiday  beards  1 

Lucy.     And,  when  a  stranger  comes,  send  seven  miles  post 
By  moonshine  for  another  pint  1 

Here  is  a  graver  passage,  the  dialogue  of  two  lovers  con- 
demned to  be  put  to  death,  and  already  kneeling  together  in 
expectation  of  their  execution  : — 

Dialogue  of  the  Doomed  Lovers. 

Scoperta.     So  much  of  various  fate  so  soon  expressed 
Two  lovers  yet  ne'er  knew,  since  sympathy 
First  dwelt  on  earth. 

Sciolto.  Ere  long  we  must  be  cold, 

Cold,  cold,  my  love,  and  wrapped  in  stubborn  sheets 


278  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Of  lead ;  housed  in  a  deep,  a  gloomy  vault, 

Where  no  society  will  mix  with  us, 

But  what  shall  quicken  from  our  tainted  limbs. 

Scoperta.     "Whilst  still  there 's  noise  and  business  in  the  world, 
Whilst  still  the  wars  grow  loud  and  battles  join, 
And  kings  their  queens  salute  in  ivory. 

Sciolto.     But  0  !  how  many  ages  may  succeed 
In  heaven's  dark  kalendar  ere  we  again 
Material  be,  and  meet  in  the  Avarm  flesh  ! 

Scoperta.  And  whether  that  our  souls,  when  they  're  preferred 
To  taste  eternity,  will  ever  think 
Upon  the  bargains  of  our  human  love 
Is  unto  me  a  desolate  suspense. 

Sciolto.     Philosophy  doth  seem  to  laugh  upon 
Our  hopes,  and  wise  divinity  belies 
Our  knowledge  with  our  faith.     Jealous  nature 
Hath  locked  her  secrets  in  a  cabinet 
Which  Time  ne'er  saw. 

All  in  all,  in  the  style  and  verse  of  Davenant  in  his  plays 
there  is  something  from  Ben  Jonson,  something-  from  Mas- 
singer,  but  more  from  Shakespeare.  The  fact,  at  all  events, 
is  that  veneration  for  the  memory  of  Shakespeare  was  one 
of  Davenant's  ruling*  passions.  The  enthusiasm  had  taken 
a  rather  extraordinary  form,  if,  as  Aubrey  hints,  he  did  not, 
in  later  life,  discourage  the  rumour  that  he  was  Shakespeare's 
natural  son.  The  old  Crown  Inn  at  Oxford,  in  which  Dave- 
nant had  been  born  in  1606,  had  been,  it  seems,  the  very  inn 
which  was  Shakespeare's  habitual  resting-place  in  his  journeys 
between  Stratford-on-Avon  and  London,  as  fine  and  comfort- 
able an  inn  as  there  was  in  those  parts,  and  with  cellars  full 
of  Gascony  and  other  wines ;  and  John  Davenant,  the  land- 
lord of  this  inn,  and  for  some  time  Mayor  of  Oxford,  a  man 
"  of  a  melancholic  disposition  and  seldom  or  never  seen  to 
laugh,"  but  "an  admirer  and  lover  of  plays  and  play-makers," 
and  his  wife,  Davenant's  mother,  "a  very  beautiful  woman, 
of  a  good  wit  and  conversation,"  were  well-remembered 
persons  long  after  they  were  both  dead.  Out  of  these 
facts  foolish  gossip  in  the  London  theatres,  possibly  while 
Ben  Jonson  was  yet  alive,  had  invented  the  pedigree  for  Sir 
William  which  he  is  said  not  to  have  disliked.  More  credit- 
able to  him,  and  more  authentic,  is  the  fact  of  his  constant 
profession  of  literary  allegiance    to    the   great   Elizabethan. 


THOMAS   HOBBES. 


279 


These  lines,  "  In  remembrance  of  Mr.  William  Shakespeare," 
by  one  who  had  seen  the  living"  man  and  had  been  patted  on 
the  head  by  him,  are  not  uninteresting' ;  and  they  are  among 
the  very  earliest  of  Davenant's  pieces  : — 

Beware,  delighted  poets,  when  you  sing 
To  welcome  nature  in  the  early  spring, 

Your  numerous  feet  not  tread 
The  banks  of  Avon  ;  for  each  flower, 
As  it  ne'er  knew  a  sun  or  shower, 

Hangs  there  the  pensive  head. 

Each  tree,  whose  thick  and  spreading  growth  hath  made 
Rather  a  night  beneath  the  boughs  than  shade, 

Unwilling  now  to  grow, 
Looks  like  the  plume  a  captain  wears, 
Whose  rifled  falls  are  steeped  i'  the  tears 

Which  from  his  last  rage  flow. 

The  piteous  river  wept  itself  away 
Long  since,  alas  !  to  such  a  swift  decay 

That,  reach  the  map  and  look 
If  you  a  river  there  can  spy, 
And  for  a  river  your  mocked  eye 

Will  find  a  shallow  brook  \ 

Ben  Jonson,  the  first  of  the  regular  series  of  the  English 
Laureates,  had  been  confessedly  a  larger  man  than  most  of 
those  who  were  nominally  his  literary  subjects.  The  same 
cannot  be  said  of  his  successor  Davenant.  Among"  the  sub- 
jects of  Ms  laureateship  there  were  some  decidedly  inferior, 
but  not  a  few  far  superior,  to  himself. 

What  more  massively  notable  figure  in  the  English  world 
of  letters  at  that  time  than  Davenant's  nominal  subject,  but 
real  master  and  mentor,  Thomas  Hobbes?  In  his  seventy- 
third  year  at  the  Restoration, — a  tall,  strong--looking"  old  man, 
of  ruddy  complexion,  though  with  hands  shaking-  from  palsy, 


1  Davenant's  Collected  Works,  folio 
edition  of  1673  ;  Aubrey's  Lives,  Dave- 
nant; Wood's  Ath.  III.  802—809; 
Ward's  Hist,  of  English  Dramatic  Lit- 
erature, II.  359 — 361 ;  Dramatic  Works 
of  Sir  William  Davenant,  in  four  volumes 
octavo,  published  in  Edinburgh  in  187*2, 
as  part  of  a  series  of  new  editions  of  the 
Dramatists  of  the  Bestoration.  The 
Memoir  of  Davenant  prefixed  to  this 
last  by  the  editors,  Messrs.  Maidment 


and  Logan,  is  the  fullest  and  most 
careful  known  to  me  ;  and  never  before 
this  publication  can  Davenant's  Plays 
be  said  to  have  been  properly  edited. 
In  Herringman's  folio  of  1673,  issued 
five  years  after  Davenant's  death,  enor- 
mous liberties  were  taken  with  the  text 
of  the  plays.  Some  of  the  blank  verse 
plays  are  reduced  in  that  folio  to  a 
chaos  of  unsightly  and  nearly  unread- 
able prose. 


280  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

his  head  very  bald  atop,  but  with  yellowish-grey  hair  in  plenty 
at  the  sides , — Hobbes  too  had  already  accomplished  the  best 
part  of  his  work.  Known  to  the  public  before  the  Civil  Wars 
chiefly  by  his  translation  of  Thucydides,  he  had  since  then, — 
in  a  series  of  books,  written  either  during-  his  eleven  years 
of  voluntary  retreat  in  Paris  from  the  uncongenial  strife  at 
home  (1641-1652),  or  afterwards  in  England  during  his 
renewed  residence  there  by  Cromwell's  leave  under  the  Pro- 
tectorate,— taken  the  world  by  storm  in  his  true  character 
of  philosopher,  or  systematic  thinker.  Called  "  the  atheist 
Hobbes"  as  long  ago  as  1646,  when  only  the  first  of  this 
series  of  books,  the  Elementa  P/tilosop/tica  cle  Cive,  had  been 
published,  he  had  become  more  and  more  "  the  atheist  Hobbes," 
with  all  who  found  advantage  in  that  style  of  epithet,  by 
his  Human  Nature  and  Be  Corjoore  Politico  of  1650,  his  all- 
comprehensive  Leviathan  of  1651,  and  some  subsequent 
writings,  while  this  dreadful  fame  of  his  for  general  Atheism 
had  been  fringed  latterly  by  a  special  reputation  for  mathema- 
tical heterodoxy.  We  can  now  judge  of  Hobbes  for  ourselves. 
He  was  indubitably  the  most  important  philosophical  or  syste- 
matic thinker  that  England  had  produced  since  Bacon,  and  a 
bolder  and  more  thorough  thinker  in  some  respects  than  Bacon 
had  been  ;  one  descries  him  among  his  English  contempo- 
raries as  a  grim  and  very  irascible  old  Aristotle  ;  and  one  can 
trace  the  descent  of  his  main  notions  through  the  whole 
subsequent  course  of  English  Philosophy. 

And  what  were  the  notions  ?  What  was  this  Hobbism  with 
which  the  English  mind  was  said  to  be  already  infected 
through  and  through  at  the  time  of  the  Restoration,  and 
which  was  alarming  and  rousing  the  clergy  and  all  denomi- 
nations of  the  orthodox  ? 

Was  it  Atheism  ?  Hobbes,  most  certainly,  did  not  so 
describe  his  system  himself,  or  want  it  to  be  so  described. 
He  expressly  denies  being*  an  Atheist,  and  declares  that 
any  person  professing  Atheism  would  be  justly  punishable 
by  God  and  the  civil  magistrate.  In  his  own  vocabulary 
no  words  are  more  frequent  than  God,  Religion,  our  Blessed 
Saviour,  the  Holy  Scripture,   the  Church,  sin,  immortality, 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  281 

and  the  like.  He  is  as  ready  to  discuss  these  topics  as 
any  one  else ;  they  are  parts  of  his  encyclopaedia ;  he 
can  use  every  doctrine  of  the  Christian  creed,  and  every  text 
or  historical  averment  of  Scripture,  with  perfect  practical 
satisfaction,  if  you  allow  him  a  Hobbist  interpretation.  On 
the  whole,  however,  he  is  emphatic  in  declaring  that  it  is  in 
the  theological  region  of  speculation  that  men  have  chiefly 
made  fools  of  themselves,  and  have  accumulated  the  greatest 
quantity  of  that  nonsense  which  it  is  the  business  of  philo- 
sophy to  sweep  away.  For  the  clergy  of  all  kinds,  as  the 
professional  purveyors  of  such  doctrine,  and  the  inventors  of 
its  jargon,  he  manifests  a  very  daring  contempt.  Moreover, 
though  the  names  and  phrases  of  Religion  are  retained  in  his 
own  vocabulary,  and  the  entities  and  objects  to  which  they 
correspond  do  seem  to  belong  somehow  to  his  encyclopaedia  of 
what  is  real,  they  are  represented  as  rather  an  influx  of  incon- 
ceivables,  maintained  there  by  sheer  option  or  constitutional . 
faith,  than  as  matters  with  which  human  reason  can  comfort- 
ably or  effectively  concern  itself.  God,  as  the  eternal  cause 
of  all  that  exists,  "  is  not  a  fancy,  but  the  most  real  substance 
that  is,"  Hobbes  distinctly  admits  ;  the  existence  of  God  might 
even  be  demonstrated  by  natural  reason,  though  it  would  be 
by  a  very  difficult  and  abstruse  process,  unintelligible  to 
the  many ;  but,  practically,  God  is  a  name  among  men  for 
the  largest  possible  amount  of  the  inconceivable.  "The 
"  name  God  is  used,  not  to  make  us  conceive  him,  for  he  is 
"  incomprehensible,  and  his  greatness  and  power  are  incon- 
"  ceivable,  but  that  we  may  honour  him."  Again,  "  By  the 
"  visible  things  in  this  world  and  their  admirable  order,  a  man 
"  may  conceive  there  is  a  cause  of  them,  which  meu  call  God, 
"  and  yet  not  have  an  idea  or  image  of  him  in  his  mind  ;" 
and,  in  fact,  "  men  cannot  have  any  idea  of  him  in  their  mind 
answerable  to  his  nature."  As  respects  the  supernatural,  there- 
fore, Hobbes  was  what  we  now  call  an  Agnostic.  But  there 
are  several  schools  of  Agnostics  ;  and,  more  precisely,  Hobbes 
was  an  Agnostic  of  that  school  which  admits,  or  does  not  deny, 
that  the  inconceivable  God  may,  in  sundry  times  and  in  divers 
places,  have  communicated  to  the  human  race  by  revelation 


282  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

some  hints  of  how  he   would   will  himself  to  be  conceived 
and  thought  of,  with  a  view  to  certain  important  effects  upon 
the  human  spirit  and  upon  human  society,  and  that  the  con- 
servation of  such  sacred  tradition  may  be  the  business  of  some 
mystic  or  visible  organization  on  earth  called  collectively  the 
Church.     What  distinguishes  Hobbes  from  some  more  recent 
Agnostics  of  this  school,  however,  is  the  sturdy  impassiveness 
with  which,  having  made  this  admission  of  a  possible  deposit 
of  revelation  in  the  world,  valid  for  practical  ends  only  and 
apprehensible  only  by  faith  or  trust,  he  turns  away  from  that 
deposit,  or  supposed  deposit,  and  addresses  himself  to  what  he 
thinks  the  real  business  of  philosophy,  viz.  the  rational  in- 
vestigation of  the  laws   of  that  phenomenal  or  phantasmic 
world    in    which,    God    or   no    God,   man  lives   and    moves. 
"  From  the  propagation  of  religion,"   he  says  in  one  place, 
"  it  is  not  hard  to  understand  the  causes  of  the  resolution  of 
"  the  same  into  its  first  seeds  or  principles ;  which  are  only 
"  an  opinion  of  a  Deity  and  powers  invisible  and  supernatural, 
"  that  can  never  be  so  abolished  out  of  human  nature  but 
"  that  new  religions  may  be  made  to  spring  out  of  them  by 
"  the  culture  of  such  men  as  for  such  purpose  are  in  reputa- 
"  tion.:'     Again,  having  to  touch  incidentally  on  the  Chris- 
tian   doctrine    of    immortality    and    future    judgment,    how 
does  he  express  himself?     "There  is,"  he  says,  "  no  natural 
"  knowledge   of  man's    estate    after  death,    much  less  of  the 
"  reward  that  is  then  to  be  given  to  breach  of  faith,  but  only 
"  a  belief,  grounded  upon  other  men's  saying  that  they  know 
"  it  supernaturally,  or  that  they  know  those  that  knew  them 
"  that  knew  others  that  knew  it  supernaturally."     Here  there 
is  almost  a  sneer  at  a  religious  belief  which  he  admits  to  be 
legitimate  on  other  grounds  than  those  of  natural  reason. 
And  so,  throughout,  there  is  no  ardour  in  Hobbes,  never  any 
sentimental  lingering  over  the  notions  of  God,  Christ,  Heaven, 
Hell,  or  any  of  their  cognates.     It  is  as  if,  having  entered 
these  names  in  his  vocabulary,  and  admitted  some  correspond- 
ing entities  in  a  Hobbist  sense  into  his  encyclopedia,  he  felt 
that  he  had  done  enough  to  appease  the  clergy  or  to  provide 
them  with  endless  matter  of  minute  logomachy  with  himself 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  283 

in  their  own  department,  and  so  had  cleared  the  decks  for  the 
real  action.  That  was  to  answer  the  question,  What  can  man 
rationally  know  of  the  world  he  lives  in,  of  his  own  constitu- 
tion in  relation  to  it,  and  of  his  duties  in  it  ? 

Here  Hobbes  is  at  home.  The  individual  man,  accord- 
ing- to  Hobbes,  is  a  body  with  a  brain,  "  a  body-animated- 
rational/'  moving-  amid  other  bodies  or  appearances  and  per- 
ceiving1 them  by  his  senses.  "  There  is  no  conception  in 
"  a  man's  mind  which  hath  not  at  first,  totally  or  by  parts, 
"  been  begotten  upon  the  organs  of  sense.  The  rest  are 
"  derived  from  that  original."  The  cause  of  sensation  in 
every  case  "  is  the  external  body  or  object  which  presseth  the 
"  organ  proper  to  each  sense,  either  immediately,  as  in  the 
"  taste  and  touch,  or  mediately,  as  in  seeing,  hearing,  and 
"  smelling ;  which  pressure,  by  the  mediation  of  the  nerves, 
"  and  other  strings  and  membranes  of  the  body,  continued 
"  inwards  to  the  brain  and  heart,  causeth  there  a  resistance 
"  or  counterpressure,  or  endeavour  of  the  heart  to  deliver 
"  itself,  which  endeavour,  because  outward,  seemeth  to  be 
"  some  matter  without."  What  we  call  Imagination  is  simply 
decaying  sensation,  or  the  relics  of  former  sensation  in  the 
form  of  the  original  nerve-vibrations  continued,  but  growing 
weaker  and  weaker  ;  and  Memory  is  but  another  name  for 
the  same  thing.  Experience,  again,  is  a  name  for  "  much 
memory  or  memory  of  many  things,"  and  consists,  in  every 
partieular  person,  of  the  whole  stock  of  decaying  nerve- 
vibrations  treasured  up  in  that  person's  bodily  organism. 
Thinking  or  mental  discourse  consists  in  trains  of  imagina- 
tions, whether  spontaneous  and  unguided  or  ordered  and 
regulated ;  i.  e.  in  the  coming  together  of  some  of  the 
treasured-up  relics  of  sensation  at  their  own  pleasure,  or  the 
bringing  of  such  together  more  stringently  and  for  a  definite 
purpose.  In  neither  case  are  the  chains  or  successions  of  ideas 
arbitrary ;  they  are  determined  by  previous  associations  or 
successions  among  the  first  sensations.  "  Besides  sense,  and 
"  thoughts,  and  the  trains  of  thoughts,  the  mind  of  man  has 
"  no  other  motion."  We  cannot,  therefore,  have  any  idea, 
conception,    or    imagination    of    anything   we    call    infinite. 


284         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Speech  or  verbal  discourse  is  the  generator  of  all  science  ;  and 
speech  consists  in  the  imposing  of  names  upon  recollected 
sensations  or  past  trains  of  thought  and  in  the  connexion  of 
these  names.  What  are  called  universale,  viz.  common  names, 
such  as  man,  tree,  as  distinct  from  proper  names,  such  as  Peter', 
John,  have  nothing  corresponding  to  them  in  real  nature,  but 
express  only  abstractions  of  the  mind.  Speech  is  liable  to 
many  abuses ;  and  the  right  use  of  speech,  and  especially  the 
art  of  strict  definition  of  words,  is  the  first  necessity  of  Philo- 
sophy. "  For  words  are  wise  men's  counters, — they  do  but 
"  reckon  by  them ;  but  they  are  the  money  of  fools,  that  value 
"  them  by  the  authority  of  an  Aristotle,  a  Cicero,  or  a  Thomas, 
"  or  any  other  doctor  whatsoever."  Reason,  or  the  highest 
faculty  of  the  mind,  is  not  born  with  us,  as  sense  and  memory 
are,  nor  is  it  gotten  by  experience  only,  as  prudence  is ;  but 
it  is  "  attained  by  industry,  first  in  apt  imposing  of  names, 
"  and  secondly  by  setting  a  good  and  orderly  method  in  pro- 
"  ceeding  from  the  elements,  which  are  names,  to  assertions 
"  made  by  connexion  of  them  to  one  another,  and  so  to  syllo- 
"  gisms,  which  are  the  connexions  of  one  assertion  to  another, 
"  till  we  come  to  a  knowledge  of  all  the  consequences  of 
"  names  appertaining  to  the  subject  on  hand  :  and  that  is  it 
"  men  call  Science."  Geometry  alone  of  the  sciences  had 
been  brought  to  a  tolerably  satisfactory  condition,  for  there 
men  had  begun  "  at  settling'  the  significations  of  their  words ;" 
but,  by  equally  strict  ratiocination,  man  might  work  out  other 
sciences,  or  collections  of  true  theorems,  on  all  subjects.  To 
formulate  experience  universally  in  such  general  theorems  is 
man's  highest  excellence  ;  "  but  this  privilege  is  allayed  by 
"  another,  and  that  is  the  privilege  of  absurdity."  Of  all 
men  the  most  subject  to  absurdity  are  philosophers. 

Such  is  the  essence  of  the  Psychology  of  Hobbes.  It  was 
a  system,  as  will  be  seen,  of  thorough-going  empiricism  or 
sensationalism,  rejecting  every  vestige  of  transcendentalism. 
It  was  also,  and  has  been  generally  called,  a  system  of  Mate- 
rialism or  Materialistic  Realism,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  the 
world  to  consist  of  an  aggregate  of  material  bodies,  with 
human  bodies  among  them,  acted  upon  by  the  rest  through 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  285 

the  senses  and  nerves.  But,  though  this  is  Hobbes's  general 
conception  of  the  world,  there  are  passages  in  his  writings 
which  seem  rather  to  propound  a  kind  of  modified  Idealism. 
He  declares  that  image,  colour,  sound,  shape,  and  the  other 
qualities  by  which  objects  are  known  and  which  seem  to 
belong  to  these  objects  themselves,  and  indeed  to  constitute 
them,  are  not  the  objects  or  in  the  objects,  but  are  only 
subjective  affections  of  the  mind,  "  apparitions  unto  us  of  the 
"  motion,  agitation,  or  alteration  which  the  object  worketh  in 
"  the  brain,  or  spirits,  or  some  internal  substance  of  the  head." 
As  the  soft  white  and  grey  mass  we  call  brain,  or  the  internal 
substance  of  the  head,  must  itself,  on  this  very  principle,  be 
regarded  as  only  the  apparition  to  us  of  the  motion  or  agita- 
tion caused  on  our  spirits  by  something  unknown,  having  no 
resemblance  in  its  own  nature  to  the  apparition  it  causes, — 
i.  e.  certainly  not  brain,  and  neither  white  nor  grey,  nor  hard 
nor  soft, — Hobbes  might  seem  to  be  shut  up  here  either  to 
Idealism  or  to  a  highly  refined  variety  of  Natural  Realism. 
Perhaps,  however,  unless  we  were  to  be  allowed  the  somewhat 
self-contradictory  phrase  Materialistic  Idealism  or  Idealistic 
Materialism,  the  name  Materialistic  Realism,  or  that  of  Mate- 
rialism pure  and  simple,  may  be  kept  as  defining  Hobbes's 
metaphysical  system  best. 

Proceeding  from  Hobbes's  Psychology  to  his  Cosmology,  or 
System  of  Physics,  we  need  remark  little  more  than  that  he 
did  propound  a  classification  of  the  physical  sciences  and 
attempt  something  himself  not  only  in  mathematics,  but  also 
in  astronomy,  optics,  meteorology,  physiology,  &c.  In  as- 
tronomy he  was  a  Copernican,  and  so  was  in  advance  of 
most  of  his  contemporaries.  As  to  Creation,  or  the  physical 
beginnings  of  the  world  and  of  animation  and  humanity  on 
the  earth,  he  is  very  cautious.  Of  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
or  development  he  seems  to  have  had  no  glimpse ;  and  hence 
his  hesitation  is  between  the  hypothesis  of  the  eternity  of  the 
world  and  that  of  its  instantaneous  creation  or  appearance  at 
some  point  of  past  time.  Out  of  that  dilemma,  however, 
he  shakes  himself  very  characteristically.  "  I  purposely 
"  pass  over  the  questions  of  infinite  and  eternal,"   he   says, 


286  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  contenting'  myself  with  that  doctrine  concerning"  the  be- 
iC  ginning  and  magnitude  of  the  world  which  I  have  been 
"  persuaded  to  by  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  fame  of  the  miracles 
"  which  confirm  them,  and  by  the  custom  of  my  country  and 
"  reverence  due  to  the  laws."  He  will  vote,  therefore,  with 
other  people,  that  the  world  began  about  six  thousand  years 
ago,  with  Adam  and  Eve,  in  the  way  described  in  the  Bible. 
And  so  we  are  brought  to  the  most  peculiar  part  of  the 
Philosophy  of  Hobbes,  viz.  his  Ethics  and  Politics. 

For  a  long  while  mankind,  a  multitude  of  "  bodies- 
animated-rational,"  moved  over  the  earth,  or  inhabited  different 
parts  of  it,  in  a  state  of  nature,  with  no  great  differences  of 
strength  or  ability  between  individual  and  individual,  but 
with  great  and  growing  differences  in  respect  of  the  nature 
and  the  intensity  of  their  appetites.  In  this  state  of  nature 
all  men  have  equal  right  to  all  things,  and  each  is  sole  judge 
of  what  will  suit  him  best.  Good  is  merely  the  name  with 
every  one  individually  for  what  he  desires,  and  Evil  merely 
the  name  for  what  he  fears.  Obviously,  however,  as  there  are 
many  things,  such  as  food,  which  all  desire  and  must  have, 
and  other  things,  especially  death  and  bodily  injury,  which 
all  fear,  a  state  of  nature,  in  which  each  strives  to  get  what  he 
can  and  to  keep  it  as  long  as  he  can,  must  be  a  mere  scramble 
of  all  against  all,  or  state  of  incessant  mutual  warfare.  Gra- 
dually it  begins  to  dawn  upon  people,  or  upon  some,  that  this 
system  of  the  right  of  all  to  all  is  incommodious,  and  might 
be  rationally  modified.  Hence,  out  of  natural  craving  for 
some  amount  of  peace,  the  first  glimmerings  of  the  so-called 
laws  of  nature.  The  fundamental  law  of  nature,  according 
to  Hobbes,  is  "  That  peace  is  to  be  sought  after  where  it  may 
"  be  found,  and,  where  not,  there  to  provide  ourselves  with 
'  helps  of  war;"  but  he  enumerates  twenty  other  more  special 
laws  of  nature,  or  inventions  in  the  interest  of  peace.  The 
first  of  these  is  "  That  the  right  of  all  men  to  all  things 
"  ought  not  to  be  retained,  but  that  some  certain  rights  ought 
;t  to  be  transferred  or  relinquished."  Ail  civil  societies  have 
had  their  origin  in  fear  and  in  the  striving  after  some  amount 
of  peace  and  self-security,  ending  at  last  in  the  surrender  of 


THOMAS    HOBBES.  287 

the  right  of  all  to  all  things  and  a  contract  to  obey  magistracy 
in  some  form.  We  may  be  swift  and  summary  in  following 
Hobbes  through  the  rest.  He  recognises  aristocracy  and 
democracy  as  possible  forms  of  magistracy,  but  prefers  abso- 
lute monarchy,  where  the  right  of  all  is  conveyed  to  one 
person.  The  king  in  a  state  is  the  fountain  of  all  law  ;  if  he 
decree  the  moralities  of  true  natural  reason,  well  and  good ; 
but  in  that  respect  he  is  responsible  to  God  only,  and  whatever 
he  may  decree  is  to  be  obeyed  by  his  subjects.  "All  judi- 
"  cature  belongs  to  him  ;"  "  The  legislative  power  is  his  only  ;" 
"  The  naming  of  magistrates  and  other  officers  belongs  to 
"him;"  "Also  the  examination  of  all  doctrines;"  "  Whatso- 
ever he  doth  is  unpunishable;"  "No  man  can  challenge 
"  a  propriety  in  anything  against  his  will/'  This  doctrine 
is  repeated  again  and  again  in  similar  strings  of  emphatic 
aphorisms.  Even  in  Religion  the  king  has  the  sovereignty. 
He  may  set  up  or  establish  what  religion  or  forms  of  public 
worship  he  pleases,  and  resistance  to  him  even  in  that  depart- 
ment, on  any  plea  of  private  liberty  of  conscience,  is  treason 
and  rebellion.  Opinions  contrary  to  the  established  religion 
ought  to  be  silenced  ;  nay,  "  disobedience  may  lawfully  be 
punished  in  them  that,  against  the  laws,  teach  even  true  phi- 
losophy." The  king  is  head  of  the  Church,  and  may  do  all  the 
acts  of  the  clergy.  Church  and  State  are  one  ;  the  clergy  have 
no  powers  but  what  they  derive  from  the  civil  sovereign  ;  not 
Pope  Sylvester,  but  the  Emperor  Constantine,  who  made  him 
Pope,  was  the  supreme  pastor  of  the  Roman  Church ;  and  so, 
in  modern  communities,  not  to  bishops  or  assemblies  of  clergy, 
but  to  the  monarch,  belongs  the  ultimate  power  ecclesiastical. 
Hobbes,  though  he  has  studied  the  history  of  Episcopacy, 
and  thinks  that  it  was  a  slow  formation  of  political  expedi- 
ency only,  and  that  the  first  bishops  were  simply  the  popularly 
elected  presbyters  or  pastors  of  congregations,  accepts  modern 
English  episcopacy  as  perhaps  the  best  form  of  Church-govern- 
ment and  the  most  consistent  with  monarchy,  but  would  have 
the  bishops  and  all  other  clergy  watched  by  the  civil  power  and 
taught  their  proper  places.  "  None  but  kings  can  put  into  their 
"titles  a  mark  of  submission  to  God  only,  Bel  gratia  Bex,  Sfc, 


288  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  Bishops  ought  to  say,  in  the  beginning  of  their  mandates,  By 
"  the  favour  of  the  King's  Majesty,  bishop  of  such  a  diocese1." 

Such  was  Hobbism.  It  was  partly  a  reproduction,  partly  a 
most  original  version,  of  an  eternally  base  philosophy.  Yet 
in  what  a  style,  and  with  what  vigour,  this  philosophy 
was  taught !  Among  English  writers  there  are  few  com- 
parable to  Hobbes  for  combined  perspicuity  and  strength. 
Every  sentence  is  as  clear  as  can  be,  and  yet  full  of  inde- 
pendence and  character.  Happy  and  memorable  expressions 
abound,  and  in  page  after  page  there  breaks  out  the  sarcastic 
humour  of  one  who  sees  the  faces  of  his  readers  as  he  writes, 
and  of  some  readers  in  particular,  and  hits  the  harder  the 
more  they  wince.  There  have  been  later  philosophers  pre- 
senting the  same  strange  union  of  practical  absolutism  in 
politics  with  universal  theoretical  scepticism  or  remorseless 
reinquiry  for  themselves  into  all  matters  intellectual,  though 
the  most  recent  followers  of  Hobbes  in  metaphysics  have 
generally  gone  the  other  way  in  politics ;  but  Hobbes  remains 
a  kind  of  unique  figure  in  English  Philosophy,  with  a  per- 
sonality quite  distinguishable  from  that  of  any  forerunner  or 
any  successor.  His  very  face  in  the  portraits  is  one  of  the 
strongest  and  most  astute  ever  seen.  Strong  and  low,  we 
may  call  Hobbes,  but  great  in  that  kind. 

From  the  Restoration  onwards,  Hobbes,  whose  connexion 
with  the  Devonshire  family  dated  from  as  far  back  as  1607, 
lived  much,  as  he  had  done  before,  at  Chatsworth  in  Derby- 
shire, the  honoured  guest  of  William,  the  third  earl,  to  whom, 
as  to  his  father,  he  had  been  tutor.  His  method  of  life  there 
was  somewhat  eccentric.  He  devoted  the  mornings  to 
vigorous  walking  and  exercise  out-of-doors ;  returned  to 
breakfast ;  and  then  "  went  round  the  lodgings,  to  wait  upon 
"  the  Earl  and  Countess  and  all  the  children,  paying  some 
"  short  addresses  to  them,"  till  about  12  o'clock,  when  "  he 
"  had  a  little  dinner  provided  for  him,"  which  he  always  took 
alone.     "  Soon   after  dinner,  he  had  his  candle  and  twelve 

1  Hobbes's   Collected  Works,  edited  concerning  Body,  the  Human  Nature, 

by  Sir  William  Moles-worth,  Bart.  (1839)  the  Philosophical  Rudiments  concerning 

in  sixteen  volumes.     The  quotations  are  Government  and  Society,  and  the  Le- 

chiefly  from  the  Elements  of  Philosophy  viathan. 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  289 

"  pipes  of  tobacco  laying  by  it ;  then,  shutting  his  door,  and 
"  darkening  some  part  of  the  windows,  he  fell  to  smoking, 
"  and  thinking,  and  writing,  for  several  hours."  So  in  the 
country ;  but  he  was  also  a  good  deal  in  London,  living  in 
the  Earl's  town-house  in  Bishopsgate  Street  Without,  and 
going  about  with  him  daily.  "  I  should  sooner  have  given 
"  you  an  account  of  an  interview  I  had  of  Mr.  Hobbes,"  writes 
Hooke  to  his  patron  Robert  Boyle,  "which  was  at  Mr.  Reeve's, 
"  he  coming  along  with  my  Lord  Devonshire  to  be  assistant 
"  in  the  choosing  a  glass.  I  was,  I  confess,  a  little  surprised 
"  at  first  to  see  an  old  man  so  view  me  and  survey  me  in 
"  every  way,  without  saying  anything  to  me ;  but  I  quickly 
"  shaked  off  my  surprisal  when  I  heard  my  lord  call  him 
"  Mr.  Hobbes,  supposing  he  had  been  informed  to  whom 
"  I  belonged.  I  soon  found,  by  staying  that  little  while  he 
"  was  there,  that  the  character  I  had  formerly  received  of  him 
"  was  very  significant.  I  found  him  to  lard  and  seal  every 
"  asseveration  with  a  round  oath,  to  undervalue  all  other  men's 
"  opinions  and  judgments,  to  defend  to  the  utmost  what  he 
"  asserted,  though  never  so  absurd,  to  have  a  high  conceit  of 
"  his  own  abilities  and  performances,  though  never  so  absurd 
u  and  pitiful,  &c.  He  would  not  be  persuaded  but  that 
"  a  common  spectacle-glass  was  as  good  an  ejre-glass  for  a 
"  thirty-six  foot  glass  as  the  best  in  the  world,  and  pretended 
"  to  see  better  than  all  the  rest  by  holding  his  spectacle  in 
"  his  hand,  which  shook  as  fast  one  way  as  his  head  did  the 
"  other  i  which,  I  confess,  made  me  bite  my  tongue."  This 
is  from  an  unfriendly  quarter,  but  it  is  trustworthy.  We  see 
the  strong  old  fellow  in  the  optician's  shop,  dogmatic  even 
about  the  best  glasses  for  telescopes,  glaring  at  Hook  feroci- 
ously because  he  knew  him  to  be  a  client  of  Boyle's,  and 
blaspheming  like  a  Trojan.  He  had  outlived  all  his  vices, 
except  those  of  temper,  and  seems  never  to  have  had  many  of 
an  unphilosophical  kind.  One  natural  daughter,  whom  he 
called  his  delictum  juventutis  or  "  slip  of  youth,"  he  had  duly 
provided  for  somewhere  *. 

1  Wood's  Ath.  III.  1206—1218,  with       Correspondence,  Boyle's  Works,  V.  533. 
quotation  from  Kennet  there ;  Boyle's       Hooke's   letter  is   of  date  1663,  when 

VOL    VI.  U 


290         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 


Hobbism,  though  Hobbes  himself  had  fancied  that  the 
political  part  of  it  might  be  adjusted  to  the  Protectorate  if 
necessary,  was  expressly,  in  all  its  parts,  the  philosophy  for 
the  Restoration.  Charles,  who  had  been  obliged  by  clerical 
influence  to  sever  his  connexion  with  Hobbes  abroad,  but  who 
now  showed  him  all  favour,  and  allowed  him  a  pension  of 
^100  a-year,  was  as  much  a  Hobbist  as  a  crypto-Catholic ; 
and,  indeed,  a  mixture  of  Hobbism  and  crypto-Catholicism 
was  the  special  court  religion.  Davenant  himself  was  a 
kind  of  Roman  Catholic  Hobbist ;  and  the  scepticism  that 
was  so  prevalent  among  the  politicians  and  wits  individually, 
while  they  abetted  collectively  the  government  policy  of  coerced 
national  conformity  to  the  Anglican  Episcopal  Church,  was 
a  modified  or  diluted  Hobbism.  Not,  of  course,  that  there 
were  not  vehement  anti-Hobbists  among  the  chiefs  of  the 
Restoration.  The  clergy,  in  a  mass,  were  bound  to  hate 
Hobbes,  not  only  for  the  heretical  theology  which  they  called 
his  Atheism,  but  also  for  the  sturdy  Erastianism  of  his  views 
about  Bishops  and  the  Church.  Hence  there  was  hardly  an 
eminent  clerical  contemporary  of  Hobbes  who  did  not  think 
it  part  of  his  professional  duty  to  gird  at  the  great  heretic  on 
every  possible  occasion.  Clerical  anti-Hobbists,  now  of  the 
Church  of  England,  who  had  already  distinguished  themselves 
in  this  way  before  the  Restoration,  were  Bramhall,  Wallis, 
and  Seth  Ward,  the  two  latter  having  assaulted  Hobbes's 
mathematical  pretensions  as  well  as  his  theology.  Hardly 
less  conspicuous  as  a  declared  anti-Hobbist  already,  and 
writer  against  Hobbes,  was  the  ever  active  Richard  Baxter. 
The  dislike  of  Boyle  for  Hobbes,  theological  and  scientific, 
was  to  manifest  itself  in  various  writings  of  the  Christian 
philosopher  ;  and  anti-Hobbism,  as  we  have  seen  from  Hooke's 


Hobbes  was  seventy-five  years  old. — 
Aubrey's  anecdotes  about  Hobbes, 
■whom  he  knew  intimately,  confirm 
Hooke's  description  of  his  ferocious 
manner  and  his  habit  of  swearing,  but 
leave  altogether  a  kindlier  impression. 
"  He  had  two  kinds  of  looks,"  says 
Aubrey  :  "  when  he  laughed,  was  witty, 
and  in  a  merry  humour,  one  could  scarce 
see  his  eyes;  by  and  bye,  when  he  was 
serious  and  earnest,  he  opened  his  eyes 


round  his  eye-lids."  When  he  appeared 
at  Court,  "  Here  conies  the  bear  "  the 
wits  would  say,  and  would  gather  round 
for  a  baiting-match  ;  on  which  occasions 
"he  would  make  his  part  good,"  says 
Aubrey,  being  "  marvellous  happy  and 
ready  in  his  replies,  and  that  without 
rancour,  except  provoked."  Aubrey 
adds  that  he  was  very  charitable  with 
his  money. 


THE   SEPTUAGENAKIANS.  291 

description  of  Hobbes  in  bis  letter  to  Boyle,  was  a  rooted 
sentiment  among  Boyle's  associates.  It  remained  to  be  seen 
whether  the  hatred  of  Hobbes  among-  the  theologians  might 
not  overbear  the  liking  for  him  among  the  freethinking 
politicians  and  wits,  and  whether,  in  some  swell  of  popular 
clamour,  the  clergy  might  not  be  able  to  bring  the  old  heretic 
to  the  bar  for  judgment.  Hobbes,  who  was,  after  all,  a  timid 
man,  was  never  quite  free  from  this  dread  of  a  writ  de  heretico 
combiirendo,  but  was  resolved  to  avoid  martyrdom  at  the  last 
by  any  required  amount  of  retractation,  attendance  at  chapel, 
or  whatever  else. 

Hobbes  thus  left  standing  by  himself,  it  will  be  enough  if 
we  enumerate  more  miscellaneously  the  rest  of  those  whom 
Davenant,  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  renewed  Laureateship, 
could  regard  as  his  literary  subjects.  We  shall  take  them  in 
groups  in  the  order  of  their  ages. 

Coevals  of  Hobbes,  or  over  seventy  years  of  age  at  the 
Restoration,  were  Robert  Sanderson  and  George  Wither. 
Sanderson  was  to  live  to  1663,  as  the  respected  Restoration 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  and  was  to  add  some  new  publications 
to  the  previous  series  of  his  sermons  and  other,  writings. 
Wither  is  still  more  astonishing.  It  seemed  as  if  the  literary 
career  of  this  most  fluent  of  poets  and  satirists,  begun  as  far 
back  as  1612,  and  continued,  in  volumes  and  sheets,  through 
the  reigns  of  James  and  Charles  I.,  and  through  the  Common- 
wealth and  Protectorate,  would  never  have  an  end.  Impover- 
ished by  the  Restoration,  and  imprisoned  for  some  time  on 
a  charge  of  political  libel,  he  was  no  sooner  released  than  his 
pen  was  again  busy  in  his  poverty.  The  Prisoner  s  Plea, 
Vox  Vulgi,  Verses  intended  to  the  King's  Majesty,  Proclamation 
in  the  name  of  the  King  of  Kings,  Tuba  Pacijica,  Three  Private 
Meditations,  such  are  the  titles  of  the  last  imbecile  musings 
in  prose  and  verse  that  were  to  come  from  the  popular  old 
Puritan  and  Parliamentarian  before  May,  1667,  when  they 
buried  him  in  the  Savoy  church1. 

1  Wood's  Ath.  III.  623—531  and  761—775. 
U   2 


292         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Alive  in  1660,  and  ranging  then  from  seventy  years  of  age 
to  sixty,  in  this  order  of  descent,  were  Herrick,  Dr.  Henry 
King,  Dr.  John  Hacket,  Dr.  John  Goodwin,  Dr.  John 
Bramhall,  Izaak  Walton,  James  Shirley,  James  Howell, 
William  Prynne,  Dr.  Brian  Walton,  John  Ogilby,  Peter 
Heylin,  Edmund  Calamy,  and  Dr.  Thomas  Goodwin. 

Of  most  of  these  we  know  enough  already  to  understand  how 
they  were  likely  to  comport  themselves  amid  the  conditions  of 
the  Restoration.  King,  Bishop  of  Chichester  before  the  Civil 
Wars,  returned  to  that  See ;  Bramhall,  formerly  Bishop  of 
Derry,  became  Archbishop  of  Armagh  and  Primate  of  all 
Ireland,  and  lived  to  1663 ;  the  learned  Brian  Walton  became 
Bishop  of  Chester,  but  died  in  November  1661 ;  Hacket,  so 
conspicuous  an  episcopal  divine  before  the  Civil  Wars,  was 
to  be  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry.  Heylin,  one  of  the 
bitterest  and  most  active  enemies  of  the  Puritans,  and  who  had 
been  living  by  miscellaneous  literature,  much  of  it  historical 
and  much  of  it  scurrilous,  since  he  had  been  voted  a  delinquent 
and  deprived  of  all  his  spiritualities  in  1643,  had  recovered 
those  spiritualities,  but  was  not  thought  fit  for  higher 
preferments.  He  died  in  May,  1662,  only  sub-dean  of 
Westminster,  after  having  published  his  last  two  or  three 
books  and  pamphlets.  And  what  of  Herrick,  the  delicious 
Herrick,  who  had  been  ejected  in  1648  from  his  Devonshire 
vicarage  of  Dean  Prior,  and  had  been  living  since  then  in  his 
native  London  as  a  vague  layman,  with  no  thoughts  of  ever 
being  a  parson  again,  and  asserting  that  fact  by  collecting 
and  publishing,  as  "  Robert  Herrick,  Esq.,"  those  Anacreontics 
and  other  songs  and  poems  which  have  made  his  name  an 
evergreen  ?  All  that  we  know  is  that  he  did  resume  the 
clerical  function,  and  return  to  spend  his  old  age  among  his 
rude  parishioners  in  Dean  Prior,  where  there  are  fond  tradi- 
tions of  him  yet,  and  where  his  ghost  is  said  to  walk  very 
contentedly  now,  though  he  had  written  of  it  during  his 
former  incumbency  : — 

"  More  discontents  I  never  had, 
Since  I  was  born,  than  here, 
Where  I  have  been,  and  still  am,  sad, — ■ 
In  this  dull  Devonshire." 


THE   SEXAGENARIANS.  293 

The  three  other  clergymen  on  our  list,  Calamy  and  the  two 
Goodwins,  went  the  opposite  way,  of  course,  from  the  Heylins 
and  Herricks,  and  had  to  take  the  consequences.  Of  the  five 
non-clerical  sexagenarians  mentioned,  only  Howell  had  com- 
promised his  original  Royalism  by  turning  Oliverian  for 
a  time.  It  was  easy  for  him,  however,  to  revert  to  his  original 
principles ;  and  so,  though  he  was  not  restored  to  his  Clerk- 
ship of  the  Council,  he  became  historiographer  to  the  King, 
and  was  the  first  who  held  that  sub-presidency  of  letters,  if 
we  may  so  call  it,  under  the  poet-laureate.  Prynne  remained 
Prynne,  a  Royalist  of  the  stifFest  Presbyterian  persuasion, 
taught  submission  at  last,  but  pregnant  still  with  pamphlets. 
The  pious  and  peaceful  Izaak  Walton,  long  retired  from  his 
haberdasher's  business,  and  having  the  eminent  Bishop 
Morley  for  his  son-in-law,  was  living  in  his  own  house  in 
Clerkenwell,  or  sometimes  with  his  son-in-law  the  bishop, 
a  happy  Royalist,  angler,  and  Anglican.  One  thinks  with 
peculiar  interest  of  Shirley  as  one  of  the  survivors  of  the 
Restoration.  Called  usually  the  latest  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  though  in  reality  his  first  plays  date  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  reign  of  Charles  L,  this  Roman  Catholic 
veteran  could  now  consider  his  schoolmastering  in  Whitefriars, 
and  his  other  recent  shifts,  as  happily  at  an  end,  and  could 
hope  to  see  some  of  his  plays  reproduced  on  the  stage  and  to 
write  more.  It  was  much  the  same  with  Shirley's  friend, 
John  Ogilby,  hitherto  less  known  to  us. — Born  in  or  near 
Edinburgh  in  1660,  but  brought  to  London  in  his  childhood, 
Ogilby  had  begun  life  in  very  hard  circumstances.  He  had 
been  a  stage-dancer  and  dancing-master ;  which  second  pro- 
fession he  had  been  able  to  continue  after  having  lamed  him- 
self by  an  accident  in  the  first.  He  had  been  dancing-master 
in  several  noble  families,  and  finally  in  that  of  Strafford  ; 
who  took  him  to  Ireland  in  some  higher  domestic  capacity, 
and  under  whose  auspices  he  had  set  up  a  prosperous  theatre 
in  Dublin.  Driven  back  to  England  by  the  Irish  Rebellion, 
he  had  set  himself  with  the  utmost  determination,  both  in 
London  and  Cambridge,  to  the  task  of  repairing  in  middle 
age  the  defects  of  his  early  education.     He  had  made  himself 


294         LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

such  a  master  of  Latin  as  to  be  able  to  bring-  out  in  1649-50 
his  extraordinary  Translation  of  Virgil.  The  book  had  been 
popular,  and  had  been  republished  in  more  splendid  form  in 
1654.  Having  by  this  time  attacked  Greek,  and  published 
Fables  of  JEsop  paraphrased  in  Verse  and  adorned  with  Sculptures, 
Ogilby  did  not  shrink  from  a  yet  bolder  feat.  Homer  his 
Iliads  Translated,  adorned  with  Sculptures,  and  illustrated  with 
Annotations,  was  the  title  of  a  folio  of  his,  ready  in  1660,  and 
dedicated  to  King  Charles.  At  the  Restoration,  accordingly, 
people  were  speaking  of  Mr.  Ogilby  as  a  kind  of  self-taught 
prodigy.  He  was  to  keep  up  his  character  of  enterprising 
author-tradesman  to  the  last.  While  not  ceasing  from  poetry 
and  the  translation  of  poetry,  he  was  to  take  more  and  more 
to  geography,  topography,  and  all  kinds  of  matter-of-fact 
prose  that  would  pay,  and  was  to  devise  fresh  ingenuities  in 
the  methods  of  printing,  bookbinding,  and  book-illustration, 
and  also  in  the  art  of  vending  and  distributing  books  \ 

The  English  authors  under  sixty  years  of  age  and  over 
fifty  at  the  Restoration  may,  inasmuch  as  Davenant  himself 
was  midway  between  the  two  ages,  be  called  the  authors  of 
Davenant's  own  wave.  Milton  also  belonged  to  this  wave, 
though  among  the  juniors  in  it,  being  but  in  his  fifty-second 
year.  Others  worth  mentioning,  in  the  order  of  seniority, 
are  Dr.  John  Earle,  Dr.  John  Lightfoot,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby, 
Thomas  Fuller,  Jasper  Mayne,  Edward  Pocock,  Edmund 
Waller,  Thomas  Browne  of  Norwich,  William  Dugdale, 
Bulstrode  Whitlocke,  John  Rush  worth,  Sir  Edward  Hyde 
(Clarendon),  Sir  Richard  Fanshawe,  Sir  Aston  Cockayne, 
Owen  Feltham,  and  Dr.  Benjamin  Whichcote. 

The  excellent  Fuller  can  hardly  be  reckoned  among  the 
Restoration  writers  at  all.  He  had  written  duly,  with  the 
rest,  his  Panegyrich  to  his  Majesty  on  his  Happy  Return,  had 
been  readmitted  to  his  prebend  of  Salisbury,  made  chap- 
lain extraordinary  to  the  King,  and  D.D.  of  Cambridge  by 

1  Authorities  for  the  facts  in  this  to  which  reference  may  be  found  by  the 
paragraph  are  numerous  and  scattered  ;  names  in  the  Index.  He  brings  in  Ogilby 
but  much  is  from  Wood  in  the  places       under  Shirley  (Ath.  III.  737—744). 


davenant's  co-etaneans.  295 

royal  command,  and  had  a  bishopric  in  certain  prospect,  when 
he  was  cut  off  by  fever,  August  1661.  All  his  useful  and 
delightful  books  had  been  already  given  to  the  world,  save 
that  his  Worthies  of  England  remained  to  be  published  in 
complete  form  the  year  after  his  death.  Dr.  John  Earle, 
whose  Microcosmography  had  been  before  the  world  since  1628, 
and  who  had  published  a  few  pieces  of  verse  since,  besides  his 
Latin  translation  of  the  Eikon  Basilike,  done  in  exile,  had 
returned  with  the  King,  to  be  Dean  of  Westminster,  and  ere 
long  bishop  of  two  sees  in  succession.  The  Cambridge  Orien- 
talist, Lightfoot,  and  the  Oxford  Orientalist,  Pocock,  were 
to  live  on  as  Orientalists  still, — Lightfoot  abating  his  Presby- 
terianism  and  his  Westminster  Assembly  recollections  so 
much  as  to  be  retained  in  the  Restoration  Church  as  con- 
forming incumbent  of  Great  Munden,  in  Hertfordshire ; 
Pocock  restored  to  his  canonry  of  Christ  Church  and  made 
D.D.,  but,  for  the  rest  of  his  long  life,  to  be  "  overlooked 
or  forgotten."  Jasper  Mayne,  of  some  reputation  as  the 
author  of  a  comedy  and  a  tragi-comedy,  the  translator  of 
Lucian,  and  a  miscellaneous  poet,  had  been  known  also 
since  1646  as  D.D.  and  author  of  some  published  sermons. 
Having  been  deprived,  in  the  Commonwealth  time,  of  two 
vicarages  he  had  held  conjointly,  he  had  been  living  mean- 
while as  chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Devonshire,  and  so  under 
the  same  roof  with  Hobbes,  and  not  much  in  harmony 
with  that  philosopher.  The  Restoration  delivered  him  by 
bringing  him  back  his  two  vicarages,  with  the  archdeaconry 
of  Chichester  in  addition, — "  all  which  he  kept  to  his  dying 
day,  and  was  ever  accounted  a  witty  and  a  facetious  com- 
panion." Whichcote,  the  only  other  clerical  member  of  our 
group,  and  about  the  youngest  person  in  it,  may  be  noticed 
more  fitly  in  a  later  connexion. 

Of  Whitlocke,  Rushworth,  and  Hyde,  among  the  laymen 
of  the  group,  it  is  enough  to  remember  that  Hyde  was  now 
the  first  man  in  England,  that  Whitlocke's  political  days 
were  over  and  he  was  living  obscurely  in  Wiltshire,  and  that 
Rushworth,  with  capacities  for  business  yet  which  were  to 
procure  him  secretarial  posts  under  the  new  powers,  and  even 


296  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

brino*  him  again  into  Parliament,  was  to  sink  lower  and  lower 
in  the  world.  The  first  part  of  his  Historical  Collections  had 
appeared  in  1659;  the  rest  was  not  to  be  published  for  many 
years.  For  the  Royalist  Dugdale,  in  reward  for  his  faithful 
heraldic  services  to  the  late  King,  and  for  the  vast  historical 
industry  which  had  enabled  him  to  produce  his  Antiquities 
of  Warwickshire,  the  first  volume  of  his  Monasticon  Angli- 
canum,  and  his  History  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  all  under  the 
Protectorate,  there  was  immediate  appointment,  at  Chancellor 
Hyde's  instance,  to  the  office  of  Norroy  King  of  Arms,  with 
still  higher  heraldic  posts  to  come,  and,  in  due  time,  when  he 
had  given  more  of  his  learned  volumes  to  the  world,  the 
honour  of  knighthood.  That  honour  was  also  to  come  in 
time,  but  more  accidentally,  to  Thomas  Browne  of  Norwich, 
to  whose  Religio  Medici,  published  in  1642,  and  his  Vulgar 
Errors,  published  in  1646,  there  had  been  added,  in  the  Pro- 
tectorate, almost  everything  else  by  which  he  was  to  be 
known,  including  his  beautiful  Discourse  of  Urn-burial,  and  his 
Garden  of  Cyrus,  printed  together  in  1658.  For  the  present 
he  was  merely  the  well-known  physician  and  scholar  of 
Norwich,  author  of  those  works.  A  knight  since  1623,  and 
of  a  family  in  which  knighthood  had  been  usual,  was  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby.  Though  he  was  to  live  on  as  a  Londoner, 
and  even  a  busy  Londoner,  for  five  years  after  the  Restoration, 
he  had  already  achieved  the  full  sum  of  his  distinctions. 
Handsome  and  gigantic  in  person,  of  "  a  wonderful  graceful 
behaviour,  a  flowing  courtesy  and  civility,  and  such  a  volu- 
bility of  language  as  surprised  and  delighted,"  men  thought 
of  him  now  as  the  hero  of  the  naval  fight  of  Scanderoon 
against  the  Venetians  in  "  the  drowsy  and  unactive  time  "  of 
1628,  as  the  man  who  had  gone  and  come  for  thirty  years 
between  England  and  the  Continent  and  had  changed  his  re- 
ligion and  his  politics  with  his  climate,  as  the  romantic  hus- 
band and  romantic  widower  of  the  beautiful  and  frail  Venetia 
Stanley,  as  the  chemist  and  natural  philosopher,  the  inventor 
of  the  powder  of  sympathy  and  of  other  mystic  medicines  for 
warts  and  wounds,  the  author  of  many  books  of  subtle  theology 
and  metaphysics, 


davenant's  co-etaneans.  297 

"  The  age's  wonder  for  his  noble  parts, 
Skilled  in  six  tongues  and  learn'd  in  all  the  arts." 

Besides  Sir  Kenelm  the  only  two  of  our  group  with  titled 
names  were  Sir  Richard  Fanshawe  and  Sir  Aston  Cockayne, 
both  of  them  baronets.  Fanshawe  had  been  in  exile  with 
his  Majesty,  had  served  him  domestically  and  in  various 
foreign  embassies,  had  afterwards  attended  him  to  Scotland, 
and  had  been  one  of  the  prisoners  from  Worcester  Battle. 
Having  rejoined  the  King  at  Breda  shortly  before  the  Resto- 
ration, he  had  returned  with  him  to  be  his  Latin  Secretary,  or 
secretarjr  for  the  foreign  tongues,  i.  e.  to  hold  exactly  the 
same  office  for  Charles  II.  that  had  been  Milton's  for  the  Com- 
monwealth and  for  Oliver.  His  secretaryship  was  not  to  be 
so  stationary,  however,  as  Milton's  had  been,  but  was  to  lead 
to  a  Mastership  of  Requests  and  a  Privy  C.ouncillorship,  and 
to  be  varied  and  interrupted  by  embassies  and  diplomatic 
missions.  He  was  a  scholarly  man,  a  good  Latinist,  and  pro- 
bably, from  long  residence  abroad,  Milton's  practical  superior 
in  the  foreign  tongues.  Nor  was  he  without  some  independent 
reputation  in  literature.  To  his  translation  of  Guarini's  II 
Pastor  Fido,  published  in  1646,  he  had  added  several  transla- 
tions from  the  Spanish,  a  translation  of  The  Lusiad  of  Camoens 
from  the  Portuguese,  and  translations  from  and  into  Latin,  be- 
sides pieces  of  original  English  verse.  "A  gentleman  very  well 
known  and  very  well  beloved,"  says  Clarendon  of  Fanshawe. 
His  brother  baronet,  Sir  Aston  Cockayne,  had  also  travelled 
abroad  and  accomplished  himself  in  foreign  languages.  He 
had  been  a  friend  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  and  had  turned 
Roman  Catholic,  like  that  knight ;  for  which,  and  for  his 
Royalism,  he  had  not  escaped  trouble.  During  the  Common- 
wealth and  Protectorate  he  had  lived  chiefly  among  his  books 
on  an  estate  of  his  in  Warwickshire,  known  as  the  author  of 
a  masque,  published  in  1639,  a  translation  of  an  Italian 
romance  published  in  1654,  a  comedy,  published  in  1657, 
and  a  tragi-comedy  and  miscellaneous  poems  and  epigrams, 
published  together  in  1658. 

Though    we   have  named   Owen    Feltham  in  our  present 
group,  because  he  lived  a  good  while  after  the  Restoration, 


298  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

one  has  little  to  tell  of  him  since  1628.  His  collection  of 
essays,  with  the  title  Resolves,  Divine }  Political,  and  Moral,  pub- 
lished in  that  year,  was  in  its  sixth  edition  and  still  a  popular 
hook  with  the  pious ;  but  the  only  other  thing  going  with 
his  name  was  A  Brief  Character  of  the  Loiv  Countries,  published 
in  1659.  Far  different  had  been  the  fates  of  Waller.  What 
a  history  his  had  been  since  he  was  first  known,  in  the  end  of 
James's  reign  and  the  beginning  of  the  next !  He  was  then 
the  favourite  of  fortune,  "  nursed  in  Parliaments  and  already 
eloquent  in  them,"  praised  for  his  juvenile  poems  and  lyrics, 
admired  by  Hyde  and  by  all  for  the  graceful  melancholy  of 
his  manners,  and  "  the  excellence  and  power  of  his  wit  and 
pleasantness  of  his  conversation."  The  interval  had  been  one 
long  course  of  pusillanimity  and  time-serving.  The  very 
flagrancy  of  his  time-serving,  the  very  notoriety  of  his 
meanness,  seem  to  have  been  his  protection ;  for,  after  the 
Restoration,  just  as  before,  Clarendon  tells  us,  "  his  com- 
pany was  acceptable  where  his  spirit  was  odious."  Still 
wealthy,  after  all  his  losses,  he  could  come  and  go  between 
the  Court  and  his  estate  of  Beaconsfield,  not  only  as  a 
pleasant  man  of  society,  of  tallish,  slender  figure,  brown- 
haired,  "  his  face  somewhat  of  an  oli vaster,"  to  whose  witty 
compliments  no  one  could  be  indifferent,  but  also  as  one 
whose  political  abilities  might  make  him  of  some  conse- 
quence in  Parliament  and  in  public  affairs  to  the  very  end 
of  his  life.  Above  all,  he  could  be  happy  in  the  reputa- 
tion he  had  acquired  as  "  maker  and  model  of  melodious 
verse."  Already  among  his  contemporaries  something  of 
that  strange  opinion  had  been  formed  which,  when  it 
had  been  expressed  more  distinctly  by  Pope  and  other 
eighteenth  century  critics,  was  to  make  it  a  point  of  literary 
orthodoxy  to  regard  Waller  as  the  first,  or  one  of  the  first, 
that  taught  the  art  of  smoothness,  sweetness,  and  harmony, 
in  English  metre.  Though  the  opinion  is  absurd,  we  can  see 
on  what  real  characteristics  it  was  founded.  In  his  pane- 
gyrics and  other  poems  of  occasion,  none  of  them  very  long, 
there  is  an  easy  elegance,  not  too  artificial,  with  an  occasional 
passage  of  strength  or  richness ;   his  best  lyrics  are  among 


davenant's  immediate  junioks.  299 

the  gems  of  light  and  gallant  verse  in  the  language ;  and 
there  is  much  in  the  whole  mind  and  style  of  Waller  to  keep 
him  among  those  few  of  our  older  poets  who  are  voted  to  be 
modern  and  still  readable.  He  did  not  overestimate  his 
chances  with  posterity  when  he  wrote  : — 

"  Poets  may  boast,  as  safely  vain, 
Their  works  shall  with  the  world  remain  : 
Both,  bound  together,  live  or  die, — 
The  verses  and  the  prophecy. 

But  who  can  hope  his  lines  should  long 
Last  in  a  daily  changing  tongue  1 
"While  they  are  new  envy  prevails  ; 
And,  as  that  dies,  our  language  fails. 

When  architects  have  done  their  part, 
The  matter  may  betray  their  art  : 
Time,  if  we  use  ill-chosen  stone, 
Soon  brings  a  well-built  palace  down1." 

Under  fifty  years  of  age  at  the  Restoration,  but  over  forty, 
were  James  Harrington,  Thomas  Killigrew,  Samuel  Butler, 
Dr.  Jeremy  Taylor,  Dr.  Robert  Leighton,  Dr.  John  Pearson, 
Dr.  Henry  More,  Dr.  John  Wilkins,  Richard  Baxter,  John 
Denham,  John  Birkenhead,  Roger  L'Estrange,  Dr.  John 
Owen,  Dr.  John  Wallis,  Ralph  Cudworth,  Algernon  Sidney,, 
Dr.  John  Worthington,  Abraham  Cowley,  William  Chamber- 
layne,  Marchamont  Needham,  Henry  Neville,  and  John 
Evelyn. 

At  the  age  of  forty  a  man  has  generally  done  a  good  deal 
of  his  work,  however  much  more  may  have  to  follow.  There 
is  one  extraordinary  exception  in  the  present  list.  Samuel 
Butler  was  forty-eight  years  of  age,  but  the  world  had  heard 
nothing  of  Samuel  Butler.  A  man  of  peculiar  temper,  he 
had  lived  through  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Commonwealth,  and 
the  Protectorate,  in  a  succession  of  clerkships  or  stewardships, 
in  different  country-houses,  Presbyterian  and  Royalist,  a  great 
reader  of  books,  and  doubtless  with  a  propensity  to  scribble, 

1  For  this  paragraph,  as  for  the  last,  references  to  Clarendon's   Life,  John- 

the  authorities  are  too  numerous  and  son's  Lives  of  the  Poets,  Ward's  History 

various  to  be  specified.  Wood's  Athenaa  of  English    Dramatic   Literature,  >nd 

and  Fasti,  Aubrey's  Lives,  and  Ander-  other  Literary  Histories,  as  well  as  to 

son's  Collection  of  English  Poets  are  Bohn's   Lowndes,  and  to  Biographical 

among  the  chief;  but  there  have  been  Dictionaries. 


300  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

but  occupying  himself  more  with  music  and  amateur  portrait- 
painting-.  Whatever  had  been  his  previous  phases  of  politics, 
he  was  sufficiently  Royalist  at  the  time  of  the  Restoration  to 
benefit  by  that  event.  Among-  the  dignities  of  the  old  mon- 
archy then  revived  by  Charles  was  that  of  the  Presidency  or 
Vice-royalty  of  Wales,  which  had  been  in  abeyance  since  it  had 
been  held,  before  the  Civil  Wars,  by  the  Earl  of  Bridgewater. 
When  that  dignity  was  revived,  who  so  fit  for  it  as  Richard 
Vaughan,  Earl  Carbery  in  the  Irish  peerage,  and  Baron 
Vaughan  in  the  English,  who  had  married,  for  his  third  wife, 
in  or  about  1653,  the  Lady  Alice  Egerton,  the  youngest 
daughter  of  the  deceased  Earl  and  former  President  ?  That 
this  Lady  Alice,  the  heroine  of  Milton's  Comus  in  1634, 
should,  as  Countess  of  Carbery,  wife  of  the  new  President,  have 
had  to  revisit  Ludlow,  the  seat  of  the  vice -royalty,  and  take 
up  her  abode  once  more  in  the  old  castle,  mistress  herself  now 
of  the  great  hall  in  which  she  had  sung  and  acted  her  sweet 
girlish  part  in  the  masque  so  long  ago,  would  have  been 
remarkable  independently ;  but  it  adds  to  our  interest  in  the 
occurrence  to  find  that  the  steward  or  secretary  whom  the 
Earl  and  Countess  of  Carbery  took  with  them  to  Ludlow,  or 
sent  to  take  charge  of  the  castle  for  some  time  in  their 
absence,  was  the  hitherto  obscure  Samuel  Butler.  Tradition 
at  Ludlow  still  points  out  a  room  in  the  entrance-gateway  to 
the  castle  where  Butler  kept  his  pen,  ink,  and  paper  for  any- 
thing he  had  on  hand.  That  he  had  something  on  hand 
we  all  know  now  very  well ;  but  not  even  the  people  of 
Ludlow  were  then  in  the  secret.  It  was  probably  his  marriage 
about  this  time  with  a  lady  of  some  means  that  was  to  break 
his  connexion  with  Ludlow  and  bring  him  to  London l. 

Of  the  ten  divines  on  our  list  not  one  but  had  more  or  less 
established  his  celebrity  before  the  Restoration,  by  writings  or 
otherwise.  Of  Jeremy  Taylor,  indeed,  all  that  was  greatest 
and  best  had  appeared  between  1638  and  1660 ;  his  Ductor 
Dubitantium  was  ready  for  publication ;  and  little  was  to  come 
from  him  in  his  Irish  bishopric.     The  celebrity  of  Leighton, 

1  Wood's  Ath.  III. ;  Johnson's  Lives,  Butler ;  Bell's  Memoir  of  Butler,  prefixed 
to  his  edition  of  Butler's  Works. 


davenant's  immediate  juniors.  301 

on  the  other  hand,  did  not  at  all  depend  as  yet  on  authorship. 
Though  well  known  as  a  preacher  and  religious  thinker,  he  was 
to  leave  his  sermons  and  discourses  wholly  for  posthumous 
publication,  and  was  to  be  distinguished,  through  the  rest  of 
his  life,  from  the  Restoration  onwards,  only  as  a  Scottish 
bishop  and  archbishop,  too  saintly  for  his  uneasy  conditions. 
Pearson,  who  was  to  rise  by  rapid  preferments  to  an  English 
bishopric,  was  for  the  present  only  rector  of  a  London  parish, 
but  had  been  known  as  a  theological  writer  since  1644,  had 
published  in  1659  his  famous  Exposition  of  the  Creed,  and  was 
now  getting  ready  his  next  treatise,  published  in  1660,  and 
entitled  No  Necessity  of  Beformation  of  the  Public  Doctrine  of 
the  Church  of  England.  The  literary  and  scientific  reputation 
of  Wilkins  dated  from  1638,  when  he  had  published  his  Dis- 
covery of  a  New  World,  or  a  Discourse  to  prove  that  'tis  possible 
there  may  be  another  habitable  world  in  the  Moon;  and  there 
had  followed,  before  the  Civil  Wars,  his  Discourse  concerning 
the  possibility  of  a  passage  to  the  World  in  the  Moon,  and  other 
similar  ingenuities.  Later  writings,  mathematical  and  theo- 
logical, throup-h  the  Civil  War  and  the  Commonwealth,  had 
increased  his  credit ;  and,  after  having  been  D.D.  and  Warden 
of  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  since  1648,  he  had  attained 
a  kind  of  national  notoriety  by  becoming  the  second  husband 
of  Cromwell's  widowed  sister,  Mrs.  French,  and  so  one  of  the 
family  props  of  the  Protectorate.  Just  before  the  Restoration, 
Richard  had  removed  him  from  Oxford  and  made  him  Master 
of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  Of  that  preferment  the 
Restoration  had,  of  course,  deprived  him,  and  there  seemed 
little  chance  of  favour  under  Charles  for  a  brother-in-law  of 
Oliver.  But,  conforming  to  the  new  ecclesiastical  system, 
and  settling  in  London  as  preacher  to  Gray's  Inn,  Wilkins, 
"  a  lusty,  strong-grown,  well-set,  broad-shouldered  person, 
cheerful  and  hospitable,"  was  again  to  rise  in  the  world,  and 
be  a  liberal  and  free-hearted  English  bishop  when  it  suited 
the  government  of  Charles  to  want  such  a  prelate  in  counter- 
poise to  others.  With  Wilkins  we  may  associate  his  friend 
Wallis.  First  known  to  us  when  he  was  a  young  Presbyterian 
parish-minister  in  London  and  assistant-clerk  to  the  West- 


302  LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

minster  Assembly,  Wallis  had  all  but  merged  the  divine  since 
then  in  the  mathematician,  had  been  Savilian  Professor  of 
Geometry  in  Oxford  since  1649,  and  had  published  his 
Arithmetica  Infinitorwm  in  1655,  his  Matkesis  Universalis  in 
1657,  and  other  writings.  Conforming,  like  Wilkins,  and 
retaining  his  professorship  and  other  appointments,  he  was 
to  live  on  beyond  all  his  early  contemporaries,  engaged  in 
farther  mathematical  labours,  and  leaving  the  Westminster 
Assembly  and  the  memories  of  the  Commonwealth  and  of  Oliver 
more  and  more  comfortably  behind  him.  Two  divines  who 
could  not  conform,  and  who  did  not  conform,  were  the  semi- 
Presbyterian  Baxter  and  the  Independent  Owen.  Baxter  was 
but  about  midway  yet  in  the  series  of  180  distinct  publica- 
tions that  bear  his  name,  while  Owen  was  about  the  same 
point  in  Ms  less  numerous,  though  still  formidable,  series1. 

Dr.  Henry  More,  founder  and  head  of  the  celebrated  school 
of  the  Cambridge  Platonists,  deserves  a  place  by  himself. 
His  first  book  had  been  his  large  philosophical  poem,  Psychodia 
Platonica,  or  A  Platonical  Song  of  the  Soul,  published  at  Cam- 
bridge in  1642  and  republished  in  1647,  and  consisting  of 
four  parts,  entitled  respectively,  (1)  Psychozoia,  or  the  First 
Part  of  the  Song  of  the  Soul,  containing  a  Christiano-Platonicall 
display  of  Life,  (2)  Psychathanasia,  or  the  Second  Part  of  the 
Song  of  the  Soul,  treating  of  the  Immortality  of  Souls,  especially 
Man's  Soul,  (3)  Antipsychopannychia,  or  the  Third  Booh  of  the 
Song  of  the  Soul,  containing  a  confutation  of  the  Sleep  of  the 
Soul  after  Death,  (4)  Antimonopsychia,  or  the  Fourth  Part  of  the 
Song  of  the  Soul,  containing  A  Confutation  of  the  Unity  of  Souls. 
There  had  followed  in  1646  another  poem  called  Democritus 
Platonissans,  or  An  Essay  upon  the  Infinity  of  Worlds  out  of 
Platonick  Principles,  intended  as  an  Appendix  to  the  Second 
Part  of  the  former  poem  ;  and  among  More's  subsequent  pub- 
lications had  been  his  Antidote  against  Atheism  in  1652,  his 
Conjectura  Cabbalistica  in  1653,  his  Enthusiasmus  Triumphatus,  or 
Treatise  on  the  nature,  causes,  kinds,  and  cure  of  Enthusiasm, 
in  1656,  and  his  Immortality  of  the  Soul  concluded  from  Reason 

1  Authorities  as  before. 


HENRY   MOEE   AND   CAMBRIDGE   PLATONISM.  303 

and  Philosophy  in  1657.  Before  the  Restoration  he  had  also 
ready  his  Explanation  of  the  Grand  Mystery  of  Godliness, 
thought  by  some  his  greatest  work.  In  these  writings,  all 
issued  from  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  the  essential  prin- 
ciples of  his  Platonic  system  of  philosophy  and  theology  had 
been  abundantly  set  forth,  partly  in  queer  and  rugged  verse 
after  the  Spenserian  model,  and  partly  in  abstruse  prose  reason  ^ 
ings,  bristling  with  fantastic  nomenclature  from  the  Greek 
and  Hebrew.  Long  ago,  when  he  had  first  entered  Christ's 
as  a  boy  of  seventeen,  More  had  been  firmly  fixed  by  mere 
constitutional  instinct,  as  we  saw  at  the  time  from  his  own 
words  (Vol.  I.  pp.  215-217),  in  the  cardinal  maxim  of  the 
Transcendental  or  Intuitional  Philosophy  in  opposition  to  the 
Empirical, — to  wit,  "  that  every  human  soul  is  no  abrasa 
"  tabula,  or  mere  blank  sheet,  but  hath  innate  sensations  and 
"  notions  in  it,  both  of  good  and  evil,  just  and  unjust,  true 
"  and  false,  and  those  very  strong  and  vivid."  He  had  also 
at  that  early  age  shaken  off,  as  he  told  us,  the  Calvinism 
which  had  been  hereditary  in  his  family,  and  was  passionately 
in  search  of  such  a  grander  and  richer  theology  as  might 
satisfy  his  soul  religiously,  and  yet  be  an  irrefragable  philo- 
sophy of  pure  reason.  And  by  persistent  musings,  aided  by 
readings  in  Plato,  and  in  "the  Platonic  writers,  Marsilius 
"  Ficinus,  Plotinus  himself,  Mercurius  Trismegistus,  and  the 
"  mystical  divines,"  including  "  that  golden  little  book,"  the 
Theologia  Germanica  of  Tauler,  the  desired  philosophy  and 
theology  had  been  found.  Diffused  from  Christ's  College,  as 
More's  Christian  neo-Platonism  or  Cambridge  Platonism,  it 
had  procured  for  the  recluse  author  the  reputation  among  his 
admirers  and  disciples  of  being  one  "  raised  up  by  a  special 
"  providence  in  these  days  of  freedom  as  a  light  to  those  that 
"  may  be  fitted  or  inclined  to  high  speculations."  More, 
in  whom  there  was  a  vein  of  resolute  and  sometimes  sharpish, 
though  far  from  unamiable,  egotism,  did  not  refuse  such 
a  reputation,  but  could  describe  himself  on  occasion  "  as  a 
fiery  arrow  shot  into  the  world."  In  such  a  saying  he  cannot 
have  thought  merely  of  the  novelty  of  his  theology  in  re- 
lation to  the  ordinary  Calvinistic  theology  of  his  time  on  the 


304  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

one  hand  or  to  the  ordinary  Arminian  theology  on  the  other. 
His  theology  was  indeed  Latitudinarian,  and  contained  matter 
of  offence  to  both  classes  of  the  ordinary  divines,  as  well  as  to 
most  of  the  sects.  For  all  systematic  and  rigid  Christians, 
it  glorified  human  reason  too  much,  made  the  essence  of 
religion  to  consist  too  much  in  a  few  great  beliefs  and  in 
noble  aspirations  after  a  godly  life  in  accordance  with  them, 
and  it  scouted  too  much  the  authority  of  definite  and  minute 
objective  creeds. 

It  was,  however,  in  the    relations  of  his  system  to  con- 
temporary philosophic  thought  that    More   recognised  most 
radically   his   own    importance.     He   was    the   champion   of 
that  philosophic  system  of  Transcendentalism  or  Spiritualism, 
rooting   itself  in   supposed    structural   ideas  of  the   human 
intellect,   which   had  always  been  at  war  with  Empiricism, 
or    the   philosophy   deriving   all    knowledge   from   sensation 
and  experience ;    and,  just  as  this  latter  philosophy  had  in 
his  time  taken  the  form  of  Hobbism,  so  More  might  believe 
that    he    had    provided    the    exact    new   form    or    version 
of  Transcendentalism  needed  by  England  as  an  antidote  to 
Hobbism.     With  the  exception  of  Browne  of  Norwich,  at  all 
events,  we  do  not  now  recognise  any  antagonist  to  Hobbes 
in  his  own  generation  comparable  to  More  of  Cambridge  and 
his   followers.     While    all  the   clergy  were    banded   against 
Hobbes   theologically,    and    some    of   them   mathematically, 
Browne  of  Norwich  and  the  Cambridge  Platonists  supplied 
the  mind  of  England  with  the  more  subtle  counteractive  to 
Hobbism    which   consisted   in   expositions    of  a    speculative 
philosophy  of  directly  opposite  principles.     "  Desert  not  thy 
title  to  a  divine  particle  and  union  with  invisibles;"    "Let 
intellectual  tubes  give  thee  a  glance  of  things  which  visive 
organs  reach  not ;  "    "  Have  a  glimpse  of  incomprehensibles, 
lodge  immaterials  in  thy  head,  ascend  unto  invisibles,  fill  tby 
mind  with  spirituals"  :  these  aphorisms  of  Browne  of  Norwich, 
the    condensation    of  all   his    teaching,    were   simply   anti- 
Hobbism  in  its  quintessence.     The  Cambridge  Platonism  of 
Henry  More  was  a  larger,  more  cumbrous,  and  more  mystical 
and  fantastic  construction  in  the  same  interest  of  Spiritualism 


HENRY  MORE  AND  CAMBRIDGE  PLATONISM.     305 

against  Materialism.  The  main  or  central  principle,  iterated 
and  reiterated,  is  that  there  is  a  structural  organ  of  meta- 
physical truth,  a  vital  connexion  with  infinity,  in  the  mind  or 
reason  of  man,  and  that,  wherever  there  is  the  necessaiy 
discipline  of  a  pure  and  earnest  life,  this  organ  may  be  so 
strengthened  and  qualified  that  it  shall  become  a  kind  of  di- 
vine sagacity,  discerning  the  invisible  realities  of  the  universe 
to  their  centre  at  the  throne  of  God,  and  indeed  entitled 
to  regard  its  own  dictates,  or  even  its  own  dreamings,  as 
certainties  and  incontrovertibles.  Perhaps  every  form  of  the 
transcendental  philosophy  has  been  necessarily,  in  some  sort, 
such  a  philosophy  of  constitutional  postulation ;  but  in  More 
the  liberty  of  constitutional  postulation  ran  riot,  and  loaded 
his  main  doctrine  with  excrescences  and  learned  whimsicalities 
which  made  his  Platonism  as  a  whole  a  far  less  effective 
counteractive  to  Hobbism  than  a  simpler  Transcendentalism 
might  have  been.  He  was  devoutly  deep  in  witchcraft  and 
in  the  lore  of  angels  and  their  possible  and  progressive  inter- 
communion with  man  ;  he  held  that  there  was  a  cabbalistic 
tradition  of  the  true  philosophy  from  Moses  on  through  Plato 
and  the  neo-Platonists ;  and  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  a 
divine  led  him  to  pack  into  his  Platonism  all  the  fragments 
he  could  of  school  theology.  Hence  there  may  be  some 
jocose  significance  in  the  saying  attributed  to  Hobbes,  that 
he  would  certainly  adopt  Dr.  More's  philosophy  if  ever  he 
gave  up  his  own.  He  may  have  meant,  "  You  see  mine,  and 
you  seethe  extraordinary  jumble  he  calls  his:  well,  there  is 
no  medium."  More,  it  ought  to  be  added,  names  Hobbes 
respectfully,  and  opposed  him  rather  by  continual  implication 
than  by  overt  attack  \ 

At  the  Restoration,  or  any  time  afterwards,  More  might 
have  had  preferment  in  the  shape  of  a  college-mastership  or 
an  Irish  bishopric.     Nothing  of  the  kind  could  induce  him  to 

1  More's  autobiographic  sketch  in  the  mole's    Literature    of  the    Church    of 

form  of  the  Prcufatio  Generalissimo-  to  England  (1844) ;  aud  the  full  and  valu- 

the   folio    1679    edition    of   his    Opera  able  study  of  More  in  Principal  Tulloch's 

Omnia;   Ward's   Life  of  More,  1710;  Rational  Theology  and  L'hrUtian  Philo- 

Dr.  Grosart's  edition  of  The  Complete  sojjhy  in  England   in   the  Seventeenth 

Poems  of  Dr.  Henry  More  in  his  Chert-  Century  (1872). 
sey  Worthies  Library  (1878);    Catter- 

VOL.  VI.  X 


306         LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY  OF  HIS   TIME. 

leave  his  quiet  fellowship  of  Christ's  College ;  and  for  many 
years  to  come  his  tall,  thin,  dignified  figure,  with  the  radiant 
eagerness  of  his  look,  was  to  continue  familiar  to  all  in  Cam- 
bridge. There  he  was  known  and  quoted  as  the  Chrysostom  of 
Christ's,  while  in  London,  we  are  told,  his  Mystery  of  God- 
liness and  other  works  "  ruled  all  the  booksellers,"  such  was 
the  demand  for  them.     Who  reads  them  now  ? 

The  other  Cambridge  Platonists,  so  called  in  their  philo- 
sophical  character,   but  called   also    "the   latitude-men "   in 
respect  of  their  ecclesiastical  views,  were  those  who,  partly 
from  More's  influence  upon  them,  partly  by  a  similar  but  in- 
dependent course  of  thought  and  study,  had  worked  themselves 
out  of  the  old  Calvinistic  Puritanism  to  the  same  general  way 
of  thinking,  though  without  More's   whimsies  and  extrava- 
gancies.    Two  of  the  young  hopes  of  the  school  had  died 
eight  or  nine  years  ago, — Nathaniel  Culverwell,  whose  Dis- 
course of  the  Light  of  Nature  had  been  published  in  1652,  and 
John  Smith,  some  of  whose  manuscript  remains  were  yet  to 
be  published,  under  the  title  of  Select  Discourses,  by  his  ad- 
miring friends.     There  remained  Dr.  Benjamin  Whichcote, 
some   years    More's    senior,    and    Dr.  Ralph    Cudworth   and 
Dr.    John   Worthington,    slightly   his  juniors.     Whichcote, 
who  had  been  provost  of  King's  College  since  1644  and  had 
won  golden  opinions  in  that  office,  had  been  too  much  of  a 
Commonwealthsman  and  Oliverian  to  be  allowed  to  keep  it ; 
and  after  the  Restoration  he  was  to  reside  chiefly  in  London, 
as  the  incumbent  of  one  parish  after  another,  maintaining  his 
great  reputation  by  his  masculine  and  impressive  preaching. 
He  had  published  nothing  and  was  to  publish  nothing ;  and 
it  was  only  by  his  preaching  and  conversation  that  he  exerted 
the  influence   which    makes   him   so  memorable.     "  He  was 
"much  for  liberty  of  conscience,"  says  Burnet,  "and,  being 
"  disgusted  with  the  dry  systematical  way  of  those  times,  he 
;£  studied  to  raise  those  who  conversed  with  him  to  a  nobler 
u  set  of  thoughts."     His  Platonism  altogether  was  of  a  sim- 
pier  kind  than  More's.     The  same  may  be  said  of  Cudworth's, 
who  was  also    to  give  the   cast    of  his   personality   to   the 
system  of  views  common  to  the  school.     After  having  been 


CUDWORTH   AND   OTHER   PLATONISTS.  307 

Master  of  Clare  Hall  and  Regius  Professor  of  Hebrew,  he 
had  been  made  Master  of  Christ's   in  1654,  and  had  thus 
been  for  some  years  in  daily  intercourse   with  More ;    and, 
though   his   Oliverianism  had  been  even   more  pronounced 
than  Whichcote's,   he  was  left  undisturbed   in   his   master- 
ship  after  the    Restoration.     He  had  published  little   yet, 
but  was  preparing  for  the  great  works  in  which,  with  such 
a  combination  of  thought  and  learning,  he  was  to  set  forth 
his    Platonic    transcendentalism    and    wrestle    openly    with 
Hobbism.     Worthington,    who  had    been   Master    of   Jesus 
College  since   1655,  when   he  succeeded  Milton's  first  pre- 
ceptor,  Thomas  Young,  in  that  post,  was  less  fortunate  at 
the    Restoration  than   Cudworth.     Deprived    of  his  master- 
ship,   he   removed,    like   Whichcote,    to    London,    where   he 
was  to  live  on  as  a  preacher,  illustrating  Cambridge  Platon- 
ism  in  a   practical    way  in   his    sermons   and  some   theolo- 
gical writings.     Minor  Cambridge  Platonists,  younger  than 
any  that  have  been  mentioned,  and  not  included  formally  in 
our  literary  enumeration,  were  George  Rust,  Fellow  of  Christ's 
College,    afterwards    an    Irish    bishop,    and    Simon   Patrick, 
who  had  recently  left  Cambridge  to  become  Vicar  of  Battersea, 
and  who,  conforming  at  the  Restoration,  was  to  rise  ultimately 
to  an  English  bishopric.     Cambridge  Platonism  had  reached 
Oxford ;  and  young  Joseph  Glanvill,  of  Lincoln  College  in 
that  University,  hitherto  a  zealous  Commonwealthsman,  and 
a  follower  of  Baxter  in  theology,  had  contracted  an  admira- 
tion for  Henry  More  and  begun  to  veer  into  Platonism  and 
Latitudinarianism.     He  was  to  distinguish  himself  by  a  long 
series  of  writings,  of  which  his  Vanity  of  Dogmatising,  pub- 
lished in  1661,  was  the  first  \ 

From  the  divines  in  our  list  we  may  pass  to  the  lay  poli- 
tical thinkers.  Of  these  the  eldest  and  most  important, 
Harrington,  was  practically  defunct.  Imprisoned  for  a  while 
as  a  dangerous  fanatic,  he  was  to  spend  part  of  the  rest  of  his 
life  abroad,  and  part  in  his  house  in  Westminster,  still  talking 

1  Cattermole  and  Tulloch  as  before  ;      volume  is'our  best  History  of  Cambridge 
with  references  to  Wood  and  to  Bonn's       Platonism. 
Lowndes.     Principal  TuHoch's  second 

X   2 


308         LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  his  Rota  notions  and  Republican  models  to  any  who 
would  listen,  but  growing-  more  and  more  crack-brained  till 
he  settled  in  a  "  deliration  or  madness."  His  faithful  pupil 
and  admirer,  the  free-thinking  Henry  Neville,  had  also  to 
undergo  a  term  of  imprisonment  and  self-banishment,  but 
was  to  be  of  some  mark  in  London  by  occasional  new  publi- 
cations through  the  whole  reign  of  Charles  and  beyond.  The 
Republican  Algernon  Sidney,  avoiding  at  present  by  exile 
the  fate  that  was  to  overtake  him  at  last,  was  not  yet  known 
by  his  speculative  political  writings,  but  was  thought  of  more 
as  a  possible  plotter  abroad,  with  Ludlow  and  others,  for  the 
subversion  of  the  restored  monarchy  on  any  opportunity. 
Birkenhead  and  L'Estrange,  the  Royalist  journalists  and 
pamphleteers,  were  reaping  their  rewards,  and  we  shall  hear 
more  of  both.  Needhanr's  career  of  journalism  was,  of  course, 
at  an  end ;  and  he  was  to  live  henceforth,  as  he  had  done  in 
his  youth,  by  the  practice  of  physic,  venturing  into  print 
again  only  at  intervals  and  on  safe  topics.  The  wealthy  and 
artistic  Evelyn,  whose  first  book  had  appeared  in  1649,  and 
whose  French  Gardener  had  appeared  in  1658,  but  who  had 
distinguished  himself  politically  by  his  Apology  for  the  Royal 
Tarty  and  his  Late  News  from  Brussels  unmasked,  both  pub- 
lished on  the  eve  of  the  Restoration,  was  now  a  much-honoured 
man  at  Court 1. 

There  remain,  of  our  list,  Thomas  Killigrew,  John  Denham, 
Abraham  Cowley,  and  William  Chamberlayne. — Killigrew, 
the  oldest  of  the  four,  was  one  of  a  family  of  Killigrews,  all 
distinguished  by  their  Royalism,  and  some  others  of  them 
also  by  literary  pretensions.  His  eldest  brother,  Sir  William 
Killigrew,  a  Royalist  soldier,  had  written  several  plays,  not 
yet  published ;  and  another  brother,  Dr.  Henry  Killigrew, 
a  clergyman,  was  the  author  of  a  tragedy,  published  as  long 
ago  as  1638,  when  he  was  a  mere  youth.  But  Tom  Killigrew 
was  the  favourite.  He  could  date  his  authorship  from  1641, 
when  he  had  published  two  tragi-comedies  ;  and,  after  having 


1  Wood  (for  Harrington,  Neville,  Bir-       Harrington) ;  Bonn's  Lowndes,  Evelyn's 
kenhead,  and  Needham) ;  Aubrey  (for       Diary,  &c. 


DENHAM   AND   COWLEY.  309 

been  the  companion  and  household  buffoon  of  Charles  all 
through  his  exile,  he  had  returned  with  him,  to  be  groom  of 
the  bedchamber  and  the  licensed  jester  of  the  Court,  a  thou- 
sand times  wittier  in  table-talk  than  he  had  been,  or  ever 
could  contrive  to  be,  with  his  pen.  Of  a  higher  and  more 
serious  genius  was  Chamberlayne,  whose  Love's  Victory,  a 
tragi-comedy,  had  been  published  in  1658,  and  his  Pharonnida, 
a  Heroic  Poem,  in  1659.  He  had  fought  on  the  Royalist  side 
in  the  Civil  Wars,  and  was  now  living  as  a  physician  in 
Shaftesbury,  complaining  of  his  poverty.  Denham,  most 
certainly,  had  no  such  cause  for  complaint.  His  poetical 
celebrity,  assured  since  1642,  when  he  had  published  his 
tragedy  called  Tlie  Sophy,  had  been  increased  by  his  short 
poem  called  Cooper's  Hill  in  1643,  and  by  some  subsequent 
occasional  pieces.  For  his  past  sufferings  and  plottings,  with 
occasional  exile,  in  the  King's  cause,  he  had  stepped  at  once 
into  the  rich  office  of  surveyor-general  of  the  royal  buildings, 
held  formerly  by  Inigo  Jones  ;  and,  having  been  made  a 
knight  of  the  Bath  at  the  coronation,  he  was  to  be  pointed 
out  thenceforth  as  the  distinguished  Sir  John  Denham,  recog- 
nisable by  his  long,  stooping  figure,  light  flaxen  hair,  and 
absent-minded  look,  as  he  walked  to  and  from  his  official 
place  of  business  near  Whitehall,  often  in  company  with  his 
deputy,  Mr.  Christopher  Wren.  Though  he  did  not  cease 
to  write  verse,  he  was  to  produce  nothing  making  good  his 
well-known  aspiration  in  his  Coopers  Hill,  where,  addressing 
the  Thames,  he  had  said — 

"  0  could  I  flow  like  thee,  and  make  thy  stream. 
My  great  example,  as  it  is  my  theme  ! 
Though  deep,  yet  clear ;   though  gentle,  yet  not  dull ; 
Strong  without  rage,  without  o'erflowing  full." 

Although  the  greater  intellect  of  Cowley  had  not  worked 
itself  out  so  completely  as  Denham's,  even  Cowley  could  re- 
gard his  best  as  perhaps  already  accomplished.  To  his  boyish 
Poetical  Blossoms,  published  so  long  ago  as  1633,  the  earliest 
additions  had  been  his  pastoral  comedy,  Love's  Piddle,  and 
his  Latin  comedy,  Naufragium  Jocular e,  both  published  in 


310         LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF  HIS  TIME. 

1638;  and  there  had  followed  his  Satire  against  Separativity 
in  1642,  his  satire  called  The  Puritan  and  the  Papist  in  1643, 
his  Mistress,  or  several  copies  of  Love  Verses,  in  1647,  his  Four 
Ages  of  England  in  1 648,  his  comedy  called  The  Guardian  in 
1650,  and  his  first  folio  edition  by  himself  of  his  Collected 
Poetical  Works  in  1656,  containing  reprints  of  a  good  deal  of 
the  preceding,  but  suppressing  much  that  was  political,  and 
adding  things  not  before  published,  such  as  some  of  his 
Pindaric  Odes  and  his  sacred  epic  called  Davideis.  Most 
deservedly  by  this  series  of  publications  had  Cowley  earned 
the  reputation  of  being  one  of  the  finest  minds  of  his  time, 
really  a  man  of  genius  and  a  poet,  though  too  much  of  his 
so-called  poetry  consisted  less  in  poetry  proper  than  in  the 
subtle  and  ingenious  intellection  in  metre  which  often  passes 
for  poetry.  As  he  had  been  an  eminent  Royalist,  it  might 
have  been  expected  that  they  would  be  proud  of  him  at  Court 
after  the  Restoration,  and  that  he  would  fare  at  least  as  well 
as  Denham.  But  there  rested  on  him  the  recollection  of  his 
semi-apostacy  under  the  Protectorate,  when  he  had  submitted 
to  Cromwell  as  the  ruler  by  right  of  victory  and  possession, 
giving  up  the  cause  of  the  Stuarts  as  utterly  lost,  and  even 
announcing  the  fact  by  implication  in  the  preface  to  his 
volume  of  collected  poems.  In  vain  had  he  tried  to  recover 
himself  by  his  Ode  upon  the  Blessed  Restoration  and  Return  of 
his  sacred  Majesty  Charles  the  Second ;  in  vain  was  he  to  renew 
the  strain  again  and  again  both  in  verse  and  in  prose  ;  his  lot 
through  the  rest  of  his  life,  as  far  as  Charles  and  the  Court 
were  concerned,  was  to  be  respectful  neglect.  In  retirement, 
farther  and  farther  from  town,  first  at  Battersea,  then  at 
Barnes,  and  finally  at  Chertsey,  he  was  to  be  heard  of  more 
and  more  as  "  the  melancholy  Cowley,"  with  sufficient  wealth 
for  his  comfort,  and  with  occupation  enough  still  in  poetry, 
essay-writing,  and  the  botanical  studies  to  which  he  had  been 
attracted  since  they  made  him  Doctor  of  Physic  at  Oxford  in 
1657,  but  restless  and  unsatisfied.  Nowhere  is  his  general 
mood  after  the  Restoration  so  well  described  as  in  his  own 
ode  of  complaint,  where  he  supposes  himself  lying  mourn- 
fully under  the  shade  of  yews  and  willows  on  the  banks  of  the 


COWLEY  AND   OTHERS.  311 

Cam,  where  he  had  first  begun  to  write,  and  hearing*  himself 
addressed  thus  by  his  Muse  : — 

"  Go,  renegado  !    cast  up  thy  account, 
And  see  to  what  amount 
Thy  foolish  gains  by  quitting  me : 
The  sale  of  knowledge,  fame,  and  liberty 
The  fruits  of  thy  unlearn'd  apostasy. 
Thou  thoughtst,  if  once  the  public  storm  were  past, 
All  thy  remaining  life  should  sunshine  be. 
Behold,  the  public  storm  is  spent  at  last; 
The  sovereign  is  tossed  at  sea  no  more, 
And  thou,  with  all  the  noble  company, 
Art  got  at  last  to  shore : 
But,  whilst  thy  fellow-voyagers  I  see 
All  marched  up  to  possess  the  promised  land, 
Thou  still  alone,  alas  !    dost  gaping  stand 
Upon  the  naked  beach,  upon  the  barren  sand 1." 

Our  direct  enumeration  hitherto  has  included  fifty-seven 
writers  who  had  passed  the  climacteric  of  their  lives  at  the 
Restoration.  Worth  mentioning'  together,  in  a  single  sup- 
plementary sentence,  as  also  alive  at  the  Restoration  and  then 
more  or  less  veterans  in  literature,  though  means  for  dating 
them  exactly  are  deficient,  are  these : — Richard  Flecknoe, 
an  Irishman  and  Roman  Catholic  priest  of  grotesque  reputa- 
tion, who  had  published  a  religious  poem  so  long  ago  as  1626, 
and  many  other  poems  and  miscellanies  at  intervals  since, 
some  of  them  written  during  an  obscure  and  poverty-stricken 
residence  in  Rome ;  Ludovick  Carlell,  who  had  been  a  gentle- 
man of  the  household  to  Charles  I.  and  had  published  five 
plays  between  1629  and  1657 ;  Sir  Samuel  Tuke,  another 
courtier  of  literary  pretensions,  not  to  be  confounded  with 
the  Presbyterian  Sir  Samuel  Luke  to  whom  Butler  had  been 
secretary;  and  Sir  Robert  Stapylton,  who  had  also  been  of  the 
royal  household,  had  been  knighted  in  the  beginning  of  the 
Civil  Wars  and  had  fought  in  them,  and  was  the  author  of 
poems,  a  translation  of  Juvenal,  and  other  things,  published 
between  1644  and  1660. 

1  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  621  and  691  (the  Ward's  Dramatic   Literature  ;    Bonn's 

Killigrews),  and  III.   823 — 827  (Den-  Lowndes ;    Anderson's    Collection    ot 

ham);  Johnson's  Lives  of  Cowley  and  British  Poets.  See  also  Vol.  V.  pp.  8J-S4, 

Denham,    with    Cunningham's    notes  ;  and  ante,  pp.  13-14. 


312  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

The  following  is  a  list  of  those  younger  writers  alive  at  the 
Restoration  of  whom  it  seems  necessary  to  take  note  in  the 
present  chapter : — 

Andrew  Marvell  :  oztat.  40  : — Milton's  colleague  in  the  Latin 
Secretaryship  to  the  Protectorate  from  1657  onwards,  Marvell, 
now  permanent  M.P.  for  Hull,  a  stoutish  man,  "  round-faced, 
cherry-cheeked,  hazel  eye,  brown  hair,"  had  been,  as  we  know,  a 
poet  from  his  youth.  Stray  pieces  of  his  had  appeared  as  early  as 
1649,  and  his  lines  on  The  First  Anniversary  of  the  Government 
under  his  Highness  the  Lord  Protector  in  a  separate  broad-sheet  in 
1655;  but  most  of  his  pieces,  English  and  Latin,  were  still  in 
manuscript,  or  only  in  private  circulation.  His  courage,  and  his 
ability  in  rough  satire  as  well  as  in  finer  verse,  were  known  to  his 
friends ;  but  his  public  literary  reputation  was  yet  to  make.  He 
was  rather  shy  in  company,  and  liked  a  bottle  by  himself. 

Henry  Vaughan  :  cetat.  40  : — Poems,  with  the  Tenth  Satire  of 
Juvenal  Englished  (1646),  Olor  Iscanus,  a  collection  of  some  select 
Poems  and  Translations  (1650),  Silex  Scintillans,  or  Sacred  Poems 
and  Private  Ejaculations  (1650-5),  The  Mount  of  Olives,  or  Solitary 
Devotions  (1652),  Flores  Solitudinis  (1654):  such,  in  addition  to 
some  medical  writings,  had  been  the  publications  hitherto  of  a 
physician  living  in  his  native  Wales  and  calling  himself  "  The 
Silurist."  He  is  remembered  under  that  name  yet  with  peculiar 
regard  by  lovers  of  rare  old  English  poetry,  and  was  esteemed  "  an 
ingenious  person,  but  proud  and  humorous." 

Alexander  Brome  :  wtat.  40 : — He  was  an  attorney  in  London, 
the  son  or  other  relative  of  Ben  Jonson's  disciple,  the  dramatist 
Richard  Brome,  who  had  died  in  1652.  He  had  not  only  preserved 
and  published  most  of  this  Richard  Brome's  plays,  but  had  himself 
published  a  comedy,  The  Cunning  Lovers,  in  1654.  He  had  also 
written  a  number  of  Royalist  songs  and  squibs  in  a  "  jovial  strain  " 
for  "  sons  of  mirth  and  Bacchus." 

Roger  Boyle,  Lord  Broghill,  Earl  of  Orrery  :  cetat.  40  : 
— A  man  of  culture  and  of  literary  tastes,  this  eminent  Oliverian 
soldier  and  politician,  now  a  convert  to  Charles,  had  made  his  first 
appearance  in  literature  in  an  instalment  of  a  great  prose  romance 
called  Parthenissa,  published  in  1655. 

Sir  William  Petty  :  cetat.  38  : — He  was  a  much  more  con- 
siderable man  now  than  when  we  first  saw  him  as  the  friend  of 
Hartlib  and  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  invisible  college  of  scientific 
and  experimental  philosophers  (Vol.  III.  664-666).  He  had 
lived  from  1647  to  1652  in  Oxford,  where  he  became  M.D.  in 
1649,  and  was  elected  Professor  of  Anatomy.  In  1652  he  had 
gone  to  Ireland  as  one  of  the  surveyors  of  Irish  lands  for  the  Com- 
monwealth; and,  living  in  Ireland  through  the  Protectorate  in  this 
great  employment,  he  had  become  enormously  rich.  He  had  served 
in   Richard's  Parliament ;   and,  just   before  the   Restoration,  his 


YOUNGER  "WRITERS   AND   LATEST   RECRUITS.  313 

proceedings  in  the  Irish  survey  had  been  called  in  question.  The 
Restoration  quashed  the  inquiry ;  and  Dr.  Petty,  his  previous  Oliver- 
ianism  notwithstanding,  became  a  great  favourite  with  Charles  II. 
He  was  knighted  in  1661,  and  carried  many  schemes  in  his  great 
head. 

Margaret  Cavendish,  Marchioness  of  Newcastle  :  cetat.  38  : 
— This  celebrated  lady,  daughter  of  Thomas  Lucas,  Esq.,  of 
Colchester,  Essex,  had  gone  abroad  with  Queen  Henrietta  Maria  as 
one  of  her  maids  of  honour,  and  had  thus  met  and  captivated  the 
great  Marquis  of  Newcastle,  an  exile  since  the  battle  of  Marston 
Moor,  and  a  widower  by  the  death  of  his  first  wife  in  1643.  They 
were  married  at  Paris  in  1645,  the  Marquis  being  then  in  his  fifty- 
fourth  year,  and  she  in  her  twenty-third.  Never  such  a  mutually 
admiring  couple  as  they  during  their  fifteen  years  at  Rotterdam, 
Antwerp,  and  other  places,  living  meagrely,  yet  grandiosely,  on  his 
shattered  fortunes,  and  waiting  for  better  times.  A  series  of  books 
published  in  London, — to  wit,  Philosophical  Fancies'va  1653,  Poems 
and  Fancies  in  the  same  year,  Philosophical  and  Physical  Opinions 
in  1655,  and  The  World's  Olio  in  the  same  year, — had  announced 
to  the  English  world  of  the  Protectorate  what  a  learned  and 
literary  lady  the  exiled  Marchioness  was  ;  and,  when  the  Restoration 
brought  her  and  her  husband  back,  she  became  an  object  of  no  small 
curiosity  on  account  of  this  literary  reputation,  and  on  account 
of  her  extremely  fantastic  behaviour  and  dress.  It  then  appeared 
that  she  had  a  great  many  plays  in  manuscript  or  designed.  No 
fewer  than  twenty-one  were  to  appear  in  1662  in  a  folio  volume, 
dedicated  to  her  husband;  and  there  were  to  be  Orations  of  Divers 
Sorts,  Philosophical  Letters,  Sociable  Letters,  Observations  upon 
Experimental  Philosophy,  and  another  volume  of  plays,  all  between 
1662  and  1668,  besides  her  Life  of  her  husband,  still  alive,  eulo- 
gising him  as  if  he  had  been  a  Julius  Caesar.  They  were  then 
Duke  and  Duchess  of  Newcastle,  by  special  letters-patent  granted 
in  1664-5. — The  Marquis  himself,  as  might  have  been  expected 
of  one  who  had  been  a  Maecenas  of  Literature  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.,  was  not  unknown  as  an  author.  He  had  published  two 
comedies  at  the  Hague  in  1649,  and  his  splendid  treatise  on  the 
management  of  horses  in  its  first  or  French  form  at  Antwerp 
in  1657. 

George  Fox  :  oztat.  37  : — It  is  well  to  remember  at  this  point 
the  incessant  activity  of  Fox,  and  of  other  Quakers,  for  the  last 
ten  years,  in  writing  and  publishing.  A  large  mass  of  Quaker 
literature  was  in  existence  before  the  Restoration,  and  more  was  to 
come. 

Thomas  Sydenham  :  cetat.  37  : — He  was  a  younger  brother 
of  the  Oliverian  Colonel  Sydenham,  had  been  himself  a  Common- 
wealthsman  and  Oliverian,  and  had  held  for  some  time  a  fellowship 
of  All  Souls'  College,  Oxford.  He  had  studied  medicine  at  Oxford, 
and  had  taken  the  degree  of  M.B.     Already  at  the  Restoration  he 


314         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

was  settled  as  a  physician  in  London,  with  a  large  practice.     His 
medical  writings  were  yet  to  come. 

Thomas  Stanley  :  cetat.  37  : — He  was  a  country  gentleman  of 
good  estate,  who  had  been  educated  at  Cambridge.  Between  1647 
and  1652  he  had  published  poems  of  his  own,  besides  translations 
from  Theocritus,  Anacreon,  Bion,  and  from  Italian  and  Spanish 
writers ;  but  more  recently  he  had  been  engaged  on  a  History  of 
Philosojrfiy .  Of  this  work  the  first  volume  had  appeared  in  1655, 
and  the  second  in  1656  ;  the  third  appeared  in  1660. 

John  Aubrey  :  cetat.  35  : — Also  a  gentleman  of  considerable 
country  estates,  but  living  chiefly  in  London,  where  his  antiquarian, 
literary,  and  scientific  tastes  gave  him  an  unusually  large  circle  of 
acquaintance.  Hobbes  was  his  chief  hero,  but  he  knew  many  others. 
He  had  published  nothing  yet,  and  was  to  publish  nothing  within 
our  range  of  time,  but  was  using  his  opportunities  for  the  collection 
of  literary  and  miscellaneous  gossip. 

George  Dalgarno  (Scottish)  :  cetat.  35  : — Born  and  educated 
at  Aberdeen,  he  had  settled  in  Oxford  in  1657,  and  set  up  a 
private  grammar-school  there.  He  continued  in  that  obscure 
occupation  for  thirty  years,  but  was  to  be  heard  of  by  a  book 
entitled  Ars  Signorum,  published  in  1661,  and  containing  in- 
genious speculations  as  to  the  possibility  of  a  Universal  Alphabet 
and  Language,  anticipating  those  of  Bishop  Wilkins.  Much  later 
in  life,  beyond  our  range  of  time,  he  was  to  put  forth  another 
ingenious  book  on  the  art  of  teaching  the  deaf  and  dumb. 

Sir  Bobert  Howard  :  cetat.  35 : — He  was  a  younger  son  of 
Thomas  Howard,  Earl  of  Berkshire,  and  had  been  educated  at 
Oxford.  A  Royalist,  like  the  rest  of  his  family,  he  welcomed  the 
Restoration  in  A  Panegyric  to  General  Monk  and  a  Panegyric  to 
the  King,  both  published  in  a  collection  of  his  poems  in  1660; 
and  he  was  to  be  known  as  a  busy  author  thenceforward,  a  member 
of  Parliament,  and  holder  of  various  posts  about  Court. — With  him 
may  be  associated  his  brothers,  the  Hon.  James  Howard  and  the 
Hon.  Edward  Howard,  also  to  be  known  as  writers. 

John  Wilson  cetat.  35  (?)  : — Little  more  is  known  of  him  than 
that  he  was  a  Royalist  lawyer  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  who  had  been 
called  to  the  Bar  in  1646,  and  was  the  son  of  the  Rev.  Aaron 
Wilson  of  Plymouth,  a  Scotchman  or  of  Scottish  descent.  He  may 
be  imagined  for  the  present  as  an  unemployed  barrister  in  London, 
with  a  liking  for  literature. 

George  Villiers,  Duke  of  Buckingham  :  cetat.  34  : — With 
his  reputation  for  wit  and  wild  ability  of  many  kinds  fully  estab- 
lished, the  Duke  had  still  to  prove  his  powers  in  authorship. 

Robert  Boyle  :  cetat.  34 : — Though  Boyle  had  some  finished 
writings  by  him,  including  his  Seraphic  Love,  written  in  1648, 
his  chemical  speculations  and  his  thoughtful  views  about  things 
in  general  had  hitherto  been  propounded  rather  by  conver- 
sation and  correspondence.      His  career  of  avowed  authorship,  even 


YOUNGER   WRITERS   AND  LATEST   RECRUITS.  315 

more  than  his  brother  Lord  Broghill's,  was  to  date  from  the 
Restoration. 

John  Bunyan  :  cetat.  33  : — Here  and  there,  np  and  down  the 
country,  people  had  heard  of  a  vehement  Baptist  preacher  of  this 
name,  who  had  been  a  tinker,  a  Parliamentarian  soldier,  and  one 
knew  not  what  else.  Here  and  there  too  some  pious  Christians 
may  have  been  deriving  edification  from  such  specimens  of  the 
tinker's  marrowy  theology  as  were  in  print,  e.  g.  his  Few  Sights 
from  Hell,  or  the  Groans  of  a  Damned  Soul,  published  in  Sept. 

1658,  and  his  Doctrine  of  the  Law  and  Grace,  published  in  May 

1659.  It  was  in  Bedford  jail,  however,  where  they  were  to  keep 
him,  more  or  less  closely,  a  prisoner  from  November  1660  to  March 
1672,  that  Bunyan  was  to  begin  his  immortal  dreamings. 

"William  Temple  :  cetat.  32  : — Educated  in  Emanuel  College, 
Cambridge,  under  the  tutorship  of  Cudworth,  Temple,  after  travel- 
ling abroad,  had  returned  to  reside  in  Ireland,  where  his  father  was 
Master  of  the  Rolls.  Not  till  1663  was  he  to  come  to  London,  to 
begin  his  career  as  statesman,  diplomatist,  and  political  essayist, 
and  be  famous  as  Sir  William  Temple.  His  publications  were  to  be 
later  incidents  in  his  life. 

Isaac  Barrow  :  cetat.  3 1  : — The  son  of  the  King's  linendraper, 
and  educated  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  Barrow  had  lived  as  a 
fellow  of  that  College  from  1649  to  1655,  known  as  a  Royalist 
and  Anglican  at  heart,  and  distinguished  by  his  great  in- 
dustry and  universal  scholarship.  From  1655  to  1659  he  had 
travelled  and  resided  in  the  East  and  in  Italy ;  but,  having  re- 
turned and  taken  orders,  he  was  to  settle  again  in  Cambridge  for 
the  rest  of  his  life,  to  be  successively  Professor  of  Greek  (1660), 
Lucasian  Professor  of  Mathematics  (1663),  and  Master  of  Trinity 
College  (1672),  and  to  become  a  wonder  equally  for  his  preaching 
and  his  mathematical  and  theological  authorship.  He  was  only 
M.A.  at  the  Restoration,  but  became  B.D.  in  1661,  and  D.D. 
in  1670. 

John  Tillotson  :  cetat.  31  : — He  also  was  a  Cambridge  man, 
having  been  educated  at  Clare  Hall,  and  fellow  of  that  College 
from  1651  to  1657.  Though  of  strongly  Puritan  parentage,  he 
had  adopted  in  the  University  the  more  moderate  or  latitudinarian 
theology  professed  by  men  like  Wilkins,  and  had  contracted  an 
especial  friendship  with  that  divine.  He  had  been  for  some  time 
tutor  in  the  family  of  Cromwell's  attorney-general  Prideaux,  and 
had  only  recently  taken  orders  and  begun  to  try  in  a  modest  way, 
before  London  congregations,  the  style  of  pulpit  oratory  for  which 
he  was  to  be  so  celebrated.  Having  conformed  at  the  Restoration, 
he  was  soon  to  rise  from  a  mere  curacy  to  a  parish  rectorship  and 
the  preachership  of  Lincoln's  Inn.  His  publications  and  his  higher 
ecclesiastical  promotions  were  yet  in  the  future. 

John  Howe  :  cetat.  31  : — Educated  both  at  Cambridge  and 
at  Oxford,  this  Independent  divine,  after  taking  his  M.A.  degree 


316         LIFE  OF  MILTON   AND   HISTOKY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

in  1652,  had  been  minister  of  Great  Torrington  in  Devonshire 
through  the  Protectorate,  but  had  been  brought  to  London  by 
Cromwell  to  be  for  some  time  his  chaplain  and  a  preacher  in  St. 
Margaret's,  "Westminster.  On  the  abdication  of  Richard,  he  had 
returned  to  his  Devonshire  parish ;  but,  as  he  could  not  conform  at 
the  Restoration,  he  was  to  be  driven,  as  one  of  the  ejected  clergy, 
to  various  shifts  and  wanderings  for  many  years  to  come.  It  was 
a  matter  of  regret  with  many  of  the  Church  of  England  clergy 
that  a  man  of  such  culture,  suavity,  and  polish  should  have  thrown 
in  his  lot  with  the  Nonconformists.  Though  he  was  already  in 
high  repute  as  a  preacher,  his  writings  had  yet  to  be  published. 

Charles  Cotton  :  cetat.  3 1  : — A  gentleman  of  Staffordshire, 
educated  at  Cambridge,  Cotton  had  welcomed  the  Restoration  in 
A  Panegyrick  to  the  King's  most  Excellent  Majesty  (1660);  and 
he  was  to  be  farther  known  by  poems  and  other  writings,  in- 
cluding Scarronides,  or  Virgil  Travestie  (first  book  in  1664),  a 
translation  of  Montaigne,  a  translation  of  one  of  Corneille's  plays, 
and  an  addition  to  Izaak  Walton's  Complete  Angler. 

Edward  Phillips,  cetat.  31,  and  John  Phillips  cetat.  30: — 
Of  the  pre-Restoration  lives  of  these  two  nephews  of  Milton  we 
know  enough  ;  but  more  about  them  will  come  hereafter. 

Anthony  Wood  :  cetat.  30  : — Not  to  be  known  till  fourteen  years 
hence  as  author  of  the  great  History  of  the  University  of  Oxford, 
nor  till  two  and  thirty  years  hence  as  the  author  of  the  still  greater 
Athence  et  Fasti  Oxonienses,  Wood  was  busily  engaged  in  his  vast 
preparations  for  those  works  of  his  life,  reading,  collating,  and 
transcribing  in  his  chamber  in  Merton  College,  or  going  about 
among  the  other  colleges  and  libraries,  or  perambulating  the  neigh- 
bourhood for  the  purpose  of  copying  from  parish  registers  and 
from  the  monuments  in  parish-churches.  He  was  known  to  all 
Oxford  as  a  large-boned  man,  of  crabbed  temper  and  surly  habits, 
whose  recreations,  amid  his  hard  antiquarian  labours,  were  ale  and 
tobacco  in  moderation  and  music  to  any  extent.  No  man  had  more 
heartily  welcomed  the  Restoration,  with  the  deliverance  it  brought 
from  those  he  called  "  the  Presbyterians  and  Phanatics." 

John  Dryden  :  cetat.  30  : — Our  first  glimpse  of  Dryden  was  in 
the  autumn  of  1657  (Vol.  V.  p.  375).  He  had  then  come  up  to 
London,  a  light-haired,  fresh-complexioned  squireen  from  North- 
amptonshire, of  short  and  stoutish  figure,  to  attach  himself  to  his 
cousin  Sir  Gilbert  Pickering,  Oliver's  councillor,  and  seek,  under 
Sir  Gilbert's  patronage,  some  addition  to  his  small  patrimonial 
income  by  employment  of  some  kind  for  the  Protector.  He  had 
actually  been  paid  £50  by  Thurloe  in  October  that  year  for  some 
piece  of  work  already  done ;  and  he  was  probably  still  hanging  on 
about  Thurloe's  office  at  the  time  of  Cromwell's  death.  Hence 
those  Heroic  Stanzas  to  the  Memory  of  Oliver,  written  after  the 
great  funeral,  which  are  the  first  known  verses  of  Dryden,  with 
two    insignificant   exceptions.      They   had   been    an    unfortunate 


YOUNGER   WRITERS   AND   LATEST   RECRUITS.  317 

beginning,  and  had  been  cancelled,  as  far  as  possible,  after  the 
Restoration,  by  his  next  piece,  the  Astrcea  Redux.  Who  could  be 
hard  on  such  a  wheel  by  a  needy  young  man  who  had  no  longer 
an  influential  cousin  to  trust  to,  but  saw  he  must  make  his  way  in 
the  new  reign  by  his  own  wits,  and  the  use  of  such  learning  as 
he  had  acquired  at  "Westminster  School  under  Dr.  Busby,  and 
afterwards  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge  1  Even  at  the  end  of 
1660  he  had  hardly  attracted  attention. 

"  Great  Dryden  did  not  early  great  appear, 
Faintly  distinguished  in  his  thirtieth  year." 

Katheeine  Philips  :  cetat.  30  : — This  lady,  daughter  of  a 
London  merchant  named  Fowler,  was  the  wife  of  a  Welsh  squire, 
James  Philips  of  Cardigan,  and  was  known  among  her  private 
friends  as  "the  matchless  Orinda,"  on  account  of  her  poems  of 
occasion.  These  had  for  the  present  only  a  limited  circulation  in 
manuscript ;  and  the  good  lady,  though  she  had  been  in  Ireland, 
and  was  not  a  stranger  at  Court,  led  a  quiet  and  domestic  life  in 
her  Welsh  abode.  She  died  in  London  in  1664,  just  after  the 
appearance  of  a  surreptitious  edition  of  her  poems,  collected  by 
a  bookseller,  under  the  title  of  Poems  by  the  Incomparable 
Mrs.  K.  P.  ;  and  there  were  verses  of  regret  by  Cowley  and  others. 
An  authorised  edition  of  her  poems,  with  translations  from  Cor- 
neille,  &c,  appeared  in  1667. 

Henby  Stubbe  :  ostat.  30 : — Born  in  Lincolnshire,  the  son  of 
very  indigent  parents,  Stubbe  had  been  carried  by  them  into 
Ireland,  whither  they  had  migrated  for  a  livelihood.  In  1641,  on 
the  outbreak  of  the  Irish  Rebellion,  his  mother  had  brought  him 
and  another  child  back,  landing  in  Liverpool  and  walking  with 
them  on  foot  all  the  way  to  London.  Supporting  them  there  with 
the  utmost  difficulty  by  her  needle,  she  yet  contrived  to  send 
Henry  to  Westminster  School ;  where  Busby,  the  head-master, 
finding  him  excessively  clever,  did  what  he  could  for  him.  One  day 
Sir  Henry  Vane,  visiting  the  school,  had  the  boy  introduced  to  him 
by  Busby ;  and  from  that  moment  Stubbe  recognised  Vane  as  the 
man  to  whom  he  was  most  indebted  in  the  world.  By  Vane's 
interest  he  was  admitted  in  1649  into  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
where  he  remained  till  1653,  when  he  took  his  B.A.  degree.  Never 
had  there  been  in  the  college  an  undergraduate  at  once  so  re- 
markable for  scholarship,  and  so  pragmatical,  forward,  and  unruly  in 
conduct.  He  was  "  often  kicked  and  beaten  "  and  once  "  whipt  in 
the  public  refectory."  It  was  in  this  time  of  his  undergraduateship 
(1651)  that  he  published  his  first  book,  entitled  Ilorce  Subsecivce, 
and  consisting  of  translations  of  Jonah  and  other  parts  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  of  Latin  epigrams  by  Randolph  and  others,  into 
Greek.  From  1653  to  1655  he  had  been  with  the  English  army 
in  Scotland  ;    and  after  his  return  he  had  published  two  more 


318         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

volumes  of  Latin  and  Greek  verse.  Having  graduated  M.A.  in  the 
end  of  1656,  he  was  appointed,  in  1657,  by  Owen's  influence, 
under-keeper  of  the  Bodleian  Library ;  and  it  was  in  a  series  of 
writings  published  by  him  while  he  held  this  post  that  he  had 
revealed  himself  most  characteristically.  Admiring  and  knowing 
Hobbes,  he  had  flung  himself  ferociously,  in  1657  and  1658,  into 
the  controversy  between  that  philosopher  and  Dr.  "Wallis,  publishing 
two  pamphlets  against  Wallis  and  heading  an  opposition  to  him  in 
the  University ;  besides  which  he  had  published,  in  1659  or  the 
beginning  of  1660,  some  six  or  seven  pamphlets  on  the  political 
questions  then  in  agitation.  Originally  a  kind  of  Independent  and 
Republican  of  the  Vanist  School,  Stubbe  still  appeared  in  these 
writings  as  a  strenuous  Republican  and  antagonist  of  the  Royalists, 
but  with  much  in  him  of  the  extreme  free-thinker,  advocating 
"  a  democracy  of  Independents,  Anabaptists,  Fifth-Monarchy  men, 
and  Quakers,"  and  assailing  the  Established  Clergy.  To  a  consi- 
derable extent  his  theories  in  Church  and  State  just  before  the 
Restoration  seem  to  have  agreed  with  Milton's.  But,  after  the 
Restoration,  Stubbe,  who  had  meanwhile  lost  his  under-librariau- 
ship  of  the  Bodleian,  and  gone  to  practise  physic  in  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  veered  round  fast  enough.  Having  received  confirmation  by 
his  diocesan  Dr.  Morley,  he  reannounced  himself  thus  : — "  I  have 
"  joined  myself  to  the  Church  of  England,  not  only  on  account  of 
"  its  being  publicly  imposed  (which  in  things  indifferent  is  no  small 
"  consideration,  as  I  learnt  from  the  Scottish  transactions  at  Perth), 
"  but  because  it  is  the  least  defining,  and  consequently  the  most 
"  comprehensive  and  fitting  to  be  national."  Henceforth,  accord- 
ingly, though  pugnacious  as  ever,  and  a  Hobbist  or  free-thinker  at 
heart,  with  an  undying  affection  for  Vane,  he  was  to  be  known  as 
Stubbe  metamorphosed.  After  trying  the  "West  Indies,  he  was  to 
return  to  Stratford-on-Avon,  resume  medical  practice  there,  remove 
subsequently  to  Warwick  and  to  Bath  in  the  same  practice,  and 
publish  a  great  many  more  writings,  chiefly  scientific  and  medical, 
but  some  of  them  political.  His  end,  like  his  life,  was  tragi-comic. 
He  was  drowned  in  crossing  a  shallow  stream  near  Bath,  on  the 
12th  of  July  1676,  "his  head  being  then  intoxicated  with  bib- 
bing, but  more  with  talking  and  snuffing  of  powder,"  says  the 
punctual  Wood,  whose  character  of  him,  all  in  all,  is  that  he  was 
"  the  most  noted  person  of  his  age  that  these  late  times  have 
produced  V 

John  Locke  :    cetat.  29  : — A  year  younger   than    Stubbe,  the 
course  of  Locke  hitherto  had  been  in  the  very  track  of  that  eccentric. 

1  Wood's  Ath.  III.  1067—1083.  Wood  estimate  of  him.    I  have  been  struck 

seems  to  have  had  a  peculiar  liking  for  chiefly  by  his  persistent  loyalty  after 

Stubbe,  and  to  have  done  his  best  to  the  Restoration  to  the  memc-ry  of  his 

immortalise  him.     The  impression  pro-  benefactor  Vane.     There  are  interesting 

duced  on  myself  by  such  of  Stubbe's  passages  to  that  effect  in  some  of  his 

writings  as  I  have  glanced  over  by  no  latest  pamphlets, 
means  answers  to  Wood's  extraordinary 


YOUNGEB  WKITERS   AND   LATEST   EECRUITS.  319 

He  had  been  at  Westminster  School  while  Stubbe  was  there ;  he 
had  followed  Stubbe  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  in  1651  ;  and  in 
that  college  he  had  devoted  himself  much,  as  Stubbe  had  done,  to 
"the  new  philosophy",  as  taught  in  the  writings  of  Bacon  and 
Des  Cartes.  He  had  also  chosen  the  profession  of  physic  rather 
than  go  into  the  Church.  There,  however,  the  parallel  ends.  The 
son  of  a  Parliamentarian  in  Somersetshire,  Locke,  though  not  dis- 
satisfied with  the  Restoration,  did  not  swerve  from  his  principles ; 
and,  unlike  Stubbe,  he  was  in  no  haste  to  come  before  the  world. 
He  was,  for  the  present,  merely  a  young  Oxford  physician  in  weak 
health,  capable  of  taking  an  interest  in  affairs,  and  thinking  about 
them  seriously  and  deeply 1. 

Samuel  Pepts  :  cetat.  29  : — Do  we  not  see  him,  a  young  navy 
official,  Clerk  of  the  Acts,  Clerk  of  the  Privy  Seal,  trudging  about 
"Westminster  and  London,  as  shrewd  and  honest  a  soul  as  ever 
lived,  observing  everything,  knowing  everybody,  taking  his  notes, 
and  keeping  his  diary  1 

Robert  South  :  cetat.  28  : — A  Londoner  by  birth,  South  had 
been  educated  in  the  track  of  Stubbe  and  Locke,  i.e.  first  at  West- 
minster School,  and  then  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  In  1654,  when 
he  was  an  undergraduate,  he  had  contributed  some  Latin  verses  to 
a  collection  of  Oxford  University  pieces  addressed  to  Cromwell  on 
the  conclusion  of  peace  with  the  Dutch;  and  in  the  following 
year,  when  he  took  his  B.A.  degree,  he  had  published  a  little  poem, 
called  Musica  Incantans.  In  1657  he  had  taken  his  M.A.  degree; 
by  which  time  he  had  distinguished  himself  in  his  college  as  a 
resolute  young  Anglican,  persisting  in  the  use  of  the  Prayer  Book 
in  spite  of  Dr.  Owen,  the  head  of  the  College.  He  had  been 
ordained  privately  in  1658  by  one  of  the  ex-bishops,  and  was 
known  before  the  Restoration  as  an  eloquent  and  witty  preacher. 
Immediately  after  the  Restoration  he  was  chosen  Public  Orator  at 
Oxford ;  and,  having  had  the  good  fortune,  in  that  capacity,  to 
please  Hyde,  on  his  installation  in  the  chancellorship  of  the  Uni- 
versity in  Nov.  1660,  he  became  domestic  chaplain  to  that  great 
man,  and  was  on  the  way  to  farther  preferment.  He  became  D.D. 
in  1663,  and  is  generally  remembered  as  Dr.  South. 

Wentworth  Dillon,  Eael  op  Roscommon  :  cetat.  28  : — To  be 
known  as  a  poet  later  in  life,  this  Irish  peer,  the  nephew  and 
godson  of  Strafford,  was  for  the  present  a  mere  spendthrift  courtier, 
alternating  between  England  and  Ireland,  though  tending  on  the 
Avhole  to  England.  He  had  been  educated  mainly  in  France  and 
Italy,  where  he  had  become  a  dilettante  in  art  and  letters. 

Thomas  Flatman:  cetat.  28  (?)  : — He  was  a  young  barrister  of 
the  Inner  Temple,  who  had  left  Oxford  without  taking  his  degree, 
and  was  a  dabbler,  says  Wood,  in  "the  two  noble  faculties  of 
poetry  and  painting  or  limning." 

Edward  Stillingfleet  :  cetat.  26  : — Recently  a  graduate  and 

1  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  638—640. 


320        LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  and  since  1657  rector  of 
a  parish  in  Bedfordshire,  this  young  divine  had  sprung  suddenly 
into  great  reputation  by  his  Irenicum,  a  Weapon  Salve  for  the 
Church's  Wound :  or  the  Divine  Bight  of  particular  forms  of 
Church  Government  Examined,  published  in  1659.  It  was  dis- 
tinctly a  Latitudinarian  treatise,  breathing  the  spirit  of  Whichcote 
and  the  other  Cambridge  latitude-men,  and  expressly  advocating  a 
comprehension  of  Presbyterians  and  others  in  a  National  Church  of 
a  broad  semi-episcopal  model,  on  the  principle  that  no  jus  divinum 
can  be  shown  for  any  one  form  of  Church  Government,  and  that  the 
constitution  of  a  Church  is  therefore  a  matter  of  expediency.  The 
Eestoration  having  come,  and  this  somewhat  Oliverian  theory  of  a 
national  church  having  gone  down  under  the  blows  of  Clarendon  and 
Sheldon,  Stillingfleet  found  his  Irenicum  a  stumbling-block  in  his 
own  path ;  and,  though  he  did  not  positively  recant  it,  he  was  to 
apologise  for  it  very  considerably  on  every  opportunity  and  speak 
of  it  as  a  juvenile  performance.  His  career  thenceforward  was  to 
be  that  of  an  orthodox  ecclesiastic  in  the  Anglican  Church  as  re- 
established, and  an  able  and  famous  polemical  theologian.  His 
Origines  Sacra?,  or  Rational  Account  of  the  Christian  Faith,  pub- 
lished in  1662,  was  his  first  important  work  after  his  Irenicum, 
and  is  accounted  his  greatest.  He  became  rector  of  St.  Andrew's, 
Holborn,  in  1665,  on  his  way  to  higher  preferments. 

George  Etherege  :  cetat.  25  : — To  be  known  ultimately  as 
Sir  George  Etherege,  he  was  for  the  present  a  young  man  of  wit 
and  fashion  about  town,  who  had  been  at  Cambridge,  had  travelled, 
and  had  read  for  the  Bar,  without  intending  to  practise. 

Thomas  Sprat  :  ottat.  25  : — Of  Devonshire  birth,  and  recently 
a  graduate  and  fellow  of  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  Sprat  had 
made  his  first  appearance  in  print  in  A  Poem  on  the  Death  of  his 
Highness  Oliver,  late  Lord  Protector.  He  had  also  published  in 
1659  a  Pindaric  Ode,  after  Cowley's  style,  called  The  Plague  of 
A  them.  Wheeling  at  the  Restoration  with  so  many  others,  he  had 
taken  orders,  and  was  chaplain  to  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  chap- 
lain to  the  King,  D.D.,  &c,  on  his  way  to  a  bishopric  at  last. 

George  Mackenzie  (Scottish):  cetat.  25: — Soon  to  be  Sir 
George  Mackenzie,  and  very  notorious  under  that  title  in  Scottish 
history,  he  was  known  in  the  first  years  of  the  Restoration  only  as 
a  young  Scottish  advocate  of  scholarly  and  literary  tastes.  A  retina, 
or  Hie  Serious  Romance  (1661),  Religio  Stoici  (1663),  A  Moral 
Essay,  preferring  Solitude  to  Public  Employment  and  all  Appanages 
(1665),  Moral  Gallantry,  a  Discourse  proving  that  point  of 
honour  obliges  man  to  be  virtuous  (1667),  A  Moral  Paradox, 
maintaining  that  it  is  much  easier  to  be  virtuous  than  vicious 
(1667): — such  were  the  titles  of  those  publications  of  Mackenzie 
which  won  him  some  reputation  even  with  London  critics  within 
the  seven  years  of  our  present  chapter.  Mackenzie  admired  Cowley, 
and  was  a  writer  of  verses. 


YOUNGER   WKITERS   AND    LATEST   RECRUITS.  321 

Charles  Sackville,  Lord  Buckhurst  :  cetat.  24 : — He  was 
the  son  of  Richard,  Earl  of  Dorset,  and  was  afterwards  himself 
Earl  of  Dorset  and  Middlesex.  He  had  just  returned  from  his 
travels,  was  a  member  of  Parliament,  and  one  of  Charles's 
favourite  courtiers.  Inheriting  the  poetic  traditions  of  his  family, 
he  was  to  be  a  poet  himself. 

Sir  Charles  Sedley,  Bart.  :  cetat.  23 : — Another  young  man 
who  had  just  returned  from  his  travels  to  be  about  Charles's  Court. 
"  He  lived  mostly  in  the  great  city,  became  a  debauchee,  set  up  for 
"  a  satyrical  wit,  a  comedian,  poet,  and  courtier  of  ladies,  and  I 
"  know  not  what,"  is  Wood's  convenient  account  of  him. 

Thomas  Shadwell  :  cetat.  21,  and  William  Wycherley  : 
cetat.  21  : — These  two,  coupled  together  in  a  well-known  line  as 
"  hasty  Shadwell  and  slow  Wycherley,"  may  close  our  list,  though 
their  public  authorship  was  hardly  to'  be  begun  within  the  range  of 
our  present  chapter.  Shadwell,  a  Staffordshire  man,  educated  at 
Cambridge,  was  a  student  of  the  Middle  Temple.  Wycherley,  the 
son  of  a  Shropshire  gentleman,  had  been  for  some  time  in  France, 
and  had  there  become  a  Roman  Catholic  ;  but,  having  returned 
and  entered  himself  nominally  as  a  student  at  Oxford,  he  had 
tuimed  Protestant  again.  Leaving  Oxford  in  1660,  without  ever 
wearing  the  gown,  he  was  to  lead  for  the  next  few  years  the 
life  of  a  man  about  town  and  a  member  of  the  Inner  Temple. 
He  had  written  one  of  his  comedies  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  and 
was  engaged  on  another  about  the  time  we  are  now  first  men- 
tioning him. 

Adding  the  forty-two  mentioned  in  the  last  list  to  the 
sixty-one  previously  enumerated,  we  have  over  one  hundred 
persons  alive  in  1660  as  potential  contributors,  in  greater 
or  less  amount,  according  to  age  and  other  circumstances, 
to  that  Literature  of  the  Restoration  of  which  Davenant 
was  the  first  Laureate.  Indeed,  even  if  we  take  the  phrase 
The  Literature  of  the  Restoration  in  the  wider  sense  in 
which  it  is  generally  and  very  properly  understood,  as  includ- 
ing all  English  Literature  produced  between  1660  and  the 
Revolution  of  1688,  it  will  still  be  found  that  to  the  very  end 
of  that  term  the  effectives  were  supplied  in  large  proportion 
from  our  present  hundred  of  1660,  and  there  were  few 
important  recruits  through  the  coming  twenty-eight  years. 
While  in  the  rest  of  the  present  chapter,  therefore,  we  shall 
speak  directly  only  of  the  Literature  of  the  Restoration  as  far 
as  to  the  end  of  1667,  much  of  what  is  to  be  said  will  apply  to 
the  Restoration  Literature  as  a  whole. 

VOL.  VI.  Y 


322  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

In  the  first  place,  one  has  to  correct  a  misconception  which 
the  very  use  of  the  phrase  The  Literature  of  the  Restora- 
tion in  our  literary  histories,  necessary  as  the  phrase  is,  has 
originated  and  is  apt  to  foster.  The  phrase  suggests  fresh 
outburst  and  abundance  at  the  Restoration  after  a  period 
of  sterility  or  poverty.  Nothing  can  be  farther  from  the 
fact. 

The  misconception  arises  in  part  from  the  habit  of  regard- 
ing many  of  the  veterans  of  our  hundred  as  Restoration  writers 
merely  because  they  were  not  defunct  at  the  Restoration,  and 
so  of  crediting  the  Restoration  with  all  that  they  had  done  in 
the  previous  portions  of  their  lives.     Our  enumeration  and 
datings  ought  to  have  helped,  in  this  respect,  towards  the 
required  correction.  *    Hobbism,  Cambridge  Platonism,  Theo- 
logical Latitudinarianism,  Quakerism,  an  association  of  almost 
national  dimensions  for  the  promotion  of  the  Mathematical  and 
Experimental  Sciences,  Harringtonian  and  other  theorisings 
in    Politics   and   Economics,    speculative    free-thinking    and 
pamphleteering  generally  and  an  organized  Newspaper  Press 
in  particular, — all  these  had  been  growths  of  the  Civil  Wars, 
the  Commonwealth,  and  the  Protectorate.     So  if  we  look  at 
the  individual  lives  of  not  a  few  of  those  of  our  hundred  now 
accounted  most  memorable.     The  best  of  old  Hobbes,  the  best 
of  Sanderson,  nearly  all  Wither,  all  Herrick,  nearly  all  Bram- 
hall,  the  best  of  Izaak  Walton,  all  Brian  Walton,  the  best  of 
Howell,  the  best  of  Shirley,  the  whole  of  Fuller,  a  great  deal  of 
Waller,  all  of  Browne  of  Norwich,  nearly  all  of  Jeremy  Taylor, 
the  best  of  Dr.  Henry  More,  a  full  half  of  Baxter  and  Owen, 
much  of  Wilkins  and  Wallis,  nearly  the  whole  of  Denham,  the 
best  of  Cowley,  the  best  of  Henry  Stubbe,  and  at  least  the 
fully  announced  beginnings  of  a  number  more,   lie  chrono- 
logically   on   the   other    side    of    the    Restoration.      Jeremy 
Taylor   the   Bishop   belongs    to    the    Restoration,    but    the 
Jeremy  Taylor  of  English  Literature  belongs  to  the  twenty 
years  of  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Republican  Government  of  the 
Rump,  and  the  sovereignty  of  Cromwell. 

That   the  Restoration  was  not  characterised  by  any  new 
burst  or  abundance  of  literature  may  be  proved  statistically. 


STATISTICS   OF   THE   RESTORATION   LITERATURE.       323 

The  Registers  of  the  Stationers'  Company  of  London  are  not 
an  infallible  source  of  information  as  to  the  quantity  of  literary 
production  in  England  in  any  one  year  or  in  any  term  of 
years.  Much  depends  on  the  stringency  of  the  press-laws 
and  of  the  execution  of  them  at  any  particular  time.  Hence 
a  most  remarkable  fluctuation  in  the  numbers  of  the  book- 
transactions  registered  annually  in  the  books  of  the  Stationers' 
Company  from  1640  to  the  Restoration.  The  number  regis- 
tered in  1640  was  259,  and  that  in  1641  was  240  ;  in  1642, 
when  all  press-regulation  was  broken  down  by  the  beginning 
of  the  Civil  War,  it  fell  to  76 ;  in  1643,  when  the  Parliament 
found  it  necessary  on  their  own  account  to  attend  to  the  press, 
it  rose  again  to  368  ;  in  the  three  following  years  the  numbers 
were  447,  652,  and  526,  respectively;  thence  again  through 
the  seven  years  between  1646  and  1653,  including  the  triumph 
of  the  Independents  and  the  time  of  Republican  rule,  there 
was  a  fall,  the  highest  number  in  any  one  of  those  years  being 
293  and  the  lowest  156  ;  and  again  in  the  Protectorate  there 
was  a  rise.  It  would  be  impossible  from  these  figures  to 
calculate  the  actual  number  of  books  published  in  any  one 
year  of  the  twenty,  inasmuch  as,  though  in  every  year  the 
number  actually  published  must  have  greatly  exceeded  the 
number  registered,  especially  in  those  years  when  there  were 
shoals  of  small  pamphlets,  yet  the  proportion  of  the  registered 
to  the  published  was  utterly  inconstant.  Still,  the  statistics 
of  the  Registers,  when  studied  with  some  knowledge  of  the 
state  of  the  Press  Laws  in  particular  years,  are  very  in- 
structive ;  and,  if  there  is  any  range  of  time  for  which  they 
ought  to  be  particularly  instructive,  it  is  just  after  the 
Restoration.  Under  a  government  like  Clarendon's,  when 
vigilance  at  head-quarters  was  at  its  keenest,  and  new  brooms 
were  out,  the  possibility  of  clandestine  publication  must  have 
been  reduced  to  a  minimum.  From  May  1662,  when  the  new 
Press  Act  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament  came  in  force,  if  not 
from  the  very  entry  of  Charles  into  London,  the  Registers  of 
the  Stationers'  Company  ought  to  represent,  more  accurately 
than  they  had  done  through  the  Commonwealth  and  Pro- 
tectorate, the  annual  quantity  of  literary  production. 

Y    2, 


324 


LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 


The  following'  is  a  comparison  of  the  registered  book- 
transactions  of  the  last  seven  years  before  the  Restoration 
with  those  of  the  first  seven  years  of  the  Restoration.  1  use 
the  phrase  "  book-transactions  ';  because,  though  most  of  the 
entries  in  the  registers  are  of  new  books  or  pamphlets,  some 
are  only  of  assignments  or  transfers  from  one  bookseller  to 
another  of  copyrights  of  single  books  or  batches  of  books 
already  in  the  market1: — 


Last  Seven  Tears  before  the  'Restoration. 
1654.  Registered  book-transactions  181 


1655. 

1656. 
1657. 
1658. 
1659. 
1660. 


357 
562 
384 
327 

247 
258 


First  Seven  Tears  of  the  Restoration. 

1661.  Registered  book-transactions  108 

1662.  „                   „  76 

1663.  „                   „  104 

1664.  „  „  86 
1665  (Plague  Year).  „  58 
1666.  „  „  141 
1667  (after  Great  Fire).  „  60 


Here,  certainly,  is  no  proof  of  fresh  outburst  and  abundance 
after  the  Restoration,  but  rather  of  arrest  and  paralysis.  As 
one  ought  not  to  be  satisfied,  however,  with  general  impres- 
sions, some  farther  investigation  may  be  necessary.  We  shall 
attend,  in  the  first  place,  to  that  department  in  which  the 
paralysis  was  most  immediate  and  obvious.  This  was  the 
department  of  Newspaper  and  Pamphlet  Literature,  the  Lite- 
rature of  Public  Affairs. 

The  history  of  the  Newspaper  Press  proper  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Civil  Wars  to  the  Restoration  has  already  been 
sketched  in  these  pages2.  The  Parliamentary  Intelligencer, 
published  on  Mondays,  and  the  Mercurius  Publicus,  published 
on  Thursdays,  both  under  the  editorship  of  Giles  Dury  and 


1  The  figures  are  from  my  notes  - 
from  the  Stationers'  Registers,  taken  at 
various  times,  and  extending  continu- 
ously from  1638  to  1682.  As  my  count- 
ing of  the  entries  year  by  year  was  only 
incidental  to  my  note-taking,  and  was 
rapidly  performed  by  running  my  finger 
along  the  margins,  my  figures  may  not 
be  absolutely  correct,  and  it  migbt  have 
been  safer  to  give  the  computation  ap- 
proximately in  tens  thus — "  about  180  " 
instead  of  181,  "about  360"  instead  of 
357.  I  prefer  adhering  strictly  to  my 
notes.  The  miscountings  in  any  case 
can  be  but  by  a  digit  or  two,  and  cannot 


affect  the  inferences  in  the  least. — The 
year  in  each  counting  is  from  Jan.  1  to 
Dec.  31.— The  year  1660  divides  itself 
between  the  Anarchy  preceding  the 
Restoration  and  the  Restoration  itself. 
Of  the  258  registrations  of  that  year, 
162  belong  to  the  first  half  of  the  year, 
between  Jan.  1  and  July  4,  and  96 
belong  to  the  latter  half,  between  July 
4  and  Dec.  31 ;  which  would  indicate 
that  the  King's  return  (May  29)  began 
to  tell  immediately  on  the  book-trade. 

2  See  Vol.  IV.  pp.  37—39,  pp.  116  — 
118,  pp.  324—335;  and  Vol.  V.  pp. 
51—52,  pp.  670—672. 


THE   NEWSPAPER   PRESS  :    BIRKENHEAD.  325 

Henry  Muddiman  1,  were,  as  we  saw,  the  sole  regular  news- 
papers for  London,  and  indeed  for  all  England,  at  the  time 
of  the  King's  return.  The  printer  of  the  first  few  numbers 
of  both  was  John  Macock  ;  but,  before  the  King's  entry  into 
London,  Milton's  and  Needham's  printer,  Newcome,  finding 
that  the  days  of  Commonwealth  typography  were  over,  and 
that  as  a  tradesman  he  ought  to  rat  in  time,  had  associated 
himself  with  this  Macock,  bringing  his  newspaper  experience, 
acquired  under  Milton  and  Needham,  to  the  aid  of  the  new 
undertakings.  Muddiman  and  Dury,  as  editors,  and  Macock 
and  Newcome,  as  printers  and  publishers,  represented  the 
newspaper-press  of  England  when  the  reign  of  Charles  and 
the  administration  of  Hyde  began 2. 

Hardly  had  Hyde's  administration  settled  into  routine  when 
the  newspaper-press  thus  already  in  existence  was  organized 
more  definitely  for  the  purposes  of  the  new  reign  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  Mr.  John  Birkenhead  to  be  the  superintendent 
of  Muddiman  and  Dury.  It  was  a  peculiarly  fit  recognition 
of  the  past  services  of  that  Royalist.  Had  he  not  edited  at 
Oxford,  from  1642  to  1646,  with  help  from  Peter  Heylin  and 
others,  the  famous  Mercur'ms  Aulicus,  the  chief  organ  of  the 
Court  and  King's  party  through  the  Civil  War  ;  and,  since 
his  ejection  from  his  fellowship  of  All  Souls'  College  in  1648, 
had  he  not  been  living  by  his  wits  in  London,  "  helping 
"  young  gentlemen  out  at  dead  lifts  in  making  poems,  songs, 
"  and  epistles,  on  and  to  their  respective  mistresses,  and  also 
"  in  translating  and  writing  several  little  things,  and  other 
"  petite  employments  "  ?  Who  so  qualified  as  Birkenhead  to 
initiate  the  real  journalism  of  the  Restoration  by  licensing, 
and  partly  editing,  the  two  newspapers,  the  Public  Intelligencer 
and  the  Mercur'ms  PuLticus,  nominally  under  the  charge  of 
Muddiman  and  Dury  ?  He  began  that  congenial  occupation, 
I  find,  in  November,  1660,  and  he  continued  it,  and  also  the 
function  of  occasional  licenser  of  books,  with  much  satisfaction 
to  the  Government,  till  1663.     But  Birkenhead,  a  man  "  of 

1  The  last  number  of  Needham's  October  1660.  See  also  the  valuable 
V, ,-,  »//,/,s7'(./i7icu5lfindregisteredinthe  History  and  List  of  English  newspapers 
Stationers'  Books  is  for  March  29,  1660.  in    Nichols's    Literary   Anecdotes,  IV. 

2  Stationers'  Registers  from  March  to  33—97. 


326  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

middling  stature,  great  goggle  eyes,  not  of  a  sweet  aspect," 
as  Aubrey  describes  him,  was  receiving  too  many  promotions 
in  other  ways  to  remain  reconciled  to  such  drudgery  for  ever. 
Created  LL.D.  of  Oxford  in  April,  chosen  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Commons  in  the  same  year,  knighted  in  November 
1662,  and  with  a  Mastership  of  Requests  promised  him,  he 
was  glad  to  hand  over  the  censorship  of  newspapers  to  a 
successor 1. 

The  general  censorship  of  the  press  having  by  this  time 
come  into  effect,  in  accordance  with  the  new  Press  Act  of  the 
Cavalier  Parliament,  about  half-a-dozen  persons  were  already 
in  employment  as  official  licensers  of  books.  There  can  have 
been  no  lack  of  candidates,  therefore,  for  the  succession  to 
Birkenhead.  The  selection  fell  on  one  whose  antecedents  had 
been  not  unlike  Birkenhead's  own.  He  was  that  Roger 
L'Estrange  who  had  been  sentenced  to  be  hanged  in  1 644  as 
a  Royalist  spy  and  conspirator  (Vol.  III.  p.  185),  had  helped 
in  stirring  up  the  Royalist  insurrection  in  Kent  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  second  Civil  War  in  1648  (Vol.  III.  p.  594),  and, 
after  a  vague  intermediate  life,  partly  of  exile  and  partly  of 
submission  to  the  Protectorate,  had  signalized  his  Royalism 
again  just  before  the  Restoration  by  his  attack  on  Milton 
entitled  No  Blind  Guides  (Vol.  V.  pp.  689-691).  Imme- 
diately after  the  Restoration  he  had  written  one  or  two 
pamphlets  in  a  revengeful  Cavalier  strain,  attacking  the  Act 
of  Indemnity  as  too  indulgent  by  far,  and  advocating  severer 
penal  proceedings  against  the  Commonwealthsmen  and  Non- 
conformists2.    But  the   most  characteristic  of  L'Estrange's 


1  Wood's  Ath.  III.  1203—1206.  English,  was  attributed  to  Milton  or 

2  One  of  these,  published  June  6,  Needham  or  both  (ante,  Vol.  V.  pp. 
1660,  was  entitled,  L'Estrange  his  664—666).  He  has  since  then  been  in- 
Aj'dngy,  with  a  short  view  of  some  late  formed,  he  says,  that   the   obnoxious 

<markable  transactions  leading  to  pamphlet  Plain  English  was  written  by 

the  happy  settlement  of  these  nations  "  a  renegado  parson,"  though   he   had 

the  Government  of  our  lawfull  taken  it  at  the  time  to  be  "  either  Need- 

and  gracious  Soveraign  Charles  the  II.,  "  ham's  or  Milton's,  a  couple  of  curs  of 

whom  God  preserve.  From  this  pamphlet  "  the  same  pack."    In  the  same  Apology 

I  find  that  L'Estrange  was  the  author  he  mentions  Milton  and  his  last  protests 

of    the    anonymous    pamphlet    of   the  for  the  Commonwealth  ironically  thus  : 

ious  3rd  of  April,  entitled  Treason  — "I  could  wish  his  excellency  [Monk] 

arraigned  in  answer  to  Plain  English,  "  had  been  a  little  civiller  to  Mr.  Milton ; 

in  which  the  Republican  Letter  to  Monk  "  for,  just  as  he  had  finished  his  model 

of   March  22,   1659-60,    called  Plain  "of  a  Commonwealth,  .  .  .  in  come  the 


THE   NEWSPAPER   PRESS  :    L'ESTRANGE.  327 

pamphlets  was  one  licensed  by  Sheldon's  private  chaplain, 
Dr.  George  Stradling,  May  28,  1663,  and  published  six  days 
afterwards,  with  this  title,  "  Considerations  and  Proposals  in 
order  to  the  Regulation  of  the  Press ;  together  with  Divers  In- 
stances of  Treasonous  and  Seditious  Pamphlets,  proving  the 
Necessity  thereof.  By  Roger  L 'Estrange.  London,  Printed  hj 
A.  C,  June  3rd,  1663."  The  pamphlet  is  really  a  curiosity. 
In  a  dedicatory  epistle  to  the  King"  he  speaks  of  it  as  pre- 
senting to  his  Majesty's  view  "  that  spirit  of  hypocrisy,  scandal, 
"  malice,  error  and  illusion  that  actuated  the  late  rebellion," 
and  also  "  a  manifestation  of  the  same  spirit,  reigning  still, 
"  and  working  not  only  by  the  same  means,  but  in  very  many 
"  of  the  same  persons  and  to  the  same  ends."  He  complains 
especially  of  the  reprinting  or  continued  sale  of  certain  anti- 
Episcopal  and  Republican  pamphlets  which  he  names  or 
describes,  and  of  the  recent  issue  of  a  very  large  edition  of 
collected  farewell  sermons  preached  to  different  congrega- 
tions over  England  by  thirty  or  forty  of  the  most  eminent 
of  the  ejected  Nonconformist  ministers.  Such  a  book  he 
regards  as  "  one  of  the  most  audacious  and  dangerous  libels 
"  that  hath  been  made  public  under  any  government ;"  and 
against  such  and  similar  press-offences  in  future  he  sees  no 
protective  but  the  severest  discipline  of  the  book-trade,  as 
including  not  only  authors  and  printers,  but  also  "  the  letter- 
"  founders,  and  the  smiths  and  joiners  that  work  upon  presses," 
"  with  the  stitchers,  binders,  stationers,  hawkers,  mercury- 
"  women,  pedlars,  ballad-singers,  posts,  carriers,  hackney- 
"  coachmen,  boatmen,  and  mariners."  He  thinks,  for  example, 
that  the  number  of  master-printers  in  London,  which  he 
reckons  as  then  sixty,  might  at  once  be  reduced  with  advantage 
to  twenty,  with  a  corresponding  reduction  of  the  number  of 
printing-offices,  and  of  the  number  of  apprentices  to  be  allowed 
in  the  printing  industry.  He  recommends  that  the  printing- 
offices  should  be  under  inspection,  and  that  none  of  them 
should  have    back-doors.     He    enumerates   with  approbation 

"secluded  members  and  spoil  his  pro-  1661,  he  repudiates  indignantly  the  im- 

"ject." — In     a    later    publication    of  putation  of  having  received  money  i'n  im 

L 'Estrange,  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  Cromwell    for    revealing    the     King's 

Chancellor  Clarendon,    dated    Dec.  3,  secrets  in  his  exile. 


328         LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  the  ordinary  penalties  "  for  treasonable  or  seditious  publica- 
tions, viz.  "  death,  mutilation,  imprisonment,  banishment, 
corporal  pains,  disgrace,  pecuniary  mulcts,"  but  thinks  it 
might  be  a  useful  addition  if  culprits  of  the  lower  grades  were 
"  condemned  to  wear  some  visible  badge  or  mark  of  ignominy, 
"  as  a  halter  instead  of  a  hatband,  one  stocking  blue  and  another 
"  red,  a  blue  bonnet  with  a  red  T  or  S  upon  it."  He  proposes 
also  that  the  censorship  of  the  press,  as  re-established  by  the 
Act  of  May  19,  1662,  should  be  regularly  organized  by  being 
put  into  the  hands  of  six  paid  surveyors  or  licencers,  under 
the  great  state-officers  charged  with  the  duty  by  the  Act  itself. 
He  recommends  that  the  punishment  for  all  press-offences 
should  be  certain  and  severe,  and  that  informers  should  be 
encouraged  and  liberally  rewarded  *. 

Whether  on  account  of  this  pamphlet,  or  because  he  had 
already  been  thought  peculiarly  well  qualified,  certain  it  is 
that,  in  August  1663,  Roger  L'Estrange,  Esq.,  was  appointed 
to  the  new  office  of  "  Surveyor  of  the  Imprimery  and  Printing- 
presses,"  with  the  right  of  "  the  sole  licensing  of  all  ballads, 
charts,  printed  portraictures,  printed  pictures,  books,  and 
papers,"  except  such  as  had  already  been  otherwise  provided 
for  by  the  Act  of  May  1662,  and  with  a  grant  also  of  "  all 
"  the  sole  privilege  of  writing,  printing,  and  publishing  all 
"  narratives,  advertisements,  mercuries,  intelligencers,  diur- 
"  nals,  and  other  books  of  public  intelligence,  and  printing  all 
"  ballads,  plays,  maps,  charts,  portraictures,  and  pictures,  not 
"  previously  printed,  and  all  briefs  for  collections,  playbills, 
"  quack-salvers'  bills,  custom  and  excise  bills,  post-office  bills, 
"  creditors'  bills  and  tickets,  in  England  and  Wales,  and 
"  with  power  to  search  for  and  seize  unlicensed  and  treason- 
"  able,  schismatical  and  scandalous  books  and  papers  2."  He 
was  thus  constituted,  (1)  sole  journalist  of  England  and 
Wales,  (2)  one  of  the  licencers  of  books  for  the  press, 
(3)  inquisitor-general  of  the  press,  and  of  all  printing-offices, 
shops  of  booksellers,  and  vendors  or  hawkers  of  books, 
pamphlets,  or  newspapers. 

1    L'Estrange's    Considerations    and  "  Nichols's   Literary  Anecdotes,  IV. 

Proposals  of  June  1663.  54—55,  footnote. 


THE    NEWSPAPER   PEESS  :    i/ESTRANGE.  329 

L 'Estrange  lost  no  time  in  assuming  his  functions  as  sole 
journalist,  for  on  Monday,  the  31st  of  August,  there  appeared 
No.  1  of  The  Intelligencer,  pullished  for  the  satisfaction  and  in- 
formation of  the  People:  with  privilege.  This  was  Roger  L'Es- 
trange's  own  newspaper,  superseding  and  abolishing  those  that 
had  been  managed  by  Birkenhead.  The  prospectus  of  the  new 
undertaking,  prefixed  to  the  first  number,  was  in  L'Estrange's 
own  strain. — He  declares  that  his  ideal  of  the  proper  state  of 
things  is  that  there  should  be  no  newspapers  at  all.  "  Sup- 
"  posing  the  press  in  order,  the  people  in  their  right  wits,  and 
"  news  or  no  news  to  be  the  question,  a  public  Mercury  should 
"  never  have  my  vote  ;  because  I  think  it  makes  the  multi- 
"  tude  too  familiar  with  the  actions  and  counsels  of  their  supe- 
"  riors,  too  pragmatical  and  censorious,  and  gives  them  not 
"  only  an  itch,  but  a  kind  of  colourable  right  and  license,  to  be 
"  meddling  with  the  Government."  In  the  actual  state  of 
things,  however,  a  newspaper  being  considered  indispensable, 
he  sees  that  there  may  be  uses  for  it,  if  it  is  prudently  managed. 
It  may  help  to  "  redeem  the  vulgar  from  their  former  mis- 
takes and  delusions,  and  to  preserve  them  from  the  like 
for  the  time  to  come/'  it  is  "none  of  the  worst  ways  of 
address  to  the  genius  and  humour  of  the  common  people, 
whose  affections  are  much  more  capable  of  being  tuned  and 
wrought  upon  by  convenient  hints  and  touches  in  the  shape 
and  air  of  a  pamphlet  than  by  the  strongest  and  best  notions 
imaginable  under  any  other  and  more  sober  form  whatsoever  ;" 
and,  at  the  very  least,  it  may  serve  "  to  detect  and  disappoint 
the  malice  of  those  scandalous  and  false  reports  which  are 
daily  contrived  and  bruited  against  the  Government."  On 
the  whole,  therefore,  he  undertakes  the  editorship  willingly 
enough,  and  will  do  his  best  in  it.  He  cannot  say  yet  whether 
his  paper  will  appear  once  a  week  or  twice  a  week,  but  will 
make  it  twice  a  week  if  he  finds  matter  enough.  He  reserves 
also  the  consideration  of  the  best  means  of  vending  and  circu- 
lating the  paper ;  because,  though  the  most  profitable  plan  for 
the  proprietor  of  a  newspaper  hitherto  has  been  "  to  cry  and 
expose  it  about  the  streets  by  mercuries  and  hawkers,"  he 
knows  that  "  under  countenance  of  that  employment  is  carried 


330         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

on  the  private  trade  of  treasonous  and  seditious  libels/'  and 
he  is  resolved  to  stop  that  trade.  There  follow,  accordingly, 
some  intimations  of  the  methods  he  means  to  adopt  in  his 
general  inquisitorship  or  surveyorship  of  the  Press.  He  still 
thinks  that  a  great  reduction  of  the  numbers  employed  in  the 
printing  business  would  be  the  most  effective  remedy;  but 
meanwhile  he  will  encourage  the  detection  of  press  offences  as 
much  as  possible  by  rewards  to  informers.  Let  any  one  who 
knows  of  "  any  printing-press  erected  and  being  in  any  private 
place,  hole,  or  corner,  contrary  to  the  tenor  of  the  late  Act  of 
Parliament,"  come  to  Mr.  L'Estrange's  office  at  the  Gun  in 
Ivy  Lane,  and  he  shall  have  40-9.  for  the  information  if  it  leads 
to  proof,  "with  what  assurance  of  secrecy  himself  shall  desire." 
Should  the  information  amount  to  the  discovery  of  any  se- 
ditious or  unlawful  book  actually  in  course  through  such 
a  printing-press,  then,  if  the  informer  shall  "  give  his  aid  to 
the  seizing  of  the  copies  and  the  offenders,""  the  reward  shall 
be  ,^5  ;  but  the  smallest  information  will  be  welcome,  and 
even  the  discovery  of  the  printing  by  any  one  of  any  book 
without  a  licence  shall  be  rewarded  with  10*.,  and  that  of  the 

selling   of  any  unlawful  book  by  any  hawker  with  5s. 

L'Estrange  did  make  his  paper  a  bi-weekly  one,  for  on  the 
following  Thursday,  September  3,  1633,  there  appeared  "  The 
Newes,  published  for  satisfaction  and  information  of  the  People: 
with  privilege.  No.  1."  It  was,  in  fact,  the  second  number  of 
the  Intelligencer,  but  with  an  alternative  name  x. 

L'Estrange's  bi-weekly  quarto  sheet,  in  its  alternative  forms 
of  The  Intelligencer,  published  on  Mondays,  and  The  News, 
published,  on  Thursdays,  was  the  sole  English  newspaper 
in  existence  from  the  end  of  August,  1663,  to  November, 
1665.  In  this  last  month,  Charles  and  the  Court  being  then 
at  Oxford,  whither  they  had  removed  a  good  many  weeks 
before,  to  avoid  the  Great  Plague,  then  ravaging  London, 
it  was  found  desirable,  for  the  convenience  of  those  gathered 
in  Oxford,  not  to  depend  on  the  coming  of  copies  of  The 
Intelligencer  or  News  from  the  plague-smitten  city.     Accord- 

1  Nichols's  Literary  Anecdotes,  IV.  55 — 5S. 


THE   NEWSPAPER   PRESS  :   l'eSTRANGE.  331 

ingly,  on  Tuesday  the  14th  of  November,  1665,  just  after  the 
rising  of  that  short  fifth  or   Oxford  session  of  the  Cavalier 
Parliament  which  passed  the  Five  Miles  Act,  there  appeared 
the  first  number  of  The    Oxford   Gazette,  a  folio   half-sheet, 
printed  by  the  University  printer,  Leonard  Litchfield,  licensed 
by    Lord   Arlington    as    Secretary    of    State,    and   written, 
Wood  thinks,  by  Henry  Muddiman.     This    Oxford    Gazette, 
published  twice  a  week  in  Oxford,  and  reprinted  in  London 
by  Thomas  Newcome,   "  for  the  use  of  some  members  and 
gentlemen   who    desired    them,"   was   an    infringement    on 
L'Estrange's  rights  which  he  seems  to  have  been  unable  to 
resist.     He   continued  indeed   to  issue  his   Intelligencer   and 
Neivs  simultaneously  with  the  Oxford  Gazette  and  its  London 
reprint  till  January  29,  1665-6  ;  but  then  he  retired  from  the 
competition,  allowing  his  bi-weekly  quarto  to  become  extinct 
in  favour  of  a  continuation  of  the  Oxford  Gazette  under  the 
new  name   of  The  London    Gazette,  naturally  thought  more 
suitable  after  Oxford  had  ceased  to  be  the  head-quarters  of 
the  King  and  Court  and  the  cessation  of  the  Plague  had  per- 
mitted their  return  to  Whitehall.     The  first  number  of  The 
London  Gazette,  calling  itself  No.  24  of  the  original  Gazette, 
appeared  on  Monday  the  5th  of  February,  1665-6,  and  the 
paper  continued   to  appear  regularly  twice  a   week  thence- 
forward, the  printer  and  publisher  being  Thomas  Newcome 
and  the  licencer  always  Lord  Arlington.     On  the  4th  of  June, 
1666,  there  appeared  the  first  number  of  another  paper,  called 
The  Current  Intelligencer ;  which,  I  find,  was  also  an  official 
journal,  licensed  by  Secretary  Morrice  or  his  deputies,   and 
published   by  John    Macock.     It  seems  to  have   had  but  a 
short  existence,  however ;  and  the  London   Gazette  remained 
in  possession,  substantially   undisturbed  by   any  competitor, 
official  or  non-official,  to  the  end  of  the  term  of  the  present 
chapter,  and  a  good  way  beyond.    Wood's  information  is  that, 
soon  after  the  numbers  of  the  London  Gazette  had  begun  to 
appear,  "  Mr.  Joseph  Williamson,   under-secretary  of  State, 
"  procured  the   writing  of  them  for  himself,  and   thereupon 
"  employed  Charles  Perrot,  M.A.,  and  fellow  of  Oriel  College 
"  in  Oxon,  who  had  a  good  command  of  his  pen,  to  do  that 


332  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  office  under  him ;  and  so  he  did,  though  not  constantly, 
"to  about  1671."  "Wood  adds  that  the  business  of  writing 
and  editing-  the  Gazette  continued  to  belong  to  the  office  of 
the  Under-Secretary  of  State  to  the  Revolution  of  1688  ;  and 
we  learn  otherwise  that  Thomas  Newcome  was  still  the  printer 
of  the  paper  in  that  year  \ 

Clearly  for  newspaper  and  pamphlet  literature  at  least  the 
Restoration  was  an  arrest  and  paralysis.  Not  only  was  the 
number  of  newspapers  kept  at  the  lowest  possible  minimum  ; 
but,  that  minimum  being  under  Government  management  far 
more  strictly  than  at  any  time  during  the  preceding  eighteen 
years  of  the  Revolution,  and  free  pamphleteering  having 
ceased  or  nearly  so,  all  heart,  all  pith,  was  taken  out  of 
English  journalism.  The  Intelligencers  and  Gazettes  and  oc- 
casional political  pamphlets  of  the  Restoration  are  meagre 
and  insipid  things  after  the  best  of  those  newspapers  and 
pamphlets  of  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Commonwealth,  and  the 
Protectorate,  in  which  political  ideas  and  political  passions  on 
both  sides  were  in  such  ferment  and  tumult. 

While  it  has  been  proved  that  the  Restoration  was  not  a 
time  of  fresh  outburst  and  abundance  in  the  literature  of 
England,  but  actually  of  arrest  and  diminution,  in  certain 
departments  at  least,  it  remains  nevertheless  true  that  the 
Restoration  did  bring  in  a  literature  of  its  own,  and  that  our 
historians  are  not  wrong  in  speaking  so  definitely  as  they  do 
of  The  Literature  of  the  Restoration.  What  justifies  this 
phi'ase  is  that,  though  there  was  a  diminished  quantity  of 
literary  production  on  the  whole  from  and  after  1660,  yet  such 
literature  as  did  appear,  and  especially  the  popular  literature 
favoured  at  Court,  was  marked  by  very  strong  characteristics, 
and  included  a  notable  revival  in  one  department. 

The  prevailing  characteristic  of  the  Restoration  literature 
proper  was  Anti-Puritanism.  Erom  1660  onwards  it  became 
the  rule  in  English  authorship  to  take  revenge  for  the  past 
twenty  years  of  Puritan  ascendancy  by  every  possible  form 

1  Nichols's  Literary  Anecdotes,  IV.  58—59 ;  Wood's  Ath,  III.  1185 ;  and  m/ 
notes  from  the  Stationers'  Registers. 


CAVALIER   SONGS.  333 

of  insult  to  whatever  had  worn  a  Puritan  guise,  or  been 
implied  in  Puritanism,  and  by  every  possible  assertion  and 
laudation  of  the  opposite. 

Signaling1  the  wheel  of  the  public  mind  at  the  very  instant 
of  the  return  of  the  Stuarts  had  been  that  burst  of  odes 
on  the  Blessed  Restoration,  by  Waller,  Cowley,  Davenant, 
Dryden,  and  others,  of  which  we  have  heard  enough.  There 
was  to  be  no  end  to  the  fulsome  series  while  Charles  lived,  or 
to  the  reprints  of  such  Cavalier  songs  and  poems  as  were  already 
in  stock  before  the  Restoration,  or  the  production  of  others  in 
the  same  vein  to  satisfy  the  increasing  demand.  The  Bump  : 
or  an  Exact  Collection  of  the  Choicest  Poems  and  Songs  relating 
to  the  late  Times,  is  the  title  of  one  book,  edited  by  Alexander 
Brome,  published  in  June  1660,  and  republished  with  addi- 
tions in  1662,  which  served  for  a  good  many  years  as  a 
manual  of  anti-Puritan  lyrics  for  ordinary  convivial  purposes. 
With  that  book,  or  any  similar  collection,  at  hand,  a  thousand 
clubs  of  jolly  fellows  could  make  themselves  happy  simulta- 
neously for  hours  together  in  a  thousand  different  London 
taverns  or  village  inns,  by  singing  over  the  whole  history  of 
the  past  reign  of  Puritanism  in  successive  snatches  of  verse  to 
popular  tunes  and  choruses.     Thus  : — 

"To  make  Charles  a  great  king  and  give  him  no  power, 
To  honour  him  much  aud  not  obey  him  an  hour, 
To  provide  for  his  safety  and  take  away  his  Tower, 
And  to  prove  all  is  sweet,  be  it  never  so  sour, 

Is  the  new  order  of  the  land  and  the  land's  new  order." 


"  Your  fond  expounding  corrupts  the  Bibble  ; 
Yet  you'll  maintain  it  with  your  twibble. 
Oh,  Roundheads,  Roundheads,  damnable  Roundheads, 
What  do  you  mean  to  do  1 " 


"What  though  the  zealots  pull  dowm  the  prelates, 
Push  at  the  pulpit,  and  kick  at  the  crown  ! 

Shall  we  not  ever  strive  to  endeavour 

Once  more  to  purchase  our  royal  renown  > 

Shall  not  the  Roundhead  first  be  confounded  1 
Sa,  sa,  sa,  sa,  boys  !    ha,  ha,  ha,  ha,  boys  !" 


334  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

"  Sirs,  Jocky  's  a  man  held  a  mickle  note  ; 

Sing  heome  agen,  Jocky,  sing  heomeagen,  Jocky. 
The  breach  o'  the  Covenant  stuck  in  his  throat; 
Sing  heome  agen,  heoine  agen,  0  valiant  Jocky." 

"Taffy  was  once  Cottamighty  of  Wales, 

Put  her  cousin  0.   P.   was  a  creater ; 
Was  come  in  her  country,  catspluttery  nails  ! 

Was  took  her  Welsh  hook  and  was  peat  her; 
Was  eat  up  her  sheese, 
Her  tuck  and  her  geese  ; 

Her  pick,  her  capon  was  tie  for  't ; 
Ap  Richard,  ap  Owen,  ap  Morgan,  ap  Stephen, 

Ap  Shenkin,  ap  Powell  was  fly  for't." 

"A  Brewer  may  be  a  Parliament-man, 
For  there  the  knavery  first  began, 
And  brew  most  cunning  plots  he  can  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

A  Brewer  may  put  on  a  Nabal  face, 
And  march  to  the  wars  with  such  a  grace 
That  he  may  get  a  Captain's  place  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

A  Brewer  may  speak  so  wondrous  well 
That  he  may  raise  great  things  to  tell, 
And  so  be  made  a  Colonel  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

A  Brewer  may  make  his  foes  to  flee, 
And  raise  his  fortunes,  so  that  he 
Lieutenant-General  may  be  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

A  Brewer  he  may  be  all  in  all, 

And  raise  his  powers  both  great  and  small, 

That  he  may  be  Lord  General: 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

Methinks  I  hear  one  say  to  me, 
Pray,  why  may  not  a  Brewer  be 
The  Chancellor  o'  the  University  1 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

A  Brewer  may  be  as  bold  as  Hector 
When  he  has  drunk  off  his  cup  of  nectar, 
And  a  Brewer  may  be  a  Lord  Protector  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 


CAVALIER   SONGS.  335 

A  Brewer  may  do  what  he  will, 

And  rob  the  Church  and  State,  to  sell 

His  soul  unto  the  Devil  of  Hell  : 

"Which  nobody  can  deny." 

"  Drunken  Dick  was  a  lame  Protector, 
And  Fleetwood  a  backslider  : 

These  we  served  as  the  rest, 

But  the  City's  the  beast 
That  will  never  cast  her  rider. 

Then  away  with  the  laws 

And  the  good  old  cause ; 
Ne'er  talk  o'  the  Rump  or  the  Charter, 

'Tis  the  cash  does  the  feat ; 

All  the  rest 's  but  a  cheat ; 
"Without  that  there's  no  faith  nor  quarter." 

"  But  I  hope  by  this  time 
You  '11  confess  'twas  a  crime 

To  abet  such  a  damnable  crew, 
Whose  petition  was  drawn 
By  Alcoran  Vane, 

Or  else  by  Corbet  the  Jew : 
By  it  you  may  knoAV 
What  the  Rump  meant  to  do 

And  what  religion  to  frame ; 
So  'twas  time  for  Old  George 
That  Rump  to  disgorge, 

And  to  send  it  from  whence  it  first  came, 
And  drive  the  cold  winter  away." 

'  We  are  sensible  now  that  there  is  no  one  thing 
Can  full  satisfaction  to  all  interests  bring, 
But  only  Charles  the  Second,  our  known  lawful  King  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny. 

Let's  dally  no  longer,  but  like  Britons  stand 

For  God  and  King  Charles  and  the  laws  of  the  land ; 

Let 's  up  and  be  doing  and  do 't  out  of  hand  : 

Which  nobody  can  deny." 

In  such  rough  popular  lyrics,  as  in  the  more  elaborate 
Restoration  odes  of  Cowley  and  the  rest,  we  have  the  expres- 
sion of  what  -may  be  called  the  direct  form  of  the  anti- 
Puritanism  which  had  come  into  the  ascendant.     It  consisted 


336  LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

in  perpetual  recollection  of  the  persons  and  transactions  of 
the  foregoing-  twenty  years  for  burlesque,  invective,  and  exe- 
cration. Always,  of  course,  and  in  the  midst  of  all,  and 
engrossing"  the  entire  retrospect  for  most,  was  the  figure  of 
Cromwell,  the  Brewer  Cromwell,  the  copper-nosed  Crom- 
well, the  supreme  villain  Cromwell.  Hence,  in  fact,  the 
most  intense  and  specific  exhibition  of  the  direct  form  of 
anti-Puritanism  was  in  loathing,  or  pretended  loathing,  of 
the  memory  of  Oliver.  To  name  Noll,  and  repeat  the  name 
Noll,  and  go  on  repeating  it  with  every  new  ludicrous  or  op- 
probrious epithet  that  ingenuity  could  invent,  was  half  the 
art  of  being  witty  in  any  company  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  the  Restoration. 

Indubitably  the  finest  literary  expressions  of  this  mood  of 
anti-Puritanism  and  reprobation  of  Cromwell  between  1660 
and  1663  were  in  certain  pieces  of  Cowley,  continuing  or 
repeating  his  first  Restoration  ode.  In  particular,  his  Dis- 
course by  way  of  Vision  concerning  the  Government  of  Oliver 
Cromwell  is  deservedly  regarded  as  the  most  eloquent  of  his 
prose-writings.  It  was  published  in  1661,  and  originally 
with  this  longer  title :  A  Vision  concerning  his  late  pretended 
Highness,  Cromivell  the  Wicked;  containing  a  Discourse  in 
Vindication  of  him  by  a  pretended  Angel,  and  the  Confutation 
thereof  by  the  Author,  Abraham  Coidey.  It  was,  in  fact, 
another  studied  attempt  by  poor  Cowley  to  retrieve  his  cha- 
racter for  loyalty  and  reinstate  himself  at  Court.  Skilfully 
enough,  the  Discourse  or  Vision  is  thrown  back  to  the  very 
day  of  Cromwell's  funeral,  so  that  the  author  might  be  sup- 
posed not  to  have  needed  the  Restoration  to  produce  the 
sentiments  he  was  now  expressing,  but  to  have  entertained 
them  while  the  Cromwell  dynasty  seemed  secure. 

Having  been  a  spectator,  he  says,  of  the  sombre  funeral 
pageant,  which  had  "  brought  some  very  curious  persons  as 
far  as  from  the  Mount  in  Cornwall  and  from  the  Orcades," 
he  had  retired  back  to  his  chamber,  weary  and  melancholy. 
There,  beginning  "  to  reflect  on  the  whole  life  of  this  pro- 
digious man/'  he  had  gradually  fallen  asleep  or  dreamt  a 
waking  dream.     He  found  himself,  as  he  thought,  ';  on  the 


cowley's  vision  of  cromwell.  337 

top  of  that  famous  hill  in  the  island  Mona  which  has  the 
prospect  of  three  great,  and  not-long-since  happy,  king- 
doms/' For  two  or  three  hours,  recalling  to  memory  all  the 
late  miseries  of  those  kingdoms,  he  wept  bitterly  ;  and  at 
length  he  broke  out  in  a  passion  of  verse,  beginning, 

"  Ah,  happy  Isle,  how  art  thou  changed  and  curst 
Siuce  I  was  born  and  knew  thee  first !  " 

He  has  not  ended  this  metrical  plaint,  but  has  just  invoked 
the  spirit  of  the  Royal  Martyr,  when  he  is  interrupted  by 
"  a  strange  and  terrible  apparition/'  It  is  the  figure  of  a 
gigantic  man,  whose  naked  body  is  tattooed  with  warlike 
figures  and  representations  of  battles,  whose  eyes  were  like 
burning  brass,  and  on  whose  head  were  three  crowns  of  the 
same  metal,  also  seeming  red-hot.  In  his  right  hand  he  held 
a  bloody  sword,  and  in  his  left  a  thick  book  of  Acts,  Ordi- 
nances, Protestations,  Covenants,  and  Engagements.  This 
figure  introduces  himself  as  the  guardian  angel  of  the  three 
kingdoms,  and  the  colloquy  begins,  Cowley  suspecting  from  the 
first  that  the  pretended  angel  is  Cromwell  himself,  but  con- 
cealing the  suspicion  as  long  as  he  can,  that  he  may  be  the 
more  frank  in  his  utterances.  And  his  frankness  is  unbounded. 
He  has  already  had  one  paragraph  of  abuse  of  the  dead  Pro- 
tector when  farther  discourse  is  brought  on  by  some  obser- 
vations of  the  phantom  in  reply,  to  the  effect  that,  though  he 
has  "  no  personal  concernment  for  his  late  highness,"  yet,  as 
guardian  angel  of  the  British  Islands,  he  has  naturally  taken 
some  interest  in  him  and  his  rule,  and  has  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  he  was  "the  greatest  man  that  ever  was  of  the  English 
nation,  if  not  of  the  whole  world."  This,  followed  by  a  defensive 
sketch  by  the  phantom  of  Cromwell's  whole  life,  sets  Cowley 
on  at  full  torrent  on  the  other  side.  There  is  a  long  and 
highly  eloquent  indictment  of  Cromwell  and  all  his  misdc  eds, 
growing  more  and  more  eloquent  as  the  phantom  occasionally 
irritates  the  speaker  by  questions  and  interruptions.  Even 
Cromwell's  abilities  are  depreciated,  and  ^reduced  to  craft,  dis- 
simulation, and  extraordinary  industry.  The  prose  once  or 
twice  lifts  itself  again  into  verse.  Thus : — 
vol.  vi.  z 


338         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  Cursed  be  the  man  (what  do  I  wish  ?  as  though 
The  wretch  already  were  not  so  ; 
But  cursed  on  let  him  be)  who  thinks  it  brave 
And  great  his  country  to  enslave, 
Who  seeks  to  overpoise  alone 
The  balance  of  a  nation." 

On  the  whole,  the  phantom  has  kept  his  temper  admirably 
through  all  this,  only  smiling  or  laughing  grimly.  At  last, 
telling  Cowley  he  is  a  mere  pedant  or  Platonical  dreamer,  and 
evidently  not  a  man  of  property,  or  a  man  of  the  world  in 
any  sense,  with  his  "  old  obsolete  rules  of  virtue  and  consci- 
ence," the  phantom  propounds  his  own  ethical  system  in  a 
metrical  sermon  which  is  a  compound  of  Biblical  references 
with  the  rankest  Machiavellianism.     It  ends, 

"  Tis  godlike  to  be  great ;    and,  as  they  say 
A  thousand  years  to  God  are  but  a  day, 
So  to  a  man,  when  once  a  crown  he  wears, 
The  coronation-day's  more  than  a  thousand  years." 

Made  furious  by  this  blasphemy,  Cowley  loses  self-command, 
and  lets  the  fiend  know  that  he  is  perfectly  aware  it  is  with 
Cromwell  himself  he  has  the  honour  of  discoursing.  The 
dreadful  figure  then  loses  temper  too,  tells  Cowley  he  is  "  an 
obstinate  and  inveterate  malignant,"  hints  at  a  power  of 
imprisoning  and  hanging  even  in  the  Inferno,  and  rushes 
at  him  ravenously.  The  poet  felt  himself,  he  says,  "  almost  in 
the  very  pounces  of  the  great  bird  of  prey,"  when  lo  !  what? 

"  When,  lo  !   ere  the  last  words  were  fully  spoke, 
From  a  fair  cloud,  which  rather  oped  than  broke, 
A  flash  of  light,  rather  than  lightning,  came, 
So  swift,  and  yet  so  gentle,  was  the  flame. 
Upon  it  rode  (and,  in  his  full  career, 
Seemed  to  my  eyes  no  sooner  there  than  here) 
The  comeliest  youth  of  all  the  angelic  race; 
Lovely  his  shape,  ineffable  his  face." 

This  radiant  and  comely  youth  is  the  true  genius  of  England, 
and  you  are  also  to  suppose  him  to  be  Charles  the  Second  as 
much  as  you  can.  He  goes  up  to  Fiend  Cromwell,  and 
whispers  some  few  words  to  him,  which  Cowley  did  not  un- 


butler's  hudlbbas.  339 

derstand,  though  he  was  sure  that  one  of  them  was  the  name 
of  Jesus.     The  fiend  immediately  collapses,  roars,  and  flies  : — 

"  He  knows  his  foe  too  strong,  and  must  he  gone  : 
He  grins  as  he  looks  hack,  and  howls  as  he  goes  on." 

No  one  could  match  Cowley  in  this  finely  poetical  style  of 
anti-Cromwellian  and  anti-Puritan  invective.  But  it  was 
too  good,  too  serious,  aggrandized  Cromwell  and  his  part  in 
British  history  too  evidently  in  the  very  act  of  execrating  his 
memory,  to  please  the  general  taste,  or  be  much  to  Cowley's 
advantage  where  he  had  hoped  it  might  chiefly  help  him. 
Rougher  and  coarser  things  pleased  better. 

November  11, 1662,  "Richard  Marriott  entered  for  his  copy, 
"  under  the  hand  of  Dr.  Birkenhead,  and  Mr.  Pakeman,  war- 
"  den,  a  book  intituled  Hudibras,  the  First  Part,  written 
"  in  the  time  of  the  late  war  by  Mr.  Butler  ;"  and,  again, 
just  a  year  after,  November  5,  1663,  "Mr.  John  Martyn  and 
"  Mr.  James  Allestry  entered  for  their  copy,  under  the  hand  of 
"  Mr.  Roger  L'Estrange  and  Mr.  Warden  Fawne,  a  book  or 
"  copy  intituled  Hudibras,  the  Second  Part,  by  the  author 
"of  the  First."  Such  were  the  entries  in  the  Stationers' 
Registers  of  those  two  parts  of  Butler's  immortal  burlesque 
which  were  all  that  the  world  was  to  have  of  it  till  the 
year  1678,  when  a  third  part  was  published,  still  leaving  the 
poem  incomplete1.  How  the  first  two  parts  were  received 
we  learn  from  Pepys.  "  Hither  come  Mr.  Battersby,"  writes 
Pepys  on  the  26th  of  December,  1662,  "and,  we  falling  into 
"  discourse  of  a  new  book  of  drollery  in  use,  called  Hudibras, 
"  I  would  needs  go  and  find  it  out,  and  met  with  it  at  the 
"  Temple  :  cost  me  2/6^.     But,  when  I  come  to  read  it,  it  is 

1  Though  the  first  part  of  Hudibras  "  Richard  Marriott,  under  St.  Dunstan's 

was  not  registered  till  Nov.  11, 1662,  it  "Church   iu  Fleet   Street;   that  other 

must  have  been  already  out  for  nearly  a  "nameless  impression  is   a  cheat,  and 

year.  In  The  Kingdom' 8  Intelligencer  for  "will  but  abuse  the  buyer,  as  well  as 

the  week  ending  Jan.  5,  1661-2, there  is  "the   author,  whose  poem  deserves  to 

this  advertisement :—"  There  is  stolen  "have  fallen  into  better  hands."— The 

"abroad  a  most  false  imperfect  copy  of  new  Press  Act,  requiring  books  to  be 

'•  a  Poem  called Hudibras,  without  name  licensed,  having  come  into  operation  in 

"^ either  of  printer  or  bookseller,  as  fit  1662,  a  few  months  after  the  date  of 

"  for  so  lame  and  spurious  an  impression.  this  advertisement,  Marriott  had  availed 

"Tne  true  and  perfect  edition,  printed  himself  of  it  for  the  protection  of  his 

by  the  author's  original,  is  sold  by  rights. 

Z  2 


340         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  so  silly  an  abuse  of  the  Presbyter  knight  going  to  the  wars 
"  that  I   am  ashamed  of  it ;    and,  by  and  bye,  meeting  at 
"  Mr.  Townsend's  at  dinner,  I  sold  it  to  him  for  18d."     Pepys 
found  very  soon  that  he  was  in  a  minority  of  one  on  that  sub- 
ject.   The  King  was  reading  Hndibras ;  the  Court  was  reading 
Hudibras ;  all  the  world  was  reading  Hudibras.   '  Accordingly, 
Pepys  tried  the  book  again.     "  And  so  to  a  bookseller's  in  the 
"Strand,"  he  writes,   Feb.   6,   1662-3,    "and    there  bought 
"  Hudibras  again,  it  being  certainly  some  ill  humour  to  be  so 
"  against  that  which  all  the  world  cries  up  to  be  the  example 
"  of  wit ;  for  which  I  am  resolved  once  more  to  read  him,  and 
"  see  whether  I  can  find  it  or  no."     "When  the  second  part 
came  out,  he  repeated  the  experiment.    "To  St.  Paul's  Church- 
"yard,"  he  writes,  Nov.  28,  1663,"  and  there  looked  upon  the 
'  Second  Part  of  Hudibras ;  which  I  buy  not,  but  borrow  to 
'  read,  to  see  if  it  be  as  good  as  the  first,  which  the  world 
"  cried  so  mightily  up,  though  I  had  tried  but  twice  or  three 
'  times  reading  to  bring  myself  to  think  it  witty."     Again, 
less  than  a  fortnight  afterwards,  giving  a  list  of  books  he  had 
been  looking  at,  he  mentions  "  Hudibras,  both  parts,  the  book 
''  now   in   greatest   fashion   for   drollery,    though   I    cannot, 
'  I  confess,  see  enough  where  the   wit   lies."     To    the  end 
Pepys  found  himself  singular  in  his  estimate  of  the  book. 
All  the  world  continued  to  read  Hudibras  and  to  talk  of  this 
extraordinary  Mr.  Samuel  Butler,  hitherto  utterly  unknown, 
who  had  made  himself  famous  by  it  at  one  bound  ;  and  Pepys, 
who  came  afterwards  to  meet  Butler  in  society,  expressly  tells 
us  that  it  seemed  unpleasantly  strange  to  him,  in  the  year  of 
the  Great  Plague,  to  hear  a  Parliament  man  quote  Hudibras 
as  if  it  were  the  book  in  the  world  that  everybody  ought  to 
know  best. 

No  wonder  at  the  sudden  and  immense  popularity  of  Hudi- 
bras. No  wonder  that  the  King  and  Clarendon  sent  for  the 
author  on  the  appearance  of  the  first  part,  and  gave  him  hopes 
of  "  places  and  employments,"  and  so  that  people,  meeting 
him  afterwards  in  society,  a  middle-sized  man,  strong-built, 
of  sanguine  complexion,  and  with  "  sorrel "  or  "  leonine- 
coloured"  hair,  watched   and  still  watched  for  "the  golden 


BUTLER'S   ni'DIBBAS.  341 

shower  "  that  was  expected  to  descend  upon  him  1.  The  book 
was  an  embodiment  of  the  anti-Puritanism  of  the  Restoration 
era  exactly  suiting"  the  general  taste,  and  was  far  fitter,  in  that 
respect,  to  be  a  vade  mecnm  for  the  courtiers  and  cavaliers 
than  anything1  that  had  been  provided  by  Cowley  or  others. 

Little  depended  on  the  story.  The  g-eneral  idea,  indeed, 
was  good  even  in  that  respect,  though  it  was  a  very  profane 
desecration  of  the  noble  fiction  of  Cervantes.  As  in  that 
fiction  Don  Quixote  and  his  squire  Sancho  go  out  on  adven- 
tures over  sunny  Spanish  scenery,  the  one  a  high-toned 
though  crazed  idealist,  the  other  a  sturdy  materialist,  so  in 
this  Butler  sends  forth  the  knight  Hudibras  and  his  squire 
Ralph,  the  one  a  representative  of  Presbyterianism  and  the 
other  of  Independency  and  New  Lights  in  Theology,  to  find 
their  adventures  on  English  ground.  The  adventures  them- 
selves are  nothing.  Who  cared  for  them,  or  even  much  for 
any  of  the  hobby-horse  grotesques,  in  the  form  of  personages 
and  characters,  which  they  bring  round  Hudibras  and  Ralph, 
for  the  purpose  of  thrashing  them,  putting  them  in  the  stocks, 
assailing  them  with  rotten  eggs,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  from 
the  bear-owner  and  the  dog-owning  butcher,  and  the  wooden- 
legged  fiddler  Crowdero,  and  the  tinker  Magnano,  and  his 
female  companion  Trulla,  at  the  beginning,  on  to  the  confusion- 
causing  widow,  and  the  astrologer  Sidrophel,  and  the  astro- 
loger's man  "Whackum  ?  It  was  the  plenitude  of  wit  and 
quaint  learning  of  all  sorts  embroidered  on  the  narrative,  like 
patches  of  pearl-work  on  leather,  the  abundance  of  quotable 
passages  and  phrases,  the  mercilessness  and  yet  oddity  of  the 
satire  on  the  Puritans  and  all  their  bel^iAti  cUt;  seconu. '  -  t\>P 
book  such  a  favourite.  O^  Court,  represented  at  its  best 
example,  when  this  Junius  of  Butler,  was  incapable  of  such 
whole  book,  as  a  -l7  to  burlesque  and  ridicule  Puritanism,  but 
that  day  to  this  l  ridicule  whatever,  in  or  out  of  Puritanism, 
eal,  earnest,  spiritual,  remote  from  common 
„  mon  apprehension,  was  the  fashion  in  the 
ip0  ion  literature.  Cowley  had  not  yielded  to 
'Twa  of  the  more  religious  intellects  in  the  An- 
i  Aubrey's  Lives,  Wtan  ranks  >   but  these  were  exceptions. 


342  LIFE   OF  MILTON  AND  HISTOKY  OF   HIS  TIME. 

For  he  was  of  that  stubborn  crew 
Of  errant  saints  whom  all  men  grant 

To  be  the  true  Church  Militant : 

Such  as  do  build  their  faith  upon 

The  holy  text  of  pike  and  gun ; 

Decide  all  controversies  by 

Infallible  artillery, 

And  prove  their  doctrine  orthodox 

By  apostolic  blows  and  knocks ; 

Call  fire  and  sword  and  desolation 

A  godly,  thorough  Reformation, 

Which  always  must  be  carried  on, 

And  still  be  doing,  never  done, 

As  if  Religion  were  intended 

For  nothing  else  but  to  be  mended  : 

A  sect  whose  chief  devotion  lies 

In  odd  perverse  antipathies, 

In  falling  out  with  that  or  this, 

And  finding  something  still  amiss ; 

More  peevish,  cross,  and  splenetic 

Than  dog  distract  or  monkey  sick; 

That  with  more  care  keep  holiday 

The  wrong  than  others  the  right  way; 

Compound  for  sins  they  are  inclined  to 

By  damning  those  they  have  no  mind  to. 

Still  so  perverse  and  opposite, 

As  if  they  worshipped  God  for  spite, 

The  self-same  thing  they  will  abhor 

One  way,  and  long  another  for ; 

Free-will  they  one  way  disavow, 

Another  nothing  else  allow ; 

All  piety  consists  therein 

In  them,  in  other  men  all  sin. 

Rather  than  fail,  they  will  defy 

That  which  they  love  most  tenderly; 
*"  ov-v~    '  ~;~L  "dnce-pies,  and  disparage 
the  Great  Plague,  to  hear  is**-,  friend,  plum-porridge; 
as  if  it  were  the  book  in  the  woriu^ose, 
know  best.  the  nose'" 

No  wonder  at  the  sudden  and  immense  ^a^tdioras,  consist- 
Iras.  ~No  wonder  that  the  King-  and  Claren  ;  a  satire  of  the 
author  on  the  appearance  of  the  first  part,  anc  porary  purposes, 
of  "  places  and  employments,"  and  so  that  iterature  not  so 
him  afterwards  in  society,  a  middle-sized  1 

of  sanguine   complexion,    and    with    "  sorre  adopted  phrases  from 
.         x  .   own,  published  anony- 

coloured     hair,  watched   and  still  watchec 


TENDENCY  TO  THE  BURLESQUE.  343 

In  the  first  place,  the  tendency  to  a  prevalence  of  the 
burlesque  or  mock-heroic  in  form  connects  itself  with  the 
anti-Puritan  reaction  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second. 
It  was  the  reign  of  the  Merry  Monarch,  and  all  things  must 
correspond.  Not  only  to  laugh,  but  to  do  nothing  else  than 
laugh,  was  the  rule  with  the  London  multitude  ;  not  only  to 
promote  laughter,  but  to  promote  nothing  else  than  laughter, 
was  the  rule  of  most  of  the  London  wits.  I  am  not  sure  but 
the  degradation  of  the  name  "  wit,"  as  applied  to  a  person, 
from  its  original  meaniug  of  "  man  of  intellect  "  to  that  of 
"a  maker  of  jests,"  dates  properly  from  the  Restoration.  To 
make  jests,  to  live  and  move  in  the  ludicrous,  to  find  fun  in 
everything  under  heaven  and  over  hell,  or  even  within  those 
realms  themselves,  so  far  as  they  were  voted  to  exist,  was  the 
business  of  the  popular  Restoration  writers.  It  was,  naturally, 
hard  work ;  and  hence,  while  so  much  of  the  literature  of  the 
Restoration  was  of  the  kind  called  generally  the  comic,  and 
there  was  plenty  that  was  genuinely  humorous,  hearty,  and 
convivial,  yet  not  a  little  was  in  that  austere  form  of  the  comic 
in  which  there  is  no  heart  whatever,  but  only  sneering  and 
sarcasm.  When,  in  Rabelais,  the  meditative  giant  Pantagruel 
hears  the  story  of  the  miraculous  announcement  of  the  death 
of  Pan  and  the  birth  of  the  great  shepherd  Christ,  as  it  was 
made  to  the  Egyptian  Thamuz,  off  the  Island  of  Naxos,  by  a 
voice  from  heaven  sounding  over  the  ship,  the  giant  reels  and 
trembles  with  the  sense  of  the  awe  and  the  grandeur,  and 
tears  roll  down  his  cheeks  "as  big  as  ostrich's  eggs."  The 
story  of  the  death  of  Pan,  or  any  similar  story  would  have 
had  no  such  effect  at  the  Court  of  Charles  the  Second.  The 
shrunken  Pantagruelism  of  that  Court,  represented  at  its  best 
in  the  Hudibrastic  genius  of  Butler,  was  incapable  of  such 
heights.  Not  only  to  burlesque  and  ridicule  Puritanism,  but 
to  burlesque  and  ridicule  whatever,  in  or  out  of  Puritanism, 
was  abstract,  ideal,  earnest,  spiritual,  remote  from  common 
appetite  or  common  apprehension,  was  the  fashion  in  the 
popular  Restoration  literature.  Cowley  had  not  yielded  to 
it,  nor  had  others  of  the  more  religious  intellects  in  the  An- 
glican or  anti-Puritan  ranks  ;  but  these  were  exceptions. 


344         LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Another  quality  of  the  Restoration  literature,  not  necessarily- 
inherent  in  the  tendency  to  the  burlesque  or  mock-heroic, 
though  generally  accompanying'  that  tendency,  is  the  quality 
called  coarseness.     Under  this  name  we  need  not  imply  any 
special  pandering  to  what   is  known  as  the  licentious.      It 
would  be  unjust  to  Butler  to  do  so.     The  coarseness  which 
we  see  in  him  has  nothing  of  that  accompaniment,  though 
the  same  cannot  be  said  of  many  of  his  contemporaries.   With 
or   without  that  accompaniment,    coarseness   consists   in    an 
unabashed  familiarity  of  the    imagination  with  things   and 
processes  which  the  taste  of  civilized  mankind  in  all  ages  has 
agreed  to  keep  as  much  as  possible  out  of  sight  and  unmen- 
tioned,  though  their  existence  runs  through  the  daily  life  of 
all,  and  there  are  names  for  them  in  every  national  vocabulary. 
Taste  in  this  respect,  it  is  true,  is  very  variable  in  particulars. 
The  standard  of  euphemism  or  fastidiousness  in  speech  has 
changed  from  age  to  age,  and  has  never  been  the  same,  even 
in  the  same  age,  for  all  classes  of  persons  or  for  all  kinds  of 
literature.     In  Chaucer's  time  the  churl's  "  manere  "  in  litera- 
ture was  recognised  as  distinct  from  the  knight's  or  lady's. 
A  writer  who  practised  both,  as  Chaucer  did,  could  inform 
his  readers  when  he  was  about  to  pass  from  the  one  to  the 
other,  and  could   warn  them,  if  the  next  tale  was  to  be  a 
churl's,    to    turn    elsewhere    for   some    "storial    thing    that 
toucheth  gentilesse."     It  had  been  much  the  same  through 
the  age  of  the  Elizabethans.     The  difference  after  the  Restora- 
tion, however,  is  enormous.     Even  Clarendon,  looking  about 
him  in  the  popular  Restoration  literature,  must  have  confessed 
himself  disappointed  in  his  expectation  of  a  general  return  of 
what  he  regarded  as  the  old  English  "  good  manners."     In 
Clarendon's  own  speeches,  as  in  most  of  Cowley's  writings, 
and  also,  of  course,  in  those  of  the  best  of  the  Restoration 
divines,  there  is  all  proper  decorum  and  fastidiousness  ;  but, 
to  a  great   extent,  it  was  "  the  churl's   manere  M  that  had 
established  itself  in  and  round  the  Court  for  the  regulation 
both  of  talk  and  of  literature.     This  was  the  case  especially 
in  that  literature  of  the  comic  order  which  was  now  so  much 
in  request.     The  coarse  had  become  the  accepted  equivalent 


COARSENESS   OF   THE   RESTORATION    LITERATURE.       345 

for  the  comic.  For  making  fun  and  causing*  laughter  the 
method  in  favour  was  to  bring  in  as  frequently  as  possible, 
out  of  the  churl's  dictionary,  and  from  every  letter  of  the 
alphabet  there,  those  anatomical  and  physiological  words 
which  startle  us  in  the  streets  by  their  nudity  and  vigour. 
There  is  no  lack  of  illustration  in  the  pages  of  Butler,  but 
even  they  do  not  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the  extent  of 
this  form  of  the  facetious  in  some  portions  of  the  literature  of 
his  time.  Let  me  speak  out  plainly.  The  familiar  representa- 
tion of  the  Court  of  Charles  the  Second  as  a  Court  of  fine  and 
gracious  manners,  a  Court  in  which  "  vice  itself  lost  half  its 
evil  by  losing  all  its  grossness,"  is  a  lying  tradition.  The 
principal  men  and  women  of  that  Court,  though  dressed  finely 
and  living  luxuriously,  spoke  and  thought  among  themselves 
in  the  language  of  the  shambles  and  the  dissecting-room. 
How  far  such  coarseness  of  speech  in  and  round  the  Court  of 
Charles  is  to  be  regarded  as  necessarily  part  and  parcel  of  the 
anti-Puritan  reaction  we  need  not  inquire  minutely.  Sincere 
religious  fervour,  whatever  the  theology  professed,  is  always 
an  education  of  the  taste ;  and,  if  English  Puritanism  had  not 
cultivated  the  graceful,  it  had  certainly  discouraged  the  more 
positive  forms  of  the  coarse.  The  taste  of  the  tinker  Bunyan, 
in  matters  of  speech,  was  more  fastidious  and  cleanly,  I  should 
say,  precisely  on  account  of  his  Puritanism,  than  that  of  a 
good  many  of  the  Restoration  scholars  and  men  of  letters  who 
had  been  educated  at  the  universities.  But  I  will  dare  a  more 
public  parallel.  The  great-hearted  Christian  gentleman  who 
had  been  the  soldier  of  Puritanism  from  the  first,  and  had 
held  the  sovereignty  of  the  British  Islands  for  five  years  in  the 
name  of  Puritanism,  as  he  himself  had  generalized  that  theory 
of  things,  liberalised  it,  and  determined  that  it  might  last — 
this  great  man,  figuring  now  in  Royalist  diatribes  as  the 
brewer,  the  hypocrite,  the  copper-nosed  saint  and  ruffian,  had 
written  much  and  had  spoken  much.  What  he  had  thus 
written  and  spoken  through  a  long  tract  of  years  he  had  left 
lying  carelessly  about,  to  be  examined  when  the  world  should 
please,  and  there  should  be  some  future  man.  above  the  rest  in 
an  unknown  posterity,  to  bring  it  all  together  and  make  the 


346  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

examination  possible.  Well,  what  of  those  letters  and  speeches, 
hurried,  numerous,  and  variously  occasioned,  of  one  whom  we 
know  independently  to  have  been  no  pedant,  no  straight-laced 
ascetic,  but  even  boisterous  in  his  fits  of  humour,  and  fond  of 
horse-play  ?  This  or  that  may  be  objected  to  in  them,  from 
the  literary  point  of  view  or  from  the  political ;  but  from  first 
to  last  no  one  will  find  in  them  a  really  unbecoming  word.  It 
must  have  been  the  same,  I  believe,  in  Cromwell's  most  private 
and  intimate  conversation.  Both  Clarendon  and  Cowley,  in- 
deed, have  made  the  most  of  one  reported  saying-  of  Cromwell 
in  a  moment  of  irritation,  when  one  of  his  words  was  of  the 
kind  that  would  require  a  dash  in  modern  printing.  But 
even  that  single  instance  is  doubtful ;  and,  were  it  true,  the 
commemoration  of  it  by  Clarendon  and  Cowley  may  surprise 
us.  For  what  was  their  hero  and  royal  master,  Charles  the 
Second,  the  theme  of  their  eulogies  ?  What,  in  manners  and  in 
speech  was  this  lazy  coffin-faced  lout,  this  Louis  Kerneguy 
of  Scott's  novel,  this  Lord's  anointed  of  Juxon  and  Sheldon, 
that  had  been  brought  back  to  sit  upon  the  throne  of  England, 
and  of  whose  grace  and  good  humour  we  hear  so  much,  as  he 
jested  with  his  courtiers  in  Whitehall,  or  went  about  with  his 
spaniels  and  fed  the  ducks  in  the  Park  ?  In  the  particular  of 
manners,  as  distinct  from  morals  or  abilities,  I  will  peril  the 
whole  impression  on  one  of  his  preserved  letters  to  his  sister, 
the  Princess  Henrietta.  There  is  nothing  immoral  in  it ;  but 
it  is  brutally  and  disgustingly  dirty.  Puritanism  or  anti- 
Puritanism,  what  but  coarseness  could  there  be  in  a  Court 
where  Louis  Kerneguy  was  King  ? 

The  various  characteristics  of  the  Restoration  literature, 
whether  anti-Puritanism  or  others  that  may  seem  more  spe- 
cial and  accidental,  are  best  seen  in  combination  in  the  Drama 
of  the  Restoration. 

By  the  Ordinance  of  the  Long  Parliament,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Civil  Wars,  enacting  that,  "  while  these  sad  causes  and 
set  times  of  humiliation  do  continue,  public  stage-plays  shall 
cease  and  be  forborne,"  the  Drama  had  been  practically  extin- 
guished in  England  from  1642  to  1656.     Occasionally  in  that 


THE   DRAMA   OF   THE    RESTORATION.  347 

interval  there  had  been  an  attempt  in  London  to  act  regular 
plays  ;  private  theatricals,  which  the  ordinance  did  not  reach, 
had  been  kept  up  in  some  great  houses  ;  and  "  the  incorrigible 
vitality  of  the  theatre/'  as  Mr.  Ward  calls  it,  had  asserted  itself 
in  an  itinerant  perseverance,  chiefly  under  the  management 
of  an  old  actor  named  Robert  Cox,  in  the  custom  of  "  drolls/' 
or  mixtures  of  tight-rope  dancing  and  farcical  dialogue,  per- 
formed at  country  fairs.  In  the  main,  however,  the  stage 
and  all  its  appurtenances  had  gone  down.  The  dramatists  of 
the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  bereft  of  their  craft  of  play-writing, 
were  keeping  schools ;  and  the  old  actors,  some  of  whom  may 
have  trod  the  boards  with  Shakespeare,  were  keeping  tap- 
rooms and  village-inns,  actors  no  more,  but  excellent  in 
anecdote  as  they  poured  out  the  ale.  Not.  that  the  drama 
had  ceased  to  exist  as  a  form  of  literature.  Through  the 
Civil  Wars,  and  still  more  through  the  Commonwealth  and 
the  Protectorate,  there  continued  to  be  a  demand  for  dramas 
for  private  reading,  and  there  was  a  considerable  activity 
among  some  London  booksellers  in  supplying  this  demand  by 
selling  and  re-printing  popular  old  plays.  Indeed  some  plays 
which  had  been  performed  before  the  Civil  Wars  were  first 
published  in  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Pro- 
tectorate, and  some  new  pla\*s  were  written  in  those  years, 
when  there  was  no  chance  of  their  being  acted  l. 

The  first  gleam  of  a  returning  theatre  had  been  in  1656, 
the  third  year  of  Cromwell's  Protectorate,  when  Davenant 
was  allowed  to  set  up  his  so-called  Opera,  for  recitations  with 
musical  and  scenic  accompaniments,  at  the  back  of  Rutland 
House  in  Aldersgate  Street  (ante,  Vol.  V.  p.  81).  There,  or  after- 
wards at  the  Cockpit  in  Drury  Lane,  Davenant  had  gone  as 
near  to  a  reproduction  of  the  regular  drama  as  he  could.  In 
the  year  before  the  Restoration  he  had  abandoned  the  pretence 
of  opera  altogether  and  had  begun  to  put  regular  plays  on  the 
stage.  Nor  had  he  been  left  without  competition  in  the 
business.     In  the  winter  of  1659-60,  when  Monk  was  on  his 

'  1  Genest's  Account  of  the  English  Ward's  Bist.  of  English  Dramatii 
Stage  from  the  Restoration  in  1660  to  Literature,  II.  444— IK'>  ;  Xntes  from 
1830,  in  ten  volumes  (1832),  Vol.  I.:      Stationers'  Registers  from  1642  onwards. 


348  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

march  from  Scotland  and  the  Republic  was  tottering,  a  book- 
seller named  Rhodes,  formerly  wardrobe-keeper  in  a  theatre, 
had  gathered  about  him  as  many  promising"  young  actors  as 
he  could,  and  had  set  up  a  theatre  of  his  own,  whether  in 
Whitefriars  or  in  the  Cockpit  beside  Davenant's  seems  uncer- 
tain. About  the  same  time  some  of  the  surviving  old  actors, 
not  to  leave  all  the  profits  to  Rhodes  and  his  young  people, 
had  associated  themselves  in  the  Red  Bull  theatre  in  St.  John's 
Street,  Clerkenwell.  The  fact  therefore  is  that  the  Londoners 
were  again  in  full  enjoyment  of  the  drama  before  they  saw 
the  face  of  Charles  the  Second 1. 

It  was  fitting,  however,  that  the  stage  should  be  re-organized 
formally  as  one  of  the  national  institutions  of  the  Restoration. 
This  was  done  in  August  1660  by  the  grants  of  two  theatrical 
patents,  constituting  the  two  companies  that  were  thenceforth 
to  have  the  right  of  supplying  the  public  with  dramatic 
amusement.  One  was  given  to  Thomas  Killigrew,  and  the 
other  to  Davenant.  Killigrew's  company,  consisting  at  first 
of  "  the  old  actors"  from  the  Red  Bull  with  additions  from 
Rhodes's,  was  to  be  called  "The  King's  Company";  Dave- 
nant's, consisting  of  a  combination  of  his  own  staff  with 
part  of  Rhodes's,  was  to  be  known  as  "  The  Duke  of  York's 
Company,"  though  the  name  of  "  The  Opera  Company  "  still 
adhered  to  it  for  some  time.  Killigrew's  theatre,  opened  in 
November,  1660,  was  in  Gibbons's  Tennis  Court,  Vere  Street, 
Clare  Market,  off  the  Strand;  but  in  April  ]663  he  removed 
to  a  new  theatre,  called  "  The  Theatre  Royal,"  in  the  part  of 
Drury  Lane,  near  Covent  Garden,  famous  ever  since  as  the 
site  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre.  Davenant's  theatre,  after  some 
shiftings  from  the  Cockpit  to  other  temporary  premises  be- 
tween 1660  and  the  spring  of  1662,  was  in  Lincoln's  Inn- 
Fields  from  the  latter  date  onwards.  Although  the  two  com- 
panies had  been  sworn  in  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain  as  "  The 
King's  Servants  "  and  "  The  Duke  of  York's  Servants  "  re- 
spectively, and  their  patents  authorized  them  and  them  only 
to  act,  there  was  some  difficulty  at  first  in  suppressing  Rhodes 

1  Genest  and  Ward  as  before,  with  notes  about  Davenant's  operatic  entertain- 
ments from  the  Stationers'  Registers. 


THE   DRAMA    OF   THE    RESTORATION.  349 

and  others.  One  hears  accordingly  of  stray  performances 
both  at  the  Red  Bull  and  in  Whitefriars,  neither  by  Killi- 
grew's  people  nor  by  Davenant's,  for  some  time  after  16601. 

In  Davenant's  patent,  and  doubtless  also  in  Killigrew's, 
there  was  this  clause  :  "  Whereas  the  women's  parts  in  plays 
"  have  hitherto  been  acted  by  men  in  the  habits  of  women,  at 
"  which  some  have  taken  offence,  we  do  permit  and  give  leave 
"  for  the  time  to  come  that  all  women's  parts  be  acted  by 
"  women."  As  the  clause  is  permissive  only  and  not  compul- 
sory, the  public  performance  of  women's  parts  by  boys,  as  had 
been  the  English  custom  before  the  Civil  Wars,  did  not  cease 
immediately;  but  it  ceased  so  soon  that  Mr.  Ward's  state- 
ment that  "  from  the  Restoration  women's  parts  were  invari- 
ably acted  by  women  "  may  be  taken  as  substantially  correct. 
It  is  a  proof,  indeed,  of  the  popularity  of  the  change  that, 
when  women,  in  the  exercise  of  their  new  profession,  took 
revenge  for  their  long  exclusion  from  it  by  acting  frequently 
in  boys'  parts,  even  that  excess  was  welcomed.  This  was  by 
no  means  all.  From  1660  onwards  there  were  to  be  many 
important  social  consequences  from  the  re-institution  of  the 
drama  in  London,  represented  in  two  theatres,  each  with  its 
numerous  company,  and  each  company  consisting  of  actors 
and  actresses  mixed  2. 

The  following  is  an  enumeration  of  the  actors  and  actresses 
connected  with  the  two  theatres  at  one  time  or  another  be- 
tween 1660  and  1668,  and  some  of  them  through  the  whole  of 
that  period : — 

Killigrew's  or  the  King's  Company. 

Actors  : — Michael  Mohun,  Edward  Kynaston,  Theophilus  Bird, 
Charles  Hart,  John  Lacy,  Nicholas  Burt,  "William  Cartwright, 
Walter  Clunn,  William  Wintershall,  Robert  Shatterel,  William 
Shatterel ;  with  Alliiigton,  Bateman,  Blagden,  Duke,  aud  Hancock, 
associated  with  them  in  inferior  parts  from  the  first,  and  Beeston, 
Charleton,  Goodman,  GrifRn,  Haines,  Tyddoll,  and  Sherly,  as  later 
additions. 

Actresses  : — Ann  Marshall,  Rebecca  Marshall,  Mrs.  or   Miss 

1  Baker's  Biographia  Dramatica  (edit.  Theatre,  and  Red  BuU  Theatre  in  Cun- 

1782),    Introduction;  Genest ;  Articles  ningham's  London;  with  references  to 

Go  hpit,  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  Oibbom's  Pepys. 

Tennis    Court,    Lincoln's    Inn    Fields  2  Genest,  aud  Ward,  II.  443— 449. 


350         LIFE   OF    MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

Corey,  Mrs.  Knepp,  Miss  or  Mrs.  Hughes,  Mrs.  or  Miss  Rutter, 
Miss  E.  Davenport,  Miss  F.  Davenport;  with  four  other  ladies, 
called  Eastland,  Quin,  Uphill,  and  Weaver ;  to  whom  were  added 
Miss  Boutel,  Eleanor  Gwynn,  and  three  others,  called  James,  Reeves, 
and  Verjuice. 

Davenant's  or  the  Duke's  Company. 

Actoes  : — Thomas  Betterton,  Joseph  Hams,  Cave  Underhill, 
James  Nokes,  Robert  Nokes,  William  Betterton  (younger  brother 
of  Thomas,  and  a  promising  young  actor,  who  came  to  an  early 
death  by  drowning) ;  with  the  following  from  the  first  or  soon : — 
Angel,  Dacres,  Dixon,  Floyd,  Lillieston,  Lovel,  Medbourne,  Moseley, 
Norris,  Price,  Richards,  Sandford,  Sheppey,  Smith,  Turner,  Young. 

Acteesses  : — Miss  Davenport,  Miss  Saunderson  (afterwards  Mrs. 
Betterton),  Miss  Mary  Davis,  Miss  Long ;  with  five  other  ladies, 
called  Gibbs,  Holden,  Jennings,  Norris,  and  Shadwell. 

Killigrew's  chief  star  was,  undoubtedly,  Mohun,  called  also 
Major  Mohun,  because  he  had   held   a    King's   commission 
abroad;  next  to  whom,  iu  that  company,  and  accounted  his 
rivals,  or  more  than  rivals,  in  some  important  parts,  or  kinds 
of  parts,  were  Bird,  Hart,  Lacy,  Burt,  Cartwright,  Kynaston, 
and  Clunn.    Hart,  who  is  believed  to  have  been  Shakespeare's 
grand-nephew,  was  a  man  of  handsome  presence  and  a  fine  actor 
in  stately  characters ;  Lacy,  originally  a  dancing-master,  but 
who   had    held   a   lieutenant's   commission    somewhere,    was 
inimitable  in  low  and   eccentric   comedy ;    Cartwright,  who 
had  been  a  bookseller  and  was  a  man  of  culture,  was  the  best 
Falstaff  of  his  time  ;  and  Kynaston,  the  loveliest  boy-lady  on 
the  London  stage  so  long  as  ladies'  parts  were  acted  by  boys, 
grew  up  to  be  majestic  and  even  lion-like  in  kingly  parts. 
None  of  the  actors  in  tbis  company,  however,  was  so  great, 
all  in  all,  as  Betterton,  the  chief  man  in  Davenant's  company. 
Like  Kynaston,  he  had  been  apprentice  to  Rhodes  the  bookseller, 
and  had  begun  his  performances  in  the  theatre  set  up  by  Rhodes; 
but  Davenant  had  secured  the  young  man,  and  it  was  in  Dave- 
nant's theatre  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  between  1662  and  1668, 
that  he  first  fully  acquired  that  extraordinary  reputation,  both 
in  tragedy  and  in  high  comedy,  which  lasted  for  fifty  years, 
and  is  one  of  the  most  cherished  traditions  yet  of  the  English 
stage.     Next  to  him,  in  Davenant's  company,  for  high  parts 
and  some  of  light  comedy,  was  Harris,  a  man  of  intelligence 


THE   DRAMA   OF   THE   RESTORATION.  351 

and  accomplishments,  with  a  charming-  voice ;  but  in  low 
comic  parts  the  company  depended  chiefly  on  Underbill  and 
James  Nokes,  each  so  admirable  in  his  kind  that  his  very 
appearance  before  he  spoke  always  set  the  house  in  a  roar. 
So  much  for  the  actors  ;  a  word  or  two  now  for  the  actresses. 
In  Davenant's  company  the  chief  were  Miss  Davenport,  Miss 
Saunderson,  Miss  Davis,  and  Miss  Long-,  all  of  whom,  it 
appears,  were  lodged  at  first  in  Davenant's  own  house,  under 
the  charge  of  Lady  Davenant.  The  arrangement  does  not 
seem  to  have  answered  the  intended  purpose.  Miss  Saun- 
derson, indeed,  became  the  wife  of  Betterton  in  1663,  and 
shared  thenceforward  the  theatrical  fortunes  and  the  high 
social  respectability  of  that  great  actor  ;  but  in  the  same  year 
Miss  Davenport  was  withdrawn  from  the  stage  by  a  shameful 
mock-marriage  with  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  while  Miss  Davis 
had  become  known  as  Moll  Davis,  and  had  broken  bounds 
without  any  mock-ceremony.  This  Miss  Davis,  splendid  in 
singing  and  dancing,  was  perhaps  the  most  popular,  as  she 
was  to  rise  the  highest  in  a  certain  kind  of  celebrity,  of  all 
the  actresses  in  Davenant's  theatre.  At  the  head  of  those 
in  Killigrew's  at  first  were  the  two  Marshalls,  or  at  all  events 
the  elder,  Ann  Marshall,  who  was  great  in  tragic  parts. 
They  were  the  daughters  of  Stephen  Marshall,  the  famous 
Presbyterian  divine  and  Smectymnuan,  and  had  inherited 
something  of  their  father's  energy  and  ability,  applying  it 
now,  brave  girls  !  in  an  occupation  he  had  never  foreseen  for 
them  when  he  looked  his  last  upon  them  from  his  death-bed. 
Mrs.  or  Miss  Corey,  Miss  or  Mrs.  Hughes,  Miss  Boutell,  and 
Mrs.  Knepp,  the  last  of  whom  was  married,  and  was  an  inti- 
mate acquaintance  of  Pepys  and  his  wife,  were  all  thought 
good  in  light  or  comic  parts.  Not  till  1664  were  they  eclipsed 
in  such  parts  by  a  new  comer.  Then  it  was  that  the  world 
first  heard  of  a  strange,  wild,  bewitching,  kind-hearted  crea- 
ture, called  Nell  Gwynn,  born  one  knows  not  where,  and 
brought  up  one  need  not  inquire  how.  From  selling  oranges 
in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  she  had  been  promoted  to 
the  stage  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  or  more  probably  seventeen  ; 
and  thenceforward  the  chief  applauses  in  that  theatre  were 


352  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

divided  between  her  and  Ann  Marshall.  Nelly  was  irre- 
sistible in  comic  and  witty  parts,  while  the  statelier  Marshall 
still  shone  in  tragedy1. 

At  first,  of  course,  both  theatres  had  to  depend  for  the  most 
part  on  old  plays.  It  is  significant  of  the  increased  demand 
for  such  immediately  after  the  Restoration  to  find  the  book- 
seller Humphrey  Moseley  on  the  alert  to  turn  to  account  such 
dramatic  copyrights  as  he  already  possessed,  or  saw  means  of 
acquiring.  In  one  registration  of  his  in  the  books  of  the 
Stationers'  Company,  of  the  date  June  29,  1660,  he  enters  as 
his  property,  in  addition  to  all  the  unpublished  remains  of 
Suckling,  no  fewer  than  thirty-six  old  plays,  including  three 
by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  ten  by  Massinger,  three  by  Glap- 
thorne,  one  by  Shakerly  Marmion,  two  by  Chapman,  three  by 
Ford,  two  by  Rowley,  two  by  Decker,  and  three  which  he 
attributes  to  Shakespeare  under  these  titles — The  History  of 
King  Stephen,  Duke  Htmphrey,  a  tragedy,  and  Iphis  and  Iantha, 
or  a  Marriage  without  a  Man,  a, comedy.  From  Moseley 's 
stock,  in  fact,  or  printed  stock  in  other  hands,  or  stock  in 
manuscript  form,  Killigrew  and  Davenant  could  choose  plays 
for  performance  from  week  to  week.  Naturally,  however, 
industry  in  dramatic  production  had  revived  with  the  theatres 
themselves.  Accordingly,  not  only  did  Killigrew  and  Dave- 
nant republish  former  pieces  of  their  own,  to  take  their  chance 
among  the  older  plays  of  the  dead  dramatists  ;  but  entirely 
new  plays,  some  of  them  by  entirely  new  hands,  began  soon 
to  insert  themselves  in  the  series. 

With  the  help  of  Pepys's  Diary  and  other  records,  it  would 
be  possible  even  now  to  present  the  reader  with  the  series 
complete  or  nearly  so,  in  the  form  of  a  list  of  plays,  old  and 
new  together,  to  the  number,  of  about  a  hundred,  known  to 
have  been  produced  in  London,  at  Killigrew's  theatre  or  at 
Davenant's,  or  elsewhere  in  some  cases,  in  the  seven  years 
between  August  1660  and  August  1667.     That  will  not  be 

1   Genest,  Vol.  I.,  with  help  from  pas-  edition  of  Davenant's  Dramatic  Works, 

sages  in  Pepys ;  Cunningham's  London ;  1872)  ;  and  Memoir  of  John  Wilson  by 

Doran's     Their     Majesties'     Servants ;  the    same    editors    (prefixed    to    their 

Memoir  of  Davenant  by  Messrs.  Maid-  edition  of  the  Works  of  that  dramatist, 

merit    and    Logan    (prefixed    to    their  1874). 


THEATRICAL   GLIMPSES   FROM    1660   TO    1667.  353 

expected  ;  but  here  are  a  few  dated  glimpses,  chiefly  from 
Pepys,  of  the  ongoings  in  the  K.  T.,  or  King's  or  Killigrew's 
Theatre,  and  the  D.  T.,  or  the  Duke's  or  Davenant's,  through 
that  period : — 

Nov.  1660:  The  Beggars  Bush,  a  comedy  (Beaumont  and 
Fletcher)  :  K.  T.  in  Vere  Street,  opened  that  month,  "  the  finest 
playhouse,  I  believe,  that  ever  was  in  England,"  says  Pepys.  He 
first  saw  "  one  Moone,"  i.  e.  Mohun,  acting  in  this  play,  Nov.  20, 
"  who  is  said  to  he  the  best  actor  in  the  world,  lately  come  over 
"  with  the  King." 

Jan.  1660-61  :  Epicene,  or  tlve  Silent  Woman,  a  comedy  (Ben 
Jonson)  :  K.  T.  in  Vere  Street.  "Among  other  things  here,"  says 
Pepys,  "  Kynaston  the  boy  had  the  good  turn  to  appear  in  three 
"  shapes  :  first,  as  a  poor  woman  in  ordinary  clothes,  to  please 
"  Morose  ;  then  in  fine  clothes,  as  a  gallant,  and  in  them  was  clearly 
"  the  prettiest  woman  in  the  whole  house  ;  and  lastly  as  a  man, 
"and  then  likewise  did  appear  the  handsomest  man  in  the  house." 

Feb.  1660-61  :  The  Changeling,  a  tragedy  (Middleton) :  D.  T.  in 
Cockpit.  "It  takes  exceedingly,"  says  Pepys;  who  adds  "I  see 
"  the  gallants  do  begin  to  be  tired  with  tbe  vanity  and  pride  of  the 
"  theatre  actors,  who  are  indeed  grown  very  proud  and  rich." 

Sept.  1661  :  Bartholomew  Fair,  a  comedy  (Ben  Jonson)  :  K.  T. 
in  Vere  Street.  Pepys,  who  saw  the  play  on  the  7th,  notes  that  it 
had  not  been  performed  for  forty  years :  "it  being  so  satirical 
"  against  Puritanism,  they  durst  not  till  now ;  which  is  strange 
"  they  should  already  dare  to  do  it,  and  the  King  do  countenance 
"  it."  His  Majesty,  the  Duke,  and  Mrs.  Palmer  were  present ; 
"  which  was  great  content,"  says  Pepys,  "  and  indeed  I  can  never 
"  enough  admire  her  beauty." 

Nov.  1661  :  The  Bondman  (Massinger)  :  D.  T.  in  Opera  House. 
Betterton  "the  best  actor  in  the  world"  thought  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Pepys. 

Sept.  1662  :  Midsummer  Night's  Dream:  K.  T.  in  Vere  Street. 
"  Which  I  had  never  seen  before,  nor  shall  ever  again,"  says  the 
irreverent  Pepys,  "  for  it  is  the  most  insipid  ridiculous  play  that 
"  ever  I  saw  in  my  life." 

Feb.  1662-3  :  First  performance  of  The  Wild  Gallant,  a  comedy, 
Dryden's  first  play  :  K.  T.  in  Vere  Street.  Pepys,  who  saw  it  on 
the  23rd,  reports  very  badly.  "It  was  ill  acted,  the  King  did  not 
"  seem  pleased  at  all,  the  whole  play,  nor  anybody  else ;  my  lady 
"  Castlemaine  was  all  worth  seeing  to-night,  and  little  Stewart." 

June  1663:  The  Committee,  a  comedy  (Sir  Robei't  Howard) :  K.  T. 
in  Drury  Lane.  "  To  the  Royal  Theatre,"  writes  Pepys  under  date 
the  12th  of  this  month,  "  and  there  saw  The  Committee,  a  merry  but 
"  indifferent  play ;  only  Lacy's  part,  an  Irish  footman,  is  beyond 
"  imagination.     There  I  saw  my  Lord  Falconbridge,  and  his  lady, 

VOL.  vi.  a  a 


354  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  my  Lady  Mary  Cromwell,  who  looks  as  well  as  I  have  known  her, 
"  and  well  clad  ;  but,  when  the  house  began  to  fill,  she  put  on  her 
"  vizard,  and  so  kept  it  on  all  the  play."  Little  wonder  !  One  hardly 
expected  to  find  Cromwell's  daughter  in  the  King's  theatre  at  all ; 
but  she  may  well  have  kept  her  mask  on  when  the  play  was  such  a 
pointedly  anti-Puritan  one  as  this.  All  through,  people  must  have 
been  looking  at  her  to  see  how  she  in  particular  took  the  jests ;  e.  g. 
when  Mrs.  Day  says  to  her  husband,  the  Chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Sequestrations,  "  By  bringing  this  to  pass,  husband,  we 
shall  secure  ourselves  if  the  King  should  come ;  you'll  be  hanged 
else." 

Jan.  1663-4  :  T/ie  Indian  Queen,  a  tragedy  (Sir  Robert  Howard, 
assisted  by  Dryden)  :  K.  T.  in  Drury  Lane.  The  play  was  veiy  suc- 
cessful and  attracted  crowds.  "  A  most  pleasant  show  and  beyond 
"  my  expectation,"  says  Pepys  of  it ;  "  the  play  good,  but  spoilt  by  the 
"  rhyme,  which  breaks  the  sense.  But,  above  my  expectation  most, 
"  the  eldest  Marshall  did  do  her  part  most  excellently  well  as  I  ever 
"  heard  woman  in  my  life." — Dryden's  own  second  play,  a  tragi- 
comedy, called  The  Rival  Ladies,  was  produced  about  the  same 
time  in  the  same  theatre,  though  Pepys  did  not  see  it  till  the 
following  August,  when  he  thought  it  "  a  very  innocent  and  most 
"  pretty  witty  play." 

June  1664  :  Henry  V  (not  Shakespeare's,  but  by  the  Earl  of 
Orrery)  :  D.  T.  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  Pepys's  account  of 
the  play  is  enthusiastic.  "  A  most  noble  play,  writ  by  my  Lord 
Orrery,"  he  says ;  "  wherein  Betterton,  Harris,  and  Ianthe's  parts 
"  most  incomparably  wrote  and  done,  and  the  whole  play  the  most 
"  full  of  heights  and  raptures  of  wit  and  sense  that  ever  I  heard." 

April  1665  :  Mustapha,  a  tragedy  (the  Earl  of  Orrery)  :  D.  T.  in 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  "All  the  pleasure  of  the  play,"  says  Pepys, 
"  was  the  King  and  my  lady  Castlemaine  were  there  ;  and  pretty 
"  witty  Nell  of  the  King's  house,  and  the  younger  Marshall,  sat 
"  next  us,  —which  pleased  me  mightily."  These  two  actresses  were 
in  the  audience  on  the  occasion. 

—  About  this  time  was  produced  at  the  K.  T.  in  Drury  Lane 
Dryden's  third  play,  a  tragedy,  The  Indian  Emperor,  or  the  Con- 
quest of  Mexico  by  the  Spaniards :  being  the  sequel  of  the  Indian 
Queen.  It  was  the  first  thoroughly  successful  play  of  Dryden,  and 
established  his  reputation. 

Interruption  of  eighteen  months  by  the  Great  Plague  and  Great 
Fire: — Dryden's  Indian  Emperor  at  the  King's  Theatre  and  Orrery's 
Mustapha  at  the  Duke's,  were  the  plays  principally  running  when, 
in  May  1655,  the  Plague  brought  horror  into  London,  theatre- 
going  ceased,  and  the  theatres  were  shut  up.  Even  after  the  subsi- 
dence of  the  Plague  in  the  winter  of  1665-6  there  was  no  hurry  to 
resume  stage-amusements.  In  March  1666,  when  the  vast  mortality 
was  over,  and  the  town  had  again  filled,  the  theatres  remained 
closed.      On  the  19th  of  that  month   Pepys   visited   the   King's 


THEATRICAL   GLIMPSES   FROM    1660  TO    1667.  355 

Theatre  at  Drury  Lane  out  of  curiosity.  "  All  in  dirt,"  he  reports, 
"  they  being  altering  of  the  stage  to  make  it  wider ;  hut  God 
"  kuows  when  they  will  begin  to  act  again.  But  my  business  here 
"  was  to  see  the  inside  of  the  stage,  and  all  the  tiring-rooms  and 
"  machines;  and  indeed  it  was  a  sight  worth  seeing.  But  to  see 
"  their  clothes  and  the  various  sorts,  and  what  a  mixture  of  things 
"  there  was, — here  a  wooden  leg,  there  a  ruff,  here  a  hobby-horse, 
"  there  a  crown, — would  make  a  man  split  himself  with  laughing ; 
"  and  particulai-ly  Lacy's  wardrobe  and  Shatterel's.  But  then 
"  again  to  think  how  fine  they  show  on  the  stage  by  candle-light, 
"  and  how  poor  things  they  are  to  look  at  near  at  hand,  is  not 
"  pleasant  at  all."  Months  more  passed ;  and,  the  Great  Fire  of 
September  1666  having  added  new  desolation,  it  was  not  till  the 
last  week  in  November  1666  that  the  public  theatres  were  effectu- 
ally again  at  work. 

Feb.  1666-7  :  The  Chances,  a  comedy  (Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
altered  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham) :  K.  T.  in  Drury  Lane. 
"  A  good  play,  and  the  actors  most  good  in  it,"  says  Pepys,  "  and 
"  pretty  to  hear  Knepp  sing  in  the  play  very  properly  '  All  night 
"  '  I  weep ' ;  and  sung  it  admirably.  The  whole  play  pleases  me 
"  well,  and  most  of  all  the  sight  of  many  fine  ladies  ;  among  others, 
"  my  Lady  Castlemaine  and  Mrs.  Middleton  :  the  latter  of  the  two 
"  hath  also  a  very  excellent  face  and  body,  I  think.  And  so  home 
"  in  the  dark,  over  the  ruins,  with  a  link." 

March  1667  :  Secret  Love,  or  the  Maiden  Queen,  a  tragi-comedy 
(Dryden) :  K.  T.  in  Drury  Lane. — This  is  Dryden's  fourth  play, 
or  his  fifth  if  we  include  his  share  in  Sir  Robert  Howard's  Indian 
Queen. — Pepys's  account  of  the  performance  (March  2)  is  as  fol- 
lows : — "  After  dinner  with  my  wife  to  the  King's  house  to  see 
"  The  Maiden  Queen,  a  new  play  of  Dryden's,  mightily  commended 
"  for  the  regularity  of  it  and  the  strain  and  wit ;  and  the  truth 
"  is  there  is  a  comical  part  done  by  Nell,  which  is  '  Florimel,'  that 
"  I  never  can  hope  ever  to  see  the  like  done  again  by  man  or 
"  woman.  The  King  and  Duke  of  York  were  at  the  play.  But  so 
"  great  performance  of  a  comical  part  was  never,  I  believe,  in  the 
"  world  as  Nell  do  this ;— both  as  a  mad  girl ;  then,  most  and  best 
"  of  all,  when  she  comes  in  like  a  young  gallant,  and  hath  the 
"  motions  and  carriage  of  a  spark  the  most  that  ever  I  saw  any 
"  man  have.  It  makes  me,  I  confess,  admire  her."  Pepys.  saw  the 
play  again  on  the  25th  of  the  same  month:  "which  indeed  the 
"  more  I  see,"  he  then  notes,  "  the  more  I  like ;  and  is  an  excellent 
"  play,  and  so  done  by  Nell  her  merry  part  as  cannot  be  better  done 
"  in  nature." — The  King  also  was  very  much  disposed  to  admire 
Nelly ;  but  her  promotion  to  semi-royalty  had  yet  to  come. 

—  Dryden's  first  and  unsuccessful  play,  The  Wild  Gallant^  re- 
vived at  the  K.  T.  in  Drury  Lane,  considerably  altered,  and  with 
a  new  prologue  and  new  epilogue.  The  success  of  his  Maiden 
Queen  had  emboldened  him  to  that  experiment. 

Aa  3 


356  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND  HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 

Aug.  1667:  Dryden's  Sir  Martin  Mar- All,  or  the  Feigned  In- 
nocence, a  comedy:  D.  T.  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  Dryden,  having 
hitherto  written  only  for  the  King's  theatre,  had  preferred  not 
giving  his  name  at  once  for  this  play  at  the  Duke's;  but  (save  in 
so  far  as  he  may  have  used  a  version  of  Moliere's  L'Etourdi  by 
the  Duke  of  Newcastle)  it  was  wholly  his  own — the  fifth  of  his 
dramas,  or  the  sixth  if  we  include  his  share  in  The  Indian  Queen. 
The  play  was  most  successful.  "It  is  the  most  entire  piece  of 
"  mirth,"  says  Pepys,  "  a  complete  farce  from  one  end  to  the  other, 
"  that  certainly  was  ever  writ.  I  never  laughed  so  in  all  my  life, 
"  and  at  very  good  wit  therein,  not  fooling." 

—  Dryden's  Indian  Emperor  revived  at  the  King's  theatre  in 
Drury  Lane,  to  balance  the  attraction  of  his  new  play  at  the  other 
house.  Pepys  was  at  the  King's  house  on  the  22nd ;  "  where  I 
"  find  Nell  come  again,"  he  says,  "  which  I  am  glad  of,  but  was  most 
"  infinitely  displeased  with  her  being  put  to  act  the  Emperor's 
"  daughter,  which  is  a  great  and  serious  part,  which  she  does  most 
"  basely."  To  explain  this,  it  may  be  mentioned  that,  about  a 
month  before,  Nelly  had  gone  to  live  with  Lord  Buckhurst,  and 
had  signified  her  intention  of  retiring  from  the  stage  altogether. 
There  had  been  a  quarrel,  however ;  and  Nelly  had  come  back, 
moneyless,  and  decidedly  under  a  cloud  for  the  moment.  Lord 
Buckhurst  was  saying  dreadful  things  of  her ;  the  actor  Hart,  her 
former  admirer,  now  hated  her;  even  Lady  Castlemaine,  who  had 
been  her  great  friend,  had  thrown  her  off;  there  was  a  general 
agreement  to  neglect  her.  It  could  not  last  long,  and  she  was  to 
bewitch  them  all  again.  The  spirit  of  the  little  thing,  it  appears, 
had  risen  in  her  temporary  adversity.  It  was  about  this  time,  at 
all  events,  that  she  had  an  encounter  of  wits  in  the  green-room 
with  her  fellow-actress  Beck  Marshall.  That  lady,  with  the  rest, 
having  upbraided  Nelly  with  the  Lord  Buckhurst  affair,  Nelly's 
retort  was  that,  though  she  was  not  "  a  presbyters  praying 
daughter,"  but  had  been  brought  up  in  very  bad  society,  "  filling 
out  strong  waters  to  the  gentlemen,"  yet  she  had  a  right  to  con- 
sider herself  the  more  virtuous  courtesan  of  the  two  l. 

Who  does  not  feel  the  charm  of  such  glimpses?  What 
a  world  of  pleasure,  long1  unnecessarily  withheld,  had  been 
restored  in  the  reopened  theatres,  each  with  its  boxes,  pit, 
and  galleries,  where  a  thousand  people  or  so  could  sit  every 
evening,  from  about  three  o'clock  till  nine,  seeing  and  hearing 
a  play  of  Shakespeare's  once  more,  or  any  later  Elizabethan 
comedy  or  tragedy,  or  whatever  else  of  newer  sorts  might  be 
produced  by  living  talent ! 

1  Genest  and  Pepys,  with  references  to  Scott's  edition  of  Dryden's  Works  and 
Christie's  edition  of  Dryden's  Poems. 


RESTORATION  COMEDIES  AND  FARCES.       357 

Charles  preferred  Comedy  and  Farce  to  Tragedy,  and  re- 
commended the  dramatists  about  his  Court  to  take  their  plots 
for  farces  and  comedies  from  the  recent  or  contemporary  conti- 
nental drama,  but  above  all  from  the  Spanish.  Royal  influence, 
therefore,  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  undoubted 
fact  of  the  preponderance  of  comedy  and  farce  in  the  drama  of 
the  Restoration,  and  also  with  the  fact  that  not  a  few  of  the 
Restoration  comedies  and  farces  were  copies,  or  even  transla- 
tions, of  French  and  Spanish  originals.  An  importation  of 
foreign  literary  tastes,  and  especially  of  French  literary  tastes, 
was,  however,  almost  a  necessary  incident  of  the  Restoration. 
Many  of  the  courtiers  of  Charles,  it  is  to  be  remembered, 
including  some  of  the  first  aristocratic  contributors  to  the 
Restoration  drama,  had  been  long  resident  in  France,  and  had 
acquired  French  habits  in  literary  matters  during  their  exile, 
as  well  as  a  knowledge  of  the  current  French  literature. 
These  brought  their  knowledge  and  their  acquired  tastes 
back  with  them  to  England,  and  so  assisted  in  that  sub- 
stitution of  the  French  influence  for  the  older  Italian,  as  the 
paramount  foreign  influence  in  English  literature,  which  our 
historians  agree  in  dating  from  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 
Nevertheless,  in  essentials,  the  English  comedy  of  the  Restora- 
tion remained  still  English.  Moliere,  whose  dramatic  activity 
had  begun  in  1653  and  who  lived  till  1673,  was  known,  re- 
ferred to,  quoted,  translated  in  parts,  and  pillaged  from  at 
pleasure ;  but  much  of  him,  and  the  best  of  him,  could  not  be 
transferred.  In  the  humorous  coarseness  of  the  native  English 
farces  and  comedies  of  the  Restoration,  or  even  of  those  that 
Moliere  suggested,  there  is  little  of  the  peculiar  genius  of  his 
wit  and  gaiety.  So,  though  there  were  translations  from 
Moreto,  Calderon,  and  other  contemporary  Spanish  dramatists, 
and  plots  for  English  comedies  were  freely  borrowed  from 
them  or  from  their  Spanish  predecessors,  the  effect  was  but 
superficial.  In  body  and  in  spirit  the  English  comedy  of  the 
Restoration  retained  its  characteristic  nationality  l.     Among 

1   On   tlie    Spanish    and    French    in-  where,  besides  independent  discussion 

fluences  on  the  English  Drama  of  the  of  the  subject,  there  is  a  valuable   ac- 

Restoration  see  Professor  Ward's  Eng-  cumulation  of  facts  in  the  text  and  in 

lish  Dramatic*  Literature,  II.  4t52 — 175  ;  the  footnotes. 


358         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS  TIME. 

the  most  characteristic  of  the  Restoration  comedies  all  in  all 
one  might  name  Cowley's  Cutter  of  Coleman  Street,  Sir  Robert 
Howard's  Committee,  Killigrew's  Parson's  Wedding,  and  Lacy's 
Old  Troop  and  his  Sawney  the  Scot.     While  all  the  five  agree 
in  being  distinctly  anti-Puritan  in  theme  and   feeling,  the 
cleverest  of  the  five  are  Howard's  and  Lacy's.     Poor  Cowley 
had  rather  failed  to  please  the  Court  by  his  recast  of  an  old 
play  of  his  under  the  new  name  of  The  Cutter,  and  had  in  fact 
produced  an  absurd,  ill-tempered  thing,  coarsely  worded,  and 
utterly  unworthy  of  his  genius.     There  is  more  of  real  cha- 
racter and  real  humour  in  Howard's  Committee,  with  less  of 
coarseness,  and  indeed  hardly  any.     Lacy's  Old  Troop,  with 
much  stir  and  humour  in  it,  is  incredibly  coarse  in  its  plot 
and  its  language ;   his  Sawney  the  Scot,  a  new  version  of  the 
Taming   of  the  Shrew,  is   coarse    only  in    the  incidental   ex- 
pressions of  the  imperturbable  Sawney  himself,  in  a  dialect 
meant  for  Scotch  of  the  Aberdeen  variety,  though  these  are 
startling   enough.     Killigrew's   Parsons   Wedding    is    simply 
abominable.     It   was   one   of  eleven   plays   he   had    written 
abroad,  and  seems  to  have  been  the  only  comic  piece  of  his 
he  ventured  to  try  even  on  his  own  stage.     He  did  his  utmost 
for  its  bestiality  by  having  it  acted  wholly  by  women. 

Though  Comedy  was  in  the  ascendant,  there  did  not  cease 
to  be  a  demand,  of  course,  for  something  that  could  be  called 
Tragedy.  Not  only  were  tragedies  or  tragi-comedies  of  Shake- 
speare, Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Massinger,  Shirley,  and  other 
old  dramatists  occasionally  revived  ;  there  were  also  some  stray 
attempts  on  the  part  of  new  authors  to  produce  fresh  tragedies 
on  the  traditional  Elizabethan  model,  with  the  customary  use 
of  blank  verse,  wholly  or  mainly,  for  the  dialogue.  But  the 
peculiar  tragic  drama  of  the  Restoration  was  one  of  a  new 
kind,  bred  by  the  conditions  of  the  Restoration  itself,  and 
belonging  exclusively,  we  may  say,  to  that  particular  period 
of  English  literature.  This  was  the  so-called  Heroic  Play  or 
Tragedy  of  Rhymed  Declamation. 

The  Heroic  Play  was  a  combination  of  several  novelties.  In 
the  first  place,  it  proceeded  on  a  new  notion  that  had  crept  into 
the  literary  mind  of  Europe  as  to  what  constitutes  the  poetical 


HEEOIC   PLATS   OR   RHYMING   TRAGEDIES.  359 

or  ideal  in  matter.  One  may  trace  the  phenomenon  as  far 
back  as  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia.  In  that  pastoral 
romance,  or  romance  pastoral  and  heroic,  if  I  may  trust  to 
my  own  recollection  of  it,  we  are  introduced,  at  first,  to  two 
shepherds,  Strephon  and  Claius,  in  a  Greek  island,  both  in 
love  with  the  beautiful  shepherdess  Urania ;  and,  as  we  read 
on,  we  find  a  Musidorus,  a  Pirocles,  a  Kalander,  and  other 
Arcadians,  till  the  story  expands  itself,  "  bringing  in  kings  and 
"  queens,  and  the  war  between  the  Lacedaemonians  and  the 
"  Helots,  and  leading  to  combats  in  armour,  new  friendships 
"  and  jealousies,  many  adventures  and  surprises,  songs  and 
"  soliloquies  of  lovers,  and  extremely  high-flown  conversa- 
"  tions."  This  kind  of  ideal,  a  bastard  prose-cognate  of 
Spenser's  wondrous  Pastoralism  and  Arthurianism  in  verse, 
and  barely  tolerable  even  from  the  fine  hands  of  Sidney,  had 
reappeared,  with  degenerate  features,  in  those  voluminous 
French  heroic  romances  of  Gomberville,  Calprenede,  Georges 
de  Scuderi,  Madeleine  de  Scuderi,  and  others,  which  were  the 
delight  and  torture  of  French  readers  between  1650  and  1660, 
as  they  came  out  in  instalments,  and  of  English  readers  also  in 
translations  of  the  successive  instalments.  The  heroes  and 
heroines  were  Pharamonds,  Cleopatras,  Mustaphas,  Bassas, 
Cassandras,  or  other  kings,  queens,  and  warriors  of  historical 
or  quasi-historical  names ;  you  were  supposed  to  be  on 
historical  ground,  and  among  Greeks,  Romans,  or .  Turks 
and  other  orientals ;  and  yet  you  were  nowhere  on  this 
earth  as  it  ever  was  or  ever  will  be,  but  in  an  impossible 
land  of  eternal  fighting  and  love-making,  bombazine  gal- 
lantry and  muslin  magniloquence.  As  far  as  was  con- 
sistent with  the  briefer  space  and  the  dramatic  form,  it  was 
this  kind  of  ideal  world  that  was  assumed  for  the  purposes  of 
the  new  English  Heroic  Tragedy.  There  must  be  kingly 
personages,  and  their  wars,  battles,  and  sieges  ;  but  the  ladies 
for  whom  they  languish  must  be  on  the  stage  to  the  battle's 
edge  and  the  cannon's  mouth,  inspiring  the  feats  of  valour,  or 
leading  to  the  truces  and  treaties,  and  the  real  business  must 
be  the  love-making.  Now,  as  in  such  "  love  and  honour  " 
histories  the  tendency  necessarily  was  to  incessant  rhetoric  in 


360         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

expression  of  those  sentiments,  there  resulted  a  second  differ- 
ence of  the  heroic  play  from  the  old  English  tragedy,  in  the 
subordination  of  character,  thought,  and  even  action,  to 
declamation.  The  declamation  might  run  to  sonorous  ex- 
travagance and  still  be  only  in  keeping  with  the  matter. 
And  so,  what  with  the  natural  instinct  of  the  unreal  kind  of 
matter  which  composed  the  heroic  plays  to  seek  refuge  and 
justification  in  verse  of  the  most  artificial  kind,  and  what  with 
the  special  fitness  of  rhyme  as  a  trick  of  emphasis  in  declama- 
tory dialogue,  there  came  to  be  that  third  peculiarity  of 
this  class  of  plays  which  was  the  most  obvious  of  all  and 
occasioned  most  comment.  Abandoning  the  law  or  tradition 
which,  since  the  beginnings  of  the  great  Elizabethan  drama, 
had  prescribed  blank  verse,  or  blank  verse  with  the  right  of 
rhyme  now  and  then,  as  the  proper  language  for  tragedies, 
histories,  and  serious  plays  generally,  the  new  heroic  play 
reverted  boldly  to  the  rhymed  verse  which  had  previously 
claimed  possession  of  all  English  poetry  whatsoever,  dramatic 
or  non-dramatic. 

In  nothing  was  the  French  influence  on  the  English  litera- 
ture of  the  Restoration  more  specifically  visible  than  in  this 
revolt  from  the  established  English  custom  of  blank  verse  for 
the  drama.  Since  1635,  when  Corneille  produced  his  first 
tragedy,  the  classic  French  drama  had  come  fully  into  being 
in  the  successive  masterpieces  of  that  author,  followed  by  some 
of  Moliere's  in  comedy ;  precisely  in  those  pre-Restoration 
years  when  the  English  national  drama  was  extinct  or  in 
abeyance,  this  classical  French  drama  of  Corneille  and  Moliere 
was  the  most  striking  thing  in  the  literature  of  Europe ;  and 
the  tragedies  of  Corneille,  as  all  the  world  noted,  and  such  of 
the  comedies  of  Moliere  as  were  in  verse  at  all,  were  systemati- 
cally in  rhyme.  The  contagion  had  spread  into  Italy,  where 
there  had  appeared,  in  1655,  a  discourse  by  an  eminent  Italian 
critic  recommending  rhymed  verse  only  as  proper  for  tragedy. 
Nor  could  England  avoid  the  effects.  In  1658  and  1659,  just 
when  Corneille  had  produced  all  his  best  tragedies,  and  was 
employing  his  decaying  powers  in  the  composition  of  those 
critical  essays  in  which  he  expounded  his  notions  of  the  drama 


HEROIC   PLAYS   OR   RHYMING   TRAGEDIES.  361 

in  general,  tragedy  in  particular,  and  the  law  of  the  three 
dramatic  unities,  his  name  and  authority  had  come  to  be  of  no 
small  consequence  in  England.  When  the  Drama  was  revived 
in  England,  immediately  before  the  Restoration,  it  came  there- 
fore to  be  a  very  natural  question  whether  the  old  Elizabethan 
style  of  blank  verse  should  be  resumed  for  plays,  or  whether 
it  would  not  be  better  to  conform  to  the  French  example  of  Cor- 
neille  and  Moliere.  The  decision,  with  some  at  least,  was  that, 
with  all  respect  for  Shakespeare  and  the  other  Elizabethans, 
tragedies  and  serious  plays,  and  especially  the  kind  of  play 
called  the  heroic,  ought  certainly  to  be  written  in  rhyme. 
The  peculiar  rhymed  verse  of  the  French  dramas,  however, 
being  those  Alexandrines  or  Iambic  senarian  couplets  which 
had  never  been  very  popular  in  England,  and  could  hardly 
reconcile  themselves  to  the  English  ear,  it  was  voted  that  the 
old  English  decasyllabic  couplet,  familiar  and  common  since 
Chaucer's  time,  and  occasional  in  the  English  drama  itself 
hitherto,  should  be  the  verse  of  the  new  English  drama. 
Hence  the  rule  of  so  called  rhyming  heroics  as  part  and  parcel 
of  the  English  heroic  play.  Still,  even  with  this  deviation 
from  the  strict  French  fashion,  the  English  heroic  plays,  from 
their  first  introduction,  were  regarded  as  direct  derivatives 
from  Corneille  and  the  French.  "  Corneille,  the  great  dra- 
"  matic  author  of  France,  wonderfully  applauded  by  the  present 
"  age,  both  among  his  own  countrymen  and  our  Frenchly 
"  affected  English,"  is  the  phrase  of  a  contemporary  English 
critic,  who  also  expressly  refers  more  than  once  to  "  the 
French  way  of  continual  rhyme  and  interlai'ding  of  history 
with  adscititious  love  and  honour  "  as  the  characteristics  of 
the  English  heroic  play1. 

As  the  English  heroic  rhyming  tragedy  was  an  invention 
or  importation  of  Davenant's  revived  Laureateship,  so  part  of 
the  credit  of  it,  such  as  it  was,  might  have  been  claimed  by 
Davenant  himself.  His  operatic  drama  of  The  Siege  of  Rhodes, 
the  first  part  of  which  was  produced  in  1656,  and  also  to  some 

1   Professor    Henry    Morlev's    First  476'  :  Phillips's  Theatrwn  Poetarwm  of 

Sketch  of  English  Literature,  pp.  633-4  107f>.  Articles  CorntiUe,  Earl  of  Orrery, 

(a.  very  luminous  passage  on  Corneille's  and  I>r;/di  ". 
influence)  ;  Ward's  Dram.  Lit.  II.  473 — 


36.2  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

extent  bis  two  operatic  pieces,  The  Cruelty  of  the  Spaniards  in 
Peru  and  The  History  of  Sir  Francis  Brake,  likewise  produced 
under  the  Protectorate,  are  in  the  approved  "  love  and  honour  " 
vein  of  the  heroic  play,  and  are  written  in  rhymed  heroics, 
intermixed  with  rhyming"  lyric  stanzas.  Davenant,  however, 
had  been  forced  into  this  rhyming-  style  of  heroic  declamation 
by  the  exigencies  of  his  situation  at  the  time.  It  was  not  the 
regular  drama  that  he  had  been  allowed  to  revive  in  London 
under  Oliver,  but  only  the  peculiar  kind  of  dramatic  entertain- 
ment he  called  an  opera,  telling  the  story  in  recitative,  and 
filling  out  the  rest  with  song,  instrumental  music,  and 
pageant  ;  and  each  of  the  pieces  of  his  we  have  named  ought 
to  be  regarded  therefore  rather  as  a  libretto  for  an  operatic 
performance  than  as  a  drama  proper.  They  are  very  good 
and  careful  in  that  kind,  far  better  than  the  wording,  whether 
recitative  or  song,  provided  for  most  operas  now  ;  but  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that,  for  the  regular  drama,  had  that 
been  permissible,  Davenant  would  have  persisted  in  his  allegi- 
ance to  the  Elizabethan  method. 

The  introduction  of  the  rhymed  heroic  tragedy  upon  the 
English  stage  may  be  attributed  more  properly,  therefore,  to 
another  person.  This  was  our  old  friend,  Roger  Boyle,  Lord 
Broghill,  now  Earl  of  Orrery.  There  must  have  been  a  con- 
stitutional proclivity  in  this  member  of  the  Boyle  family  to 
the  heroic  or  "  love  and  honour  "  species  of  fiction  ;  for  one  of 
the  celebrated  books  of  the  Protectorate  had  been  Lord  Brog- 
hill's  heroic  prose-romance,  Parthenissa,  of  which  several 
portions  had  appeared,  at  intervals,  before  the  Restoration, 
though  it  had  not  then  been  completed.  Retaining  his  liking 
for  this  style  of  the  poetic,  but  taking  to  the  dramatic  form  of 
authorship  after  the  Restoration,  Orrery  had  written,  between 
1660  and  1665,  at  least  three  heroic  rhyming  plays,  The  Black 
Prince,  The  History  of  Henry  the  Fifth,  and  Mnstapha,  the  Son 
of  Solyman  the  Magnificent.  The  last  two  had  been  acted  at 
Davenant's  theatre  ;  and  the  Tragedy  of  Mustapha  in  particular, 
the  subject  of  which  was  suggested  by  Davenant's  Siege  of 
Rhodes,  seems  to  have  been  the  most  successful  and  frequently 
repeated  thing  in  the  shape  of  tragedy  on  the  English  stage 


HEROIC   PLAYS   OR   RHYMING   TRAGEDIES.  363 

between  1663  and  1665.  The  opening  of  the  first  act  will  be 
a  sufficient  specimen  of  the  verse.  The  scene  is  Solyman's 
camp  with  his  pavilion  : — 

Ritstan.     What  influence,  mighty  Sultan,  rules  the  day 
And  stops  your  course  where  glory  leads  the  way  1 
Th'  Hungarian  armies  hasten  from  the  field, 
And  Buda  waits  for  your  approach  to  yield ; 
Yet  you  seem  doubtful  what  you  are  to  do, 
And  turn  from  triumphs  when  they  follow  you. 

Pyrrhus.     We  at  the  sun's  one  moment's  rest  should  more 
Admire  than  at  his  glorious  course  before. 
Glory,  like  time,  progression  does  require  : 
When  it  does  cease  t'  advance  it  does  expire. 

Solyman.     You  both  mistake.     My  glory  is  the  cause 
That  in  my  conquest  I  have  made  a  pause. 
Whilst  Hungary  did  powerful  foes  afford 
I  thought  her  ruin  worthy  of  my  sword  ; 
But  now  the  war  does  seem  too  low  a  thing 
Against  a  mourning  Queen  and  infant  King. 
Pyrrhus,  it  will  unequal  seem  in  me 
To  conquer  and  then  blush  at  victory  l. 

The  Earl  of  Orrery's  rank,  and  his  acquired  reputation  both 
in  state  and  in  war,  recommended  the  new  style  of  the  heroic 
rhyming-  drama.  One  of  the  first  to  follow  him  in  the  practice 
was  Sir  Robert  Howard,  whose  rhymed  tragedy  of  The  Indian 
Queen,  in  which  he  was  assisted  to  an  unknown  extent  by 
Dryden,  was  produced  with  much  success  at  the  King's  theatre 
early  in  1664,  and  was  published,  together  with  his  two 
comedies,  and  another  tragedy  called  The  Vestal  Virgin,  in 
1665.  Sir  Robert,  however,  was  not  an  absolute  convert  to 
the  theory  of  rhyme  only  for  the  serious  drama.  His  other 
tragedy,  The  Vestal  Virgin,  is  partly  in  rhyme  and  partly  in 
blank  verse  ;  and  in  the  preface  to  his  volume  containing  his 
four  plays,  where  he  distinctly  refers  to  "  the  dispute  between 
<;  many  ingenious  persons  whether  verse  in  rhime  or  verse 
"  without  the  sound  (which  may  be  called  blank  verse,  though 
"  a  hard  expression)  is  to  be  preferred,"  he  ventures  on  the 
opinion  that,  upon  the  whole,  rhyme  is  "  proper  for  a  poem  or 
copy  of  verses,"  but  "  unnatural  "  for  a  drama,  inasmuch  as  it 

'  Ward's   Dram.  Lit.  II.  492—495;    and  Herringman's  1669  edition  of  Orrery's 
Henry  the  Fifth  and  Mv&tapha. 


364  LIFE   OF   MILTON  AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

would  seem  strange  "  when  a  servant  is  called  or  a  door  bid 
be  shut  in  rhyme1." 

In  the  preface  to  The  Usurper,  a  tragedy  by  Sir  Robert's 
brother,  the  Honourable  Edward  Howard,  which  was  acted  at 
the  King's  theatre  in  or  before  1667,  that  member  of  the  clever 
Howard  family  also  declares  his  general  preference  for  blank 
verse  in  plays.  The  tragedy  itself,  accordingly,  is  in  a  kind 
of  limping  blank  verse.  Though  of  little  or  no  merit,  it  is 
interesting  on  account  of  its  theme.  Damocles,  the  usurper 
in  the  play,  is  clearly  Cromwell ;  his  son  Dionysius  is  Richard 
Cromwell  ;  Charles  appears  as  "  Cleander,  the  true  King,  dis- 
guised like  a  Moor ;  "  the  other  characters  represent  Royalists 
or  partisans  of  the  Protector ;  and  among  them  is  Hugo  de 
Petra,  "  a  parasite  and  creature  of  the  usurper/'  i.  e.  Hugh 
Peters.  Here  is  a  portion  of  the  concluding  scene ;  in  which 
Damocles,  overthrown  at  last,  appears,  in  a  kind  of  stupefied 
trance,  in  the  restored  King's  presence,  and  Hugo  de  Petra  is 
brought  in  guarded  : — 

Hugo.     Ha  !  the  King  !  I  am  blasted,  Sir ;  I  most 
Humbly  beg  that  you  would  hang  me. 

Cleander.     The  laws  may  fit  you,  Sir. 

Hugo.     I  have  deserved  it. 

Cleander.     I  make  no  question. 
Remove  this  horrid  traitor  from  my  sight : 
This  day  be  sacred  to  our  kingdom's  peace; 
And  let  him  dream  on  till  the  laws  and  death 
Awake  him. 

A  lexius.     Ask  the  King  mercy :  speak  for  yourself,   Hugo. 

Hugo.     To  what  purpose]     Let  me  say  what  I  will,  I 
Know  they  will  hang  me  [They  lead  him  off]. 

Damocles.     Then  I  will  wake  myself. 
The  next  wound's  his  that  dares  approach  me. 
Cleander,  I  will  do  thee  justice. 

[  Wounds  himself  with  a  poniard]. 

Cleander.     Restrain  him. 

Damocles.     'Tis  too  late.     I  scorn  your  canting  forms  of  law; 
'Tis  in  my  power  to  deceive  all  your  policy.     Ha  ! 
I  do  begin  to  be  awake.     This  wound  has  don  't  ; 
But  I  shall  sleep  again,  I  fear,  and  quickly  vanish 
I  know  not  whither. 

1  Sir  Robert  Howard's  "  Four  New  Plays  "  :  Herringnian's  edition  of  1665. 


JOHN   WILSON.  365 

My  eyes  grow  dim  o'  the  sudden  :  'tis  a  trouble 
Now  to  look  upwards.     Heaven  's  a  great  way  off ; 
I  shall  not  find  my  way  i'  the  dark.     Farewell ! 

A  lexius.     He 's  dead. 

Oleander.     But  left  his  name  behind :  a  glorious  villain  *. 

The  English  Drama  of  the  Restoration,  we  have  thus  seen, 
included  (1)  comedies  and  farces  in  prose,  (2)  comedies  in 
verse,  or  in  prose  and  verse  intermixed,  the  verse  either  blank 
or  blank  and  rhyme  intermixed,  after  the  native  English 
fashion,  (3)  tragedies  or  serious  plays  in  blank  verse,  with 
occasional  rhyme,  after  the  native  English  fashion,  and  (4) 
tragedies  and  histories  of  love  and  honour  in  the  peculiar  new 
fashion  of  rhyming  heroics. 

Among  the  contributors  to  this  composite  drama  whom 
should  we  recognise  now  as  the  men  of  greatest  literary 
ability  ? — Had  Davenant  worked  more  in  the  drama  after  the 
Restoration,  he  would  have  held  his  own  easily,  and  even  in 
the  little  that  he  did  produce  he  continued  to  prove  his 
trained  and  versatile  faculty.  His  Playhouse  to  Let  is  a  clewr 
medley  and  worth  reading,  especially  the  part  of  it  which 
consists  of  a  condensed  translation  from  Moliere  in  a  kind  of 
broken  French  English. — Then,  among  the  dramatists  wTho 
had  obtained  some  footing  on  the  London  stage  between 
1660  and  1667,  but  do  not  seem  to  have  taken  perma- 
nent hold  there  or  to  have  been  widely  appreciated  by  the 
public,  there  was  no  one  whose  plays  are  entitled  to  rank 
higher  now,  as  plays  for  reading,  than  that  John  Wilson 
whom  we  have  barely  had  occasion  to  name  hitherto  in 
our  literary  survey.  His  two  comedies,  The  Cheats  and  The 
Projectors,  the  first  mainly  in  prose  and  the  second  wholly, 
both  published  in  1664,  after  having  been  acted,  and  his 
tragedy  in  blank  verse  called  Anclronicus  Comnenius,  published 
in  the  same  year,  but  without  having  been  previously  acted,  are 
perhaps  the  very  best  things  in  the  early  dramatic  literature 

1  "The  Usurper,  a  Tragedy.     As  it  printed  by  Herringman,  e.g.  Sir  Robert 

was   acted    at   the    Theater   Roval   by  Howard's  comedies,  one  is  struck  byt lie 

his    Majestie's    Servants.     Written   by  fact  that  the  sheerest  prose,  or  matter 

the  Honourable  Edward  Howard,   Esq.  not   far   off   from    prose,    is    presented 

Licens'd  Aug.  2, 1667,  Roger  L'Estrange.  mechanically  as  a  kind  of  lawless  blank 

London  :    Printed  for  Henry  Herring-  verse. 
man,  1668."   In  this  and  in  other  books 


366  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

of  the  Restoration,  the  most  original,  compact,  and  full- 
bodied.  Professor  Ward,  who  has  lately  done  justice  to 
Wilson's  long-forgotten  merits,  discerns  in  him  more  of  Ben 
Jonson's  copiousness  and  ripeness  of  wit  than  in  any  of  his 
contemporaries,  and  says  justly  that  "he  draws  character  with 
"  clearness  and  strength,  and  that  the  manliness  of  his  serious 
"  as  well  as  of  his  comic  writing  refreshes  and  invigorates  the 
"student  of  the  literary  period  in  which,  unfortunately 
"  perhaps  for  his  literary  reputation,  it  was  his  lot  to  live." 
There  was  wanting  only  a  certain  electric  something  more  in 
his  genius  to  place  him  very  high  K — And  so  the  man  who  did 
emerge  as  the  supreme  dramatist  of  the  Restoration  was,  as 
all  the  world  knows,  not  John  Wilson,  but  John  Dryden. 

Between  1660  and  1663  Dryden  had  been  living  in  London 
as  a  bachelor  of  very  moderate  means,  often  seen  in  coffee- 
houses in  a  homely  suit  of  Norwich  drugget,  and  much  in  the 
society  of  Sir  Robert  Howard  and  other  persons  of  note,  but 
doing  nothing  in  literature  higher  than  some  now  untraceable 
prose  hack-work  for  the  bookseller  Herringman  and  some  new 
copies  of  complimentary  verses.  To  my  Honoured  Friend  Sir 
Robert  Howard  on  his  excellent  Poems,  To  his  Sacred  Majesty : 
A  Panegyric  on  his  Coronation,  To  my  Lord  Chancellor :  pre- 
sented on  New  Year's  Pay,  and  To  my  Honoured  Friend 
Pr.  Charleton  on  his  Learned  and  Useful  Works  : — these,  added 
to  the  Funeral  Panegyric  on  Cromwell  in  1658,  and  the  atoning 
Astraa  Redux  of  1660,  were  the  sum  and  substance  of  Dryden 
till  the  appearance  of  his  Wild  Gallant  on  the  boards  of  the 
King's  theatre  in  Vere  Street  on  the  5th  of  February,  1662-3. 
The  failure  of  that  play  will  astonish  no  one  that  tries  to  read 
it  now.  It  is  a  comedy  in  prose,  with  confused  and  ill-drawn 
characters,  very  heavy  wit,  and  a  preposterous  plot,  in  which 

!  Wilson  lived  to  about  1696,  and  was  The   Marriage  of  the  Devil,  was  not 

in  public  employment  in  Ireland  in  the  published    till    1691.      His   four  plays 

latter  part  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  have  recently  been  published  together 

and  through  that  of  James  II.     He  was  in  a  single  volume  as  part  of  the  Edin- 

the  author  of  some  legal  and  political  burgh  series  of  the  Dramatists   of  the 

writings  in  addition  to  his  dramas,  the  Restoration,  edited  by  Messrs.  Maid- 

lasl  ol  which,  a  tragi-comedy  in  prose  ment  and  Logau. 
and  blank  verse,  entitled  Bdpheyor,  or 


DRYDEN  :    HIS    FIRST   DRAMAS.  367 

an  old  lord  is  persuaded,  by  the  help  of  a  pillow,  that  his 
daughter  is  with  child,  and  also  that  he  is  with  child  himself. 
Dryden  bore  the  disappointment  patiently  enough,  and  had 
some  consolation  in  knowing  that  Lady  Castlemaine  liked  the 
play  and  defended  it  at  Court,  He  had  also  continued  en- 
couragement from  Sir  Robert  Howard  and  the  Earl  of  Orrery, 
both  of  whom  had  conceived  a  friendly  interest  in  his  fortunes. 
Between  Howard  and  Dryden  indeed  the  relations  became 
closer  now  than  they  bad  been  before.  Hitherto  they  had 
been  those  of  aristocratic  patron  and  needy  client ;  but  on  the 
1st  of  December,  1663,  Dryden  became  Howard's  brother- 
in-law,  by  marrying  his  sister,  Lady  Elizabeth  Howard.  The 
marriage,  which  was  not  only  favoured  by  Sir  Robert  and  his 
brothers  Edward  and  James,  but  had  also  the  public  consent 
of  their  father  the  Earl  of  Berkshire,  caused  some  surprise  at 
the  time ;  and  Dryden's  biographers  are  obliged  to  account 
for  it  now  by  supposing  that,  as  the  lady's  reputation  was  not 
unblemished,  her  family  were  glad  to  see  her  respectably 
married  to  any  one.  Such  as  it  was,  the  connection  with  the 
Berkshire  family  was  not  without  important  effects  on 
Dryden's  career.  While  it  was  being  arranged,  he  and  Sir 
Robert  Howard  had  formed  a  kind  of  literary  copartnership 
for  the  production  of  a  heroic  tragedy  in  rhyme ;  and  what  is 
called  Sir  Robert  Howard's  tragedy  of  The  Indian  Queen, 
brought  out  with  such  good  success  at  the  King's  theatre  in 
Drury  Lane  in  January,  1663-4,  was  the  result  of  this  co- 
partnership. Meanwhile  Dryden  had  written  his  own  second 
play,  The  Rival  Ladies,  a  tragi-comedy,  mainly  in  blank  verse, 
but  with  intermixed  rhyme  and  prose  ;  and,  this  play  having 
also  had  good  success  at  the  same  theatre  about  the  same 
time,  Dryden  published  it  in  1664,  with  an  interesting  dedi- 
cation to  the  Earl  of  Orrery,  highly  eulogistic  of  his  lordship's 
genius  and  taste  in  literary  matters,  and  expounding  critically 
some  of  Dryden's  own  notions  of  English  style  and  verse. 
From  that  year  he  felt  his  footing  surer  ;  but  his  complete 
mastery  of  the  stage-art  may  date  from  the  beginning  of 
1665,  when  his  rhymed  tragedy  of  The  Indian  Emperor, 
avowedly  a  secmel  to  The  Indian   Queen,   eclipsed    with   its 


368  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

success  at  Drury  Lane  not  only  that  previous  performance 
there,  but  all  in  rhyming  tragedy  that  had  yet  been  produced 
at  either  house,  Lord  Orrery's  best  included.     Great  pains 
were  taken  in  bringing  the  play  on  the  stage,  even  to  the 
distribution  among  the  audience  of  a   printed  handbill  ex- 
plaining the  connection  of  the  play  with  its  predecessor.     In 
The  Indian  Queen  the  subject  had  been  the  acquisition  of  the 
throne  of  Mexico  by  Montezuma  before  the  arrival  of  the 
Spaniards  in  America  ;  but  in  The  Indian  Emperor  the  audi- 
ence were  to  see   Montezuma  in  his  imperial  glory  twenty 
years  later,  and  the  intermingling  of  Mexicans  and  Spaniards, 
ending  in  his  fall  and  death  and  the  Spanish  conquest  of  his 
kingdom.     And,   what  with   the  poetic  merits  of  the  piece 
itself,  what  with  the  splendid  dresses,  what  with  the  splen- 
did acting  of  Mohun  as  Montezuma,   Hart  as  Cortez,   and 
Ann    Marshall    as  Almeria,    the    audience   were   abundantly 
satisfied,  and  the  applauses  of  The  Indian  Emperor  would  have 
gone  on  indefinitely  but  for  the  interruption  of  the  Great 
Plague.     Through  that  interruption   Dryden, — having  pub- 
lished his  Indian  Emperor,  or  at  least  registered  it  for  publi- 
cation,— lived  in  retirement  at  Charlton  in  Wiltshire,  the  seat 
of  his  father-in-law  Lord  Berkshire ;  and  there  his  first  son 
was  born.     He  was  not  idle  in  his  retirement,  however ;  and 
in  1667,  when  the  theatres  were  re-opened,  he  had  a   new 
play  for  each  of  them.     To  the  King's  house,  early  in  the 
year,  he  gave  his  comedy,  or  tragi-comedy,  partly  in  verse 
and  partly  in  prose,  called  Secret  Love,  or  the  Maiden  Queen. 
The  merits  of  the  play,  and  Nell  Gwynn's  acting  in  the  part 
of  FlorimeL  made  the  success  triumphant ;  Charles  liked  it  so 
much  that  Dryden  called  it  ever  afterwards  "  the  King's  own 
Play  "  and  would  dedicate  it  to  no  subject ;  and  under  cover 
of  its  great  success,  and  of  the  renewed  applauses  of  The  Indian 
Emperor,  now  revived  and  running  a  second  course,  even  The 
Wild  Gallant  slipped  itself  in  again  without  protest.     While 
they  were  thus  all  but  cloyed  with  Dryden  at  Drury  Lane, 
lo !  unexpectedly,  in  August  of  the  same  year,  the  other  house 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  had  his  uproarious  prose-comedy  or 
farce  of  Sir  Martin  Mar-all,     The  triumphant  success  of  this 


DRYDEN  :     HIS   FIRST    DRAMAS.  369 

play  was  also  owing-  largely  to  the  acting  in  one  of  the  parts. 
What  Nell  had  done  for  Dryden  in  his  last  play  in  the  King's 
theatre  was  done  for  him  by  Nokes  in  this  at  the  Duke's.  In 
the  part  of  Sir  Martin,  the  blundering-  knight  who  is  always 
spoiling  by  his  own  awkwardness  and  stupidity  the  cleverest 
schemes  that  can  be  devised  in  his  interest  by  his  servant 
Warner,  till  that  subtle-brained  plotter  is  driven  mad  with 
shame  and  marries  the  lady  himself,  the  acting  of  Nokes 
was  something  superb.  Colley  Cibber,  who  saw  him  long 
afterwards  in  the  part,  has  commemorated  his  performance  of 
it  as  the  very  perfection  of  that  kind  of  comic  acting  which, 
by  dumb  show  and  play  of  feature  suited  to  the  situations 
and  the  words,  kills  an  audience  by  a  continued  fatigue  of 
laughter.  Nokes  and  Nell  Gwynn  between  them,  we  can 
see,  had  helped  greatly  to  win  for  Dryden  that  supremacy  in 
the  London  dramatic  world  which  was  certainly  his  in  the 
year  1667.  The  supremacy  had  been  won  on  the  boards.  Of 
his  five  dramas,  only  The  Rival  Ladies  and  The  Indian  Emperor 
had  then  been  published 1. 

Dryden  was  one  of  those  writers  who  get  better  and  better, 
richer  and  mellower,  as  they  grow  older.  He  was  by  no 
means  at  his  best  in  1667,  had  not  even  then  found  out  his 
vein  of  highest  excellence  ;  and  this  is  to  be  remembered  while 
we  estimate  for  ourselves,  without  Nell's  acting  or  Nokes's 
acting  to  dazzle  us,  the  real  merits  of  those  five  plays  which 
had  established  his  reputation  so  far. 

Their  most  obvious  merit  is  that  they  had  been  written  to 
suit  and  had  succeeded.  Dryden  was  a  man  of  very  easy  con- 
science. His  notion  of  literature  was  not  that  rare  one  which 
would  insist  on  administering  to  the  public  what  they  need, 
whether  they  like  it  or  not ;  nor  was  it  that  which  would  first 


1  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Life  of  Dryden,  man,   under  licence  from   L'Estrange, 

forming  Vol.  I.  of  his  edition  of  Dryden's  June  27,  1664.     The  Indian   Em: 

Works  in  eighteen  volumes  (1808) ;  Mr.  was  registered  by  the  same   publisher, 

Christie's  Memoir  of  Dryden,  prefixed  also  by  licence  from  L'Estrange,  on  the 

to  the  Globe  Edition  of  Dryden's  Poetical  26th  of  May,  1665;  but,  as  I  find  1667 

Works,  with  the  notes  in  that  edition  to  generally  given  as  the  year  of  the  pub- 

the  Prologues  ami  Epilogues  of  Dryden's  lication  of  that  play,  I  suppose  Her- 

first   Plays  ;    Stationers'   Registers   for  ringman  kept  it  back  on  account  of  the 

registrations  of  the  first  Plays.     The  Great  Plague. 
Rival  Ladies  was  registered  by  Herring- 

VOL.  VI.                                             B  b 


370  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

let  something"  fashion  itself  freely  and  constitutionally,  with 
more  or  less  of  art  and  elaboration,  in  the  author's  own 
thoughts  and  genius,  and  then  publish  the  same  courageously 
to  the  winds  and  the  chances.  It  was  simply  the  grocer's 
notion  of  finding-  out  the  articles  immediately  in  demand  with 
the  best  customers  and  competing  for  the  supply  of  these. 
Having  turned  a  Restoration  writer,  he  would  go  at  once  to 
all  extremes  in  that  character.  He  avowed  that  he  wrote  for 
Charles  II.  and  his  Court,  and  that  he  recognised  no  higher 
standard  than  the  tastes  of  that  Court ;  and  his  adulation,  not 
only  of  Charles  himself,  but  of  all  persons,  things,  or  ten- 
dencies that  had  gathered  round  Charles,  was  boundless  and 
unblushing.  There  was  nothing  that  Dryden  would  not  say 
without  shame  to  please  any  important  person.  How  had 
he  written  to  Lady  Castlemaine  ? — 

"  True  poets  empty  fame  and  praise  despise ; 
Fame  is  the  trumpet,  but  your  smile  the  prize. 
You  sit  above,  and  see  vain  men  below 
Contend  for  what  you  only  can  bestow ; 
But  those  great  actions  others  do  by  chance 
Are,  like  your  beauty,  your  inheritance  : 
So  great  a  soul,  such  sweetness,"  &c. 

That  Dryden  had  taken  to  the  Drama  at  all  was  in  itself 
a  sign  of  his  readiness  to  accommodate  himself.  That  he  had 
taken  to  Comedy  first,  because  that  was  most  in  request,  was 
a  further  sign.  His  natural  inclinations  were  hardly  in  that 
direction.  But,  having  taken  to  Comedy,  he  had  exerted  him- 
self to  please  the  reigning  taste  in  that  article  in  every  parti- 
cular. In  the  first  place,  he  was  studiously  anti-Puritan. 
None  of  his  first  comedies,  indeed,  is  directly  such  an  anti- 
Puritan  invective  as  Cowley,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  and  others 
offered  for  the  stage.  He  had  possibly  a  sense  that  such 
a  thing  from  the  pen  of  one  whose  connexions  had  been 
Puritan,  and  who  had  himself  made  court  to  Oliver,  would 
have  been  unnecessarily  indecent.  But  there  are  particles  of 
anti-Puritanism  throughout  the  comedies  to  the  requisite 
extent.  "  The  gude  Scotch  covenant,"  "  a  silenced  minister/' 
and  the  like  come  in  sufficiently  ;  and  we  have  such   insinua- 


DRYDEN  :    HIS    FIRST   DRAMAS.  371 

lions  of  the  courtly  doctrines  of  royal  prerogative  and 
passive  obedience  as  the  following-, — the  second  actually  a 
translation  into  metre  of  a  passage  of  the  speech  of  Charles  I. 
on  the  scaffold  : — 

Queen.  Princes  sometimes  may  pass 

Acts  of  oblivion  in  their  own  wrong. 

Fhilocles.     'Tis  true ;  but  not  recall  them. 

Maiden  Queen,  III.   1. 

Queen.     My  people's  fears  !     "Who  made  them  statesmen  1 
They  much  mistake  their  business,  if  they  think 
It  is  to  govern. 

The  right  of  subjects  and  of  sovereigns 
Are  things  distinct  in  nature.      Theirs  is  to 
Enjoy  propriety,  not  empire.  Ibid.  I.  31. 

Further,  in  that  particular  concomitant  of  anti-Puritanism  in 
the  Restoration  literature  which  consisted  in  coarseness  of 
language,  a  degradation  of  the  standard  of  mannerly  speech 
between  human  beings  in  public  or  in  private,  Dryden's 
comedies  are  but  too  representative.  Even  his  ladies  and 
their  lovers  talk  disgustingly  on  the  least  occasion.  What 
is  worst  in  Dryden,  however,  is  that  he  pushes  coarseness, 
whenever  he  can,  into  elaborate  obscenity.  He  was  to  pander 
more  and  more  to  this  taste  of  the  Court  and  of  the  populace, 
till  in  some  of  his  plays  the  stage  is  actually  turned  into 
a  mere  proscenium  to  the  stews  ;  but  already  in  his  Wild 
Gallant  and  his  Sir  Martin  Mar-all,  and  in  one  of  his  pro- 
logues, there  were  passages  which  one  would  have  thought 
ineffable  even  then  in  an  English  theatre. 

In  those  plays  of  Dryden,  such  as  his  two  tragi-comedies 
The  Rival  Ladies  and  The  Maiden  Queen,  where  he  was  not 
tied  necessarily  to  prose  or  to  contemporary  manners,  but  had 
an  opportunity  of  showing  his  notions  of  the  ideal  or  poetical, 
he  still  adopted  what  he  found  in  fashion.  His  ideal  was 
simply  that  balloon  kind  of  ideal,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  which, 
under  the  name  of  the  heroic,  suited  and  satisfied  the  lords 
and  ladies  of  Charles's  Court.    The  rope  attaching  the  balloon 

1  Compare  this  passage  with  a  sentence  or  two  of  the  dying  speech  of  King 
Charles,  given  ante,  Vol.  III.  p.  725. 

B  b  2 


372  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

to  the  stage  was  loosened,  and  the  balloon  went  up,  containing1, 
at  one  time,  a  Don  Gonzalvo,  a  Don  Boderigo,  a  Don  Manuel, 
a  Julia,  a  Honoria,  an  Angelina,  with  the  necessary  number 
of  servants  and  other  supernumeraries,  or,  at  another  time, 
a  Queen  of  Sicily,  her  princesses  and  maids  of  honour,  a 
Lysimantes,  a  Philocles,  a  Celadon,  and  the  rest.  There 
they  remained  for  three  or  four  hours;  and  you  saw  their 
adventures,  marvellous  with  the  amount  of  love-making  and 
drawing  of  swords;  and  you  heard  their  superfine  sentiments 
uttered  in  verse,  save  for  a  dash  of  prose-fun  thrown  in  now 
and  then,  with  a  wriggling  of  the  rope  underneath,  to  keep 
the  gods  from  being  fatigued  ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  time  the 
balloon  was  hauled  down,  and  tied  again  to  the  stage  for  the 
next  occasion,  and  what  you  had  seen  and  heard  was  a  dream 
of  things  impossible  anywhere  in  nature,  and  unimaginable 
anywhere  by  a  sane  human  intelligence.  It  was  much  the 
same,  with  some  variations,  if  you  witnessed  such  a  positive 
tragedy,  in  rhymed  heroics,  as  The  Indian  Emperor.  The  ideal 
is  still  of  the  narrowest  and  most  absurdly  conventional. 
Mexicans  and  Spaniards  are  alike  featureless  in  their  sub- 
limity ;  love  and  gallantry  are  at  the  heart  of  the  fighting ; 
"  Montezuma  rises,  goes  about  the  ladies,  and  at  length  stays 
at  Almeria,  and  bows  ;"  all  the  other  personages,  transatlantic 
or  cisatlantic,  are  similarly  after  the  approved  pattern  of 
the  French  romances  of  the  day;  and  the  so-called  poetry  of 
the  dialogue  is  declamation  and  bombast. 

With  all  this,  and  with  the  future  uncalculated,  Dry  den 
was  already  a  man  to  be  admired  and  liked.  There  was  much 
in  his  character  and  demeanour  that  was  amiable  and  es- 
timable. The  very  profuseness  of  his  adulation,  his  readiness 
to  praise  any  one,  came  partly  from  an  honourable  desire  to 
acknowledge  any  favour  done  him,  partly  from  a  general 
benevolence  of  disposition,  a  habit  of  judging  people  really  by 
their  best,  and  allowing  for  every  form  of  merit.  If  he  had 
an  easy  conscience,  he  had  also  an  easy  temper.  He  was  far 
from  ovei'-estimating  himself,  was  even  modest  and  diffident 
in  that  respect,  and  always  did  himself  injustice  in  company 
by  a  certain  shyness  and  slowness.     "He  had  something  in 


dryden:   his  first  dramas.  373 

his  nature  that  abhorred  intrusion  into  any  society  what- 
soever," Congreve  was  to  say  of  hirn  from  much  later  ac- 
quaintance ;  and  it  was  true  of  him  from  the  first.  All  the 
while  there  was  a  secret  reserve  of  independence,  a  concealed 
fund  of  the  nemo  me  impune  lacesset,  on  which  he  could  draw 
if  there  were  occasion,  gently  and  with  playful  courtesy  if  the 
occasion  were  slight,  but  furiously  and  terribly  if  that  should 
be  demanded.  This  had  hardly  been  discovered  as  yet ;  and, 
on  the  whole,  easiness  of  temper,  placability,  modesty  of  self- 
estimate,  and  generosity  in  his  estimates  of  others,  dead  or 
living,  were  the  qualities  most  discernible  in  Dryden  per- 
sonally when  people  were  beginning  to  hail  him  as  the  chief 
of  the  Restoration  dramatists.  That  place,  however,  he  had 
earned,  of  course,  not  by  his  personal  characteristics,  but  by 
his  dramas  themselves.  There  too,  quite  consistently  with 
what  has  been  already  said,  we  must  admit  that  his  success 
had  not  been  undeserved.  If  his  notion  of  writing  had  been 
to  write  what  wTould  suit  the  Court,  he  had  certainly  brought 
a  larger  amount  of  talent  into  that  business,  and  had  bestowed 
more  careful  study  upon  it,  than  any  of  his  competitors.  For 
one  thing,  he  was  evidently  a  new  master  in  the  art  of  writing 
English.  "  I  know  not  whether  I  have  been  so  careful  of  the 
"  plot  and  language  as  I  ought,"  he  had  said  in  his  dedication 
of  The  Rival  Ladles  to  Lord  Orrery ;  "  but,  for  the  latter, 
"  I  have  endeavoured  to  write  English,  as  near  as  I  could  dis- 
"  tinguish  it  from  the  tongue  of  pedants  and  that  of  affected 
"  travellers."  He  had  certainly  not  failed  in  this  endeavour. 
Dryden's  English  prose,  admirable  for  its  ease,  lucidity,  and 
flexibility,  its  combination  of  strength  and  grace  with  a  kind 
of  happy  negligence,  might  well  already  have  been  a  subject 
of  remark.  Nor  was  his  mastery  of  English  verse,  after 
a  fashion  of  his  own,  in  the  least  more  doubtful.  In  his 
verse,  blank  or  rhymed,  one  could  not  but  observe,  though 
there  was  the  same  general  easy  negligence  as  in  his  prose, 
and  also  a  most  pernicious  tendency  to  any  artificial  inversion 
of  syntax  that  would  suit  the  exigencies  of  the  metre  and  the 
rhyme,  yet  a  certain  growing  consciousness  of  a  peculiar 
power.     Most  of  all   this  was  visible  in  Dryden's  discipline 


374  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

of  himself  more  and  more  strictly  every  day  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  heroic  rhymed  couplet.  That  art  of  the  use  of 
this  couplet  for  purposes  of  weighty  argumentation,  sonorous 
maxim,  or  sarcasm  and  satire,  which  Dryden  was  ultimately 
to  extricate  from  the  dramatic  form  of  industry  altogether, 
and  apply  per  se,  with  so  much  social  and  political  effect  and 
so  much  increase  of  his  own  celebrity,  was  already  forming 
itself  in  his  earliest  prologues  and  epilogues  and  in  his  Indian 
Emperor.  From  this  last  there  may  be  a  single  quotation,  ex- 
hibiting Dryden  at  his  very  best  in  verse  as  far  as  we  are  yet 
concerned  with  him.  Understand  that  Pizarro  and  a  band  of 
the  Spaniards,  with  a  Christian  priest  among  them,  have  put 
Montezuma  and  the  Indian  high  priest  to  the  rack  in  prison, 
to  force  them  to  yield  up  more  gold,  the  generous  Cortez 
being  at  the  moment  absent  and  knowing  nothing  of  the 
cruelty. 

Christian  Priest.     Those    pains,  0  Prince,  thou    sufferest    now 
are  light 
Compared  to  those  which,  when  thy  soul  takes  flight, 
Immortal,  endless,  thou  must  then  endure, 
Which  death  begins  and  time  can  never  cure. 

Montezuma.     Thou  art  deceived;  for,  whensoe'er  I  die, 
The  Sun,  my  father,  hears  my  soul  on  high  : 
He  lets  me  down  a  beam,  and,  mounted  there, 
He  draws  it  back  and  pulls  me  through  the  air  : 
I  in  the  eastern  parts  and  rising  sky, 
You  in  heaven's  downfall  and  the  west,  must  lie. 

Christian  Priest.     Fond  man,  hy  heathen  ignorance  misled, 
Thy  soul  destroying  when  thy  body  's  dead, 
Change  yet  thy  faith,  and  buy  eternal  rest. 

Indian  High  Priest.     Die  in  your  own,  for  our  belief  is  best. 

Montezuma.     In  seeking  happiness  you  both  agree, 
But  in  the  search  the  paths  so  different  be 
That  all  religions  will  each  other  fight, 
While  only  one  can  lead  us  in  the  right. 
But  till  that  one  hath  some  more  certain  mark 
Poor  human  kind  must  wander  in  the  dark, 
And  stiffer  pain  eternally  below 
For  that  which  here  we  cannot  come  to  know. 

Christian   Priest.     That    which    we   worship,    and   which    you 
believe, 
From  nature's  common  hand  we  both  receive: 
All,  under  various  names,  adore  and  love 


DRYDEN  :    HIS   FIRST   DRAMAS.  375 

One  Power  immense,  which  ever  rules  above. 
Vice  to  abhor  and  virtue  to  pursue 
Js  both  believed  and  taught  by  us  and  you. 
But  here  our  worship  takes  another  way. 

Montezuma.     Where  both  agree,  'tis  there  most  safe  to  stay ; 
For  what  more  vain  than  public  light  to  shun, 
And   set  up  tapers  while  we  see  the  sun  1 

Christian  Priest.  Though  nature  teaches  whom  we  should  adore, 
By  heavenly  beams  we  still  discover  more. 

Montezuma.     Or  this  must  be  enough,  or  to  mankind 
One  equal  way  to  bliss  is  not  designed ; 
For,  though  some  more  may  know  and  some  know  less, 
Yet  all  must  know  enough  for  happiness. 

Christian  Priest.     If  in  this  middle  way  you  still  pretend 
To  stay,  your  journey  never  will  have  end. 

Montezuma.     Howe'er,  'tis  better  in  the  midst  to  stay 
Than  wander  farther  in  uncertain  way. 

Christian  Priest.     But  we  by  martyrdom  our  faith  avow. 

Montezuma.     You  do  no  more  than  I  for  ours  do  now. 
To  prove  religion  true 
If  either  cost  or  sufferings  would  suffice, 
All  faiths  afford  the  constant  and  the  wise ; 
And  yet  even  they,  by  education  swayed, 
In  age  defend  what  infancy  obeyed. 

Christian  Priest.     Since  age  by  erring  childhood  is  misled, 
Befer  yourself  to  our  unerring  head. 

Montezuma.     Man  and  not  err  !  what  reason  can  you  give  1 

Christian  Priest.     Benounce  that  carnal  reason,  and  believe. 

Montezuma.     The  light  of  nature  should  I  thus  betray, 
'Twere  to  work  hard  that  I  might  see  the  day. 

Christian  Priest.  Condemn  not  yet  the  way  you  do  not  know ; 
I  '11  make  your  reason  judge  what  way  to  go. 

Montezuma.     'Tis  much  too  late  for  me  new  ways  to  take 
Who  have  but  one  short  step  of  life  to  make. 

Pizarro.     Increase  their  pains :  the  cords  are  yet  too  slack. 

Christian  Priest.     I  must  by  force  convert  him  on  the  rack. 

Indian  High  Priest.     I  faint  away,  and  find  I  can  no  more  : 
Give  leave,  O  King,  I  may  reveal  thy  store, 
And  free  myself  from  pains  I  cannot  bear. 

Montezuma.     Think'st  thou  I  lie  on  beds  of  roses  here, 
Or  in  a  wanton  bath  stretched  at  my  ease  1 
Die,  slave,  and  with  thee  die  such  thoughts  as  these. 

[High  Priest  turns  aside  and  dies.     Enter  Cortez. 

Not  only  was  Dryden,  in  the  year  1667,  the  chief  of  the 
Restoration  dramatists ;  he  had  been  also  qualifying'  himself, 
by  excursions  out  of  the  drama,  to  be  Davenant's  lieutenant 


376  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

meanwhile,  and  his  successor  very  soon,  in  the  nominal  head- 
ship of  the  Restoration  literature  generally. 

"Annus  Mirabilis :  The  Year  of  Wonders,  1666:  An  His- 
torical Poem,  containing  the  progress  and  various  success  of  our 
Naval  War  tvith  Holland  under  the  conduct  of  his  Highness 
Prince  Rupert  and  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Albemarle,  and  de- 
scribing the  Fire  of  London  ":  such  is  Herringman's  registration, 
under  date  January  21,  1666-7,  of  a  non-dramatic  poem  by 
Dryden  on  which  he  had  bestowed  as  much  pains  as  on 
any  of  his  plays.  It  had  been  written  in  his  enforced  vacation 
during  the  closing  of  the  London  theatres  on  account  of  the 
Great  Plague  and  the  Great  Fire  ;  and,  when  it  appeared, 
it  was  dedicated  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  Aldermen,  and  Corpo- 
ration of  London,  and  was  prefaced  by  a  letter,  dated  "  From 
Charlton,  in  Wiltshire,  Nov.  10,  1666,"  and  addressed  to  his 
brother-in-law  Sir  Robert  Howard  in  terms  of  the  most 
grateful  respect  and  humility.  The  poem  consists  of  304 
quatrain -stanzas,  like  those  of  Davenant's  Gondibert ;  and 
that  performance  of  Davenant's  was  avowedly  Dryden's  model 
for  the  verse.  But  Dryden's  versification,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, beats  Davenant's  for  weight  and  strength,  if  not  for 
luxuriance  and  melody,  and  shows  better  than  even  his  Indian 
Emperor  the  progress  of  his  self-discipline  in  the  art  of  sonorous 
metrical  rhetoric.  Dryden  has  the  advantage  also  of  a  more 
compact  story,  and  the  brevity  of  the  poem  makes  it  more 
readable  than  any  long  narrative  could  ever  be  in  a  form  of 
verse  so  unsuitable  for  narrative  as  the  elegiac  quatrain. — 
The  title  of  the  poem  describes  its  matter  very  accurately. 
The  commercial  pride  and  greed  of  the  Dutch,  we  are  told  in 
the  beginning,  had  compelled  the  great  and  good  King 
Charles  to  go  to  war  with  them.  And  what  battles  there 
had  been,  what  prodigies  of  English  seamanship  and  valour ! 
Having  just  glanced  at  the  earlier  events  of  the  war  and  duly 
noted  the  first  great  battle,  off  Lowestoffe,  on  the  3rd  of 
June,  1665,  when  the  Duke  of  York  was  commander-in-chief, 
the  poem  skips  the  rest  of  that  year,  leaving  the  Plague  un- 
derstood, to  arrive  at  the  true  year  of  wonders,  1666.  The 
alliance  of  France  and  Denmark  with  the  Dutch  having  been 


DRYDEN  :    HIS   ANNUS   MIBABILIS.  377 

mentioned,  we  see  the  English  fleets  at  sea  again  under  Prince 
Rupert  and  Albemarle.  Then  for  about  eighty  stanzas  we  are 
in  the  roar  of  the  cannon  of  Albemarle's  o-reat  four  days' 
battle  of  June  1-4,  1666,  off  the  North-Foreland,  ending 
with  Rupert's  arrival  to  help  him  and  the  retreat  of  the 
Dutch.  For  about  fifty  stanzas  more  there  is  a  lull  in  the 
warfare,  admitting  of  his  Majesty's  visit  to  the  battei-ed  fleet 
and  a  "  digression  concerning  shipping  and  navigation ;"  after 
which  we  have  the  next  great  battle  of  the  25th  and  26th  of 
July,  with  the  subsequent  pursuit  of  the  Dutch  to  their  har- 
bours by  Rear-Admiral  Holmes,  and  his  destruction  of  their 
merchant-men  off  Uly  and  firing  of  the  chief  town  of  Schelling 
on  the  8th  and  9th  of  August.  This  being  the  last  notorious 
incident  of  the  war  while  Dryden  wrote,  the  poem  makes 
a  transition  to  the  Great  Fire  of  London,  which  followed 
within  a  month  of  Holmes's  firing  of  Schelling.  The  last 
hundred  stanzas,  perhaps  the  most  interesting  in  the  poem, 
are  given  to  this  subject,  and  the  incidents  of  the  great 
disaster,  from  the  outbreak  of  the  fire  on  the  2nd  of  September 
to  its  arrest  on  the  6th,  are  related  succinctly  and  poetically 
as  Dryden  had  heard  of  them. — Altogether  the  poem  may 
be  described  as  Dryden's  retrospective  almanac-epic  for  the 
year  1666.  Very  suitable  for  sale  among  the  Londoners  in 
those  months  of  1667  when  his  Maiden  Queen,  his  Indian 
Emperor,  and  his  Sir  Martin  Mar-all,  were  running  with 
such  applause  at  the  two  theatres,  it  must  have  added  greatly 
to  his  reputation  and  the  opinion  of  his  versatility.  Its  per- 
vading characteristic,  indeed,  and  what  we  note  in  it  now 
with  least  liking,  is  its  abject  sycophancy  to  Charles.  Not 
only  is  there  the  inevitable  vein  of  anti-Puritanism,  showing 
itself  in  references  to  the  late  "  usurpers  "  and  their  acts  of 
church-profanation ;  but  there  is  a  studied  genuflexion  at 
every  point  before  the  image  of  Charles  himself  as  the  god  of 
England,  her  all- wise  and  all-good  genius,  her  mediator  with 
the  Almighty.  This,  however,  was  the  first  law  of  all  Restora- 
tion literature  touching  on  public  affairs;  and  in  Dryden's 
poem  there  were  merits  apart  and  unusual.  It  celebrated 
recent  events  and  important  living  personages  in  stirring  and 


378         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

poetical  phraseology,  and  it  furnished  passages  fit  for  quotation 
whenever  people  spoke  of  the  Dutch  war  or  the  late  terrible 
fire.  This  anticipation  of  the  rebuilding-  of  London  must 
have  been  very  popular: — 

"  Methinks  already  from  this  chymic  flame 
I  see  a  city  of  more  precious  mould, 
Rich  as  the  town  which  gives  the  Indies  name, 
With  silver  paved  and  all  divine  with  gold. 

Already,  labouring  with  a  mighty  fate, 

She  shakes  the  rubbish  from  her  mounting  brow, 

And  seems  to  have  renewed  her  charter's  date, 
Which  Heaven  will  to  the  death  of  Time  allow. 

More  great  than  human  now  and  more  august, 
New  deified  she  from  her  fires  does  rise  : 

Her  widening  streets  on  new  foundations  trust, 
And  opening  into  larger  parts  she  flies." 

Another  excursion  of  Dryden  beyond  his  province  of  prac- 
tical dramatist  had  been  in  a  critical  prose  essay  entitled  Essay 
on  Dramatic  Poesy.     He  had  already,  in  the  dedication  of  his 
Rival  Ladies  to  Lord  Orrery  in  1664,  made  a  short  venture 
into  this  field  of  literary  criticism ;  but  the  Essay  was  of  larger 
dimensions  and  much  more  elaborate.     Like  the  Annus  Mira- 
bilis,  it  had  been  written  by  Dryden  during  his  leisure  in 
Wiltshire  ;  and,  though  brought  to  town  with  him  early  in 
1667,  it  was  not  registered  for  publication  by  Herringman 
till  August  in  that  year l.     It  is  in  reality  a  little  treatise  on 
poetry,  and  especially  on  dramatic  poetry,  thrown  into  the 
form  of  an  imaginary  conversation  by  four   friends,    named 
Crites,    Eugenius,  Lisideius,    and   Neander,    while  they    are 
barging  down  and  up  the  Thames  on  a  beautiful  day.     Crites 
is  supposed  to  represent  Dryden's  brother-in-law,  Sir  Robert 
Howard ;  Eugenius  to  represent  Lord  Buckhurst ;    Lisideius 
is  a  kind  of  anagram  for  Sir  Charles  Sedley  ;  and  Neander 
stands  for  Dryden  himself.     The  essay  is  charmingly  written, 
and  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  Dryden's  prose  style.     From 
it  and  the  dedication  of  The  Rival  Ladies  to  Lord  Orrery, 

1  The  date  of  registration  in  the  Stationers'  Books  is  Aug.  7, 1667,  L'Estrange 
the  licencer. 


DRYDEN  :    HIS   ESSAY  ON  POETBT.  379 

taken  together,  we  may  gather  those  opinions  of  Dryden's  own 
on  literary  matters  which  he  had  formed  before  1667,  and 
which,  so  far  as  he  was  to  have  further  influence  on  the 
Restoration  literature,  were  to  pass  as  his  rules  and  recom- 
mendations. 

Dryden  thought  of  the  literature  of  his  own  tongue  and 
nation  with  a  fine  patriotic  enthusiasm.  The  only  literatures 
besides  of  which  he  seems  to  have  had  any  direct  knowledge 
were  the  Greek  and  Latin  and  the  French  ;  and  he  will  not 
lower  the  English  flag  to  any  of  them.  His  knowledge  of 
English  literary  history,  indeed,  is  very  imperfect.  It  goes 
no  farther  back  than  the  Elizabethan  age ;  and  even  there  he 
makes  such  a  blunder  as  to  say  that  Shakespeare  "  was  the 
"  first  who,  to  shun  the  pains  of  continual  rhyming,  invented 
"  that  kind  of  writing-  which  we  call  blank  verse,  but  the 
"  French,  more  properly,  prose  mesure."  But  from  Shake- 
speare's time  to  his  own  he  has  a  pretty  accurate  general 
knowledge  of  the  course  and  phases  of  English  literature, 
with  definite  opinions  on  some  important  points.  All  in  all, 
Shakespeare  is  his  hero,  his  non-such.  "  He  was  the  man  who, 
"  of  all  modern  and  perhaps  ancient  poets,  had  the  largest 
"  and  most  comprehensive  soul."  Dryden  can  hardly  quit 
this  topic.  He  finds  fault  with  this  or  that  in  Shakespeare, 
but  always  returns  fondly  to  the  contemplation  of  his  unpar- 
alleled greatness.  "  Shakespeare,"  he  says,  "  was  the  Homer 
"  or  father  of  our  dramatic  poets ;  Jonson  was  the  Virgil, 
"  the  pattern  of  elaborate  writing  :  I  admire  him,  but  I  love 
"  Shakespeare/'  Sufficiently  orthodox  on  this  point,  Dryden 
intimates  that,  next  to  Shakespeare,  for  natural  genius,  though 
longo  intervallo,  he  would  place  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  or 
rather  Fletcher  as  the  real  chief  of  that  firm.  But  he  has  a 
large  reserve  of  affection  for  Ben  Jonson,  and  indeed  makes 
Ben  his  main  text  through  a  considerable  part  of  the  essay. 
"  I  think  him,"  says  Dryden,  "  the  most  learned  and  judicious 
"  writer  which  any  theatre  ever  had."  Still  further,  "  As  he 
"  has  given  us  the  most  correct  plays,  so  in  the  precepts  which 
"  he  has  laid  down  in  his  Discoveries  we  have  as  many  and 
"  profitable  rules  for  perfecting  the  stage  as  any  wherewith 


380         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  the  French  can  furnish  us."  By  way  of  detailed  illustra- 
tion, there  is  an  analysis  or  "  examen"  of  Jonson's  comedy  of 
The  Silent  Woman,  with  reference  especially  to  the  ancient 
dramatic  laws  of  the  three  unities.  An  exposition  of  these 
laws,  with  discussion  for  and  against  them,  though  generally 
in  their  favour,  runs  through  the  essay  ;  but  we  are  more 
interested  in  Dryden's  continued  sketch  of  English  literary 
history.  Just  after  Jonson's  death,  "  as  if,  in  an  age  of  so 
"  much  horror,  wit  and  those  milder  studies  of  humanity  had 
"  no  farther  business  among  us,  the  Muses,  who  ever  follow 
"  peace,  went  to  plant  in  another  country.  It  was  then  that 
"  the  great  Cardinal  of  Richelieu  began  to  take  them  into  his 
"  protection,  and  that,  by  his  encouragement,  Corneille  and 
"  some  other  Frenchmen  reformed  their  theatre,  which  before 
"  was  as  much  below  ours  as  it  now  surpasses  it  and  the  rest 
"  of  Europe."  This  is  spoken  by  Lisideius,  and  the  drift  of 
a  good  deal  of  the  dialogue  is  to  disprove  the  last  words, 
and  assert  that,  whatever  merits  were  to  be  allowed  to  Cor- 
neille, Moliere,  and  other  living  French  dramatists,  the 
English  were  still  the  leading  literary  nation.  Of  English 
writing  during  the  Interregnum,  indeed,  little  is  said.  Wither 
is  mentioned  contemptuously,  and  Cleveland  almost  con- 
temptuously ;  and  such  writers  as  had  distinguished  them- 
selves in  Dryden's  estimation  in  the  interval  between  Ben 
Jonson's  death  and  the  Restoration  are  gathered  rapidly  into 
a  group  for  happy  adoption  into  the  Restoration  at  last. 
Suckling,  whom  Dryden  praises  much,  was  unfortunately 
dead ;  but  others,  as  English,  and  of  various  excellence,  had 
survived.  In  all  Greek  or  Latin  non-dramatic  poetry 
"  nothing  so  even,  sweet,  and  flowing,  as  Mr.  Waller,  nothing 
"  so  majestic,  so  correct,  as  Sir  John  Denham,  nothing  so 
:c  elevated,  so  copious  and  full  of  spirit,  as  Mr.  Cowley." 
Then  of  the  revived  English  Drama  of  the  Restoration  might 
not  any  nation  be  proud  ?  True,  the  stage  had  been  living 
to  a  great  extent,  these  last  seven  years,  on  reproductions  of 
the  great  old  plays,  especially  those  of  Shakespeare,  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and  Ben  Jonson ;  in  connexion  with  which  re- 
mark Dryden  gives  us  the  interesting  piece  of  information  that 


DRYDEN  :    HIS   ESSAY  ON  POETRY.  381 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays  had  been  most  in  demand, 
"  two  of  theirs  being  acted  through  the  year  for  one  of 
"  Shakespeare's  or  Jonson's."  But  it  was  not  necessary  to 
call  in  the  aid  of  those  dead  heroes  to  vindicate  the  superi- 
ority of  the  English  dramatic  genius  even  yet  over  the  much 
vaunted  French,  with  their  Corneille  and  their  Moliere. 
"  Be  it  spoken  to  the  honour  of  the  English,  our  nation 
"  can  never  want  in  any  age  such  who  are  able  to  dispute 
"  the  empire  of  wit  with  any  people  in  the  universe  ;"  and  so 
"  We  have  seen  since  his  Majesty's  return  many  dramatic 
"  poems  which  yield  not  to  those  of  any  foreign  nation,  and 
"  which  deserve  all  laurels  but  the  English."  This  conclusion, 
that  the  English  dramatic  poetry  of  the  Restoration,  and 
indeed  the  English  poetry  of  the  Restoration  generally,  though 
inferior  to  the  best  of  the  Old  English,  was  superior  to  all 
else,  ancient  or  foreign,  is  emphatically  repeated  thus:  — 
"  I  think  it  may  be  permitted  me  to  say  that,  as  it  is  no 
"  lessening  to  us  to  yield  to  some  plays,  and  those  not  many, 
"  of  our  own  nation  in  the  last  age,  so  it  can  be  no  addition 
"  to  pronounce  of  our  present  poets  that  they  have  far  sur- 
"  passed  all  the  ancients  and  the  modern  writers  of  other 
"  countries."  Of  course,  there  were  faults,  and  there  might 
be  improvements.  Let  English  dramatic  writers  be  true  to 
their  English  instincts  and  to  the  genuine  English  traditions, 
taking  their  lessons  rather  from  their  own  Shakespeares  and 
Fletchers  and  Ben  Jonsons  in  the  past,  with  all  their  bold 
irregularities,  their  mixture  of  the  comic  with  the  tragic,  than 
from  the  contemporary  French  stage,  with  its  thin  and  highly 
regulated  artificiality ;  and  no  doubt  but  improvements  would 
easily  be  worked  out.  There  might  be  advantage,  for  example, 
in  a  more  steady  recollection  for  the  future  of  Ben  Jonson's 
example  in  the  matter  of  art  and  correctness  of  plot.  Only 
in  one  particular,  but  a  very  important  one,  would  Dryden 
recommend  an  improvement  involving  a  positive  departure 
from  the  old  English  practice  in  the  drama  and  an  assimilation 
to  Corneille  and  the  French.  This  was  in  the  matter  of  the 
verse  employed.  Instead  of  keeping  uniformly  to  blank  verse, 
Dryden  would  advocate  in  future  the  use  of  rhyme  for  all 


382         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

high,  dramatic  dialogue.  Comedy  still  might  most  properly 
be  in  prose  or  in  blank  verse  ;  but  for  tragedy,  heroic  plays 
generally,  and  the  higher  and  more  serious  parts  of  all  plays, 
rhyme  would  be  the  nobler  instrument.  So  much  of  pleading 
to  this  effect  is  there  in  the  Essay  that  it  is  often  remembered 
as  if  it  were  nothing  else  than  Dryden's  defence  of  the  heroic 
or  rhymed  tragedy.  That  is  not  the  case ;  the  recom- 
mendation of  rhyme  is  but  an  incident  in  the  Essay.  It  is, 
however,  a  very  vital  incident.  Dryden  was  especially  anxious 
to  vindicate  and  extend  the  practice  of  that  tragedy  of  heroic 
declamation  of  which  Lord  Orrery,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  and 
himself,  had  given  examples,  and  which  he  knew  had  the 
King's  approval.  In  fighting  for  it,  and  for  the  entire  sub- 
stitution in  future  of  rhyme  for  blank  verse  in  English 
tragedies,  should  that  be  possible,  he  believed  that  he  was 
doing  a  service  to  the  national  literature. 

His  argument  takes  this  form  : — The  charms  of  rhyme 
in  itself  are  admitted ;  and  such  objections  as  that  it  is  un- 
natural, that  the  ancients  had  it  not,  and  the  like,  might  be 
refuted  afresh,  if  necessary.  Dryden  attempts  the  refutation, 
in  reasonings  of  considerable  ingenuity,  showing  how  much 
minute  attention  he  had  given  to  the  subject.  In  the  main, 
however,  he  assumes  that  rhyme  has  already,  by  universal 
consent,  made  itself  good  in  modern  times  as  the  kind  of  verse 
suitable  and  necessary  in  all  non-dramatic  poetry.  "  Blank 
verse,"  he  says,  "  is  acknowledged  to  be  too  low  for  a  poem, 
nay  more,  for  a  paper  of  verses."  So  much  is  this  the  case 
that  it  is  only  by  concession  that  he  calls  blank  verse  by  the 
name  of  verse  at  all ;  and  in  most  parts  of  his  essay  the  word 
verse,  if  not  otherwise  qualified,  stands  simply  for  rhyme. 
Now,  why  should  rhyme,  in  undisputed  possession  everywhere 
else  for  really  poetic  purposes,  be  excluded  from  the  serious  or 
high  drama  ?  He  discusses  the  alleged  unfitness  of  rhyme 
for  discourse,  repartee,  &c.  ;  but,  while  thus  answering 
theoretical  objections,  he  adverts  also  to  the  historical  objec- 
tion that  the  great  Elizabethans  had  rejected  rhyme.  They 
had  not  done  so  altogether,  for  they  had  rhymed  occasionally 
in  their  dramas  ;  but,  so  far  as  they  had  rejected  rhyme,  might 


DEYDEN  :    HIS   ESSAY  ON  POETRY.  383 

there  not  be  a  sufficient  reason  ?  The  art  of  rhyme  was  pre- 
cisely that  part  of  the  general  poetic  art  which  those  old  giants 
had  not  mastered.  But  it  had  been  mastered  by  English  genius 
since.  "  The  excellence  and  dignity  of  it  were  never  fully 
"  known  till  Mr.  Waller  taught  it;  he  first  made  writing  easily 
"  an  art ;  first  showed  us  to  conclude  the  sense  most  commonly 
"  in  distichs,  which  in  the  verse  of  those  before  him  runs  on 
"  for  so  many  lines  together  that  the  reader  is  out  of  breath 
"  to  overtake  it.  This  sweetness  of  Mr.  Waller's  lyric  poesy 
"  was  afterwards  followed  in  the  epic  by  Sir  John  Denham  in 
"  his  Cooper's  Hill,  a  poem  which,  your  lordship  knows,  for  the 
"  majesty  of  the  style,  is,  and  ever  will  be,  the  exact  standard 
"  of  good  writing.  But,  if  we  owe  the  invention  of  it  to  Mr. 
"  Waller,  we  are  acknowledging  for  the  noblest  use  of  it  to 
"  Sir  William  Davenant,  who  at  once  brought  it  upon  the 
"  stage  and  made  it  perfect  in  The  Siege  of  Rhodes."  What 
Davenant  had  done  let  others  continue  to  do.  Only  by  this 
use  of  rhyme  in  high  drama,  generally  in  the  form  of  the 
rhyming  heroic  or  decasyllabic  couplet,  but  with  liberty  occa- 
sionally of  rhyming  Pindarics  or  other  variations,  as  in 
Davenant's  last-named  play,  was  there  hope  that  the  Restora- 
tion drama  might  rival  the  old  Elizabethan.  To  beat  the  old 
dramatists  in  matter  was  impossible.  "  Not  only  we  shall 
"  never  equal  them,  but  they  could  never  equal  themselves, 
"  were  they  to  rise  and  write  again.  We  acknowledge  them 
"  our  fathers  in  wit,  but  they  have  ruined  their  estates  them- 
"  selves  before  they  came  to  their  children's  hands.  There  is 
"  scarce  an  humour,  a  character,  or  any  kind  of  plot,  which 
"  they  have  not  used.  All  comes  sullied  or  wasted  to  us." 
In  these  circumstances  the  remedy  was  in  the  adoption  of  some 
new  way,  some  new  mechanism,  that  might  lead  to  differences 
of  invention.  That  new  way  was  rhyme.  But  the  rhymed 
drama  was  unpopular  ;  the  multitude  would  not  have  it,  were 
crying-  out  against  it !  WTho  cared  for  the  multitude  ?  "  It  is 
"  no  matter  what  they  think  ;  they  are  sometimes  in  the  right, 
"  sometimes  in  the  wrong  ;  their  judgment  is  a  mere  lottery." 
Let  the  appeal  be  to  Court  tastes,  or  to  the  people  considered 
as  a  due  mixture  of  courtiers  with  those  they  could  influence  ; 


384<  LIFE   OF  MILTON  AND  HISTORY   OF  HIS  TIME. 

and  what  then  ?  "  If  you  mean  the  mixed  audience  of  the 
"  populace  and  the  noblesse,"  says  Dryden, "  I  can  confidently 
"  affirm  that  a  great  part  of  the  latter  sort  are  favourable  to 
"  verse  [i.  e.  to  rhyme],  and  that  no  serious  plays  written  since 
"  the  King's  return  have  been  more  kindly  received  by  them 
"  than  The  Siege  of  Rhodes,  the  Mustapha,  the  Indian  Queen 
"  and  Indian  Emperor." 

Dryden's  admirable  Essay  is  instructive  in  many  ways.  In 
the  first  place,  we  see  in  it,  with  all  its  fine  enthusiasm  for  the 
greater  old  English  poetry,  so  far  as  Dryden  was  acquainted 
with  it,  that  special  form  of  delusion  in  which  the  literary 
mind  of  the  Restoration  age  had  begun  to  find  happiness,  and 
which  it  managed  to  transmit  through  the  next  century  as  an 
incontrovertible  article  of  historical  belief.  Mr.  Waller,  for- 
sooth, had  been  the  first  to  teach  the  art  of  English  verse  ; 
Denham's  strength  had  been  added  to  Waller's  sweetness ; 
and  the  age  of  Charles  the  Second  was  thus  fortunately  in 
possession  of  at  least  one  power  which  it  knew  how  to  use  and 
which  had  been  wanting  to  the  English  genius  before  !  The 
art  of  English  verse !  Not  to  go  beyond  Dryden's  own 
horizon  in  the  retrospect  of  English  poetry,  had  he  never  read 
Spenser,  or  Shakespeare's  minor  poems,  or  the  poems  and 
lyrics  of  Shakespeare's  contemporaries,  whether  in  the  drama 
or  out  of  it  ?  Doubtless  he  had  to  some  extent,  and  we  can 
see  what  he  meant ;  but  we  can  only  wonder  the  more. 
Actually  it  had  come  to  pass  that  the  English  ear,  within 
Dryden's  circle,  could  no  longer  relish  the  more  exquisite 
melody,  the  richer  and  more  involved  harmony,  of  the  older 
poetry,  but  preferred  the  regularised  rhetorical  effect  of  that 
mechanical  kind  of  metre  in  which  every  line  is  like  a  plank 
poised  on  a  definite  fulcrum  of  swing,  and  the  sense  "  is  con- 
cluded most  commonly  in  distichs."  Not  even  in  this  kind 
of  verse  had  Waller  and  Denham  been  the  first,  or  the  best, 
by  any  means ;  but,  if  Dryden  and  their  other  juniors  chose 
to  acknowledge  the  debt  to  them,  it  need  be  no  business 
of  ours.  That  kind  of  verse,  therefore,  may  be  conceded 
to  the  Restoration  as  a  congenial  literary  inheritance,  the 
value  of  which,  and  its  farther  capacities,  might  be  tested 


DRYDEN  :    HIS   ESSAY  ON  POETBY.  385 

by  new  hands.      No    one   was  to    do  this   more  ably  than 
Dryden  himself. 

A  more  general  delusion  pervading  Dryden's  essay  is  that 
of  the  supposed  flight  of  the  muses  from  England  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Civil  Troubles  and  their  return  at  the  Restora- 
tion.     This  delusion  has  been  already  exposed  by  statistics 
and   otherwise.      A  total  of  2316  registered  transactions  in 
the  London  book-trade  in  the  seven  years  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  Restoration,  as  against  a  total  of  633  in  the  seven 
years  immediately  following  the  Restoration,  does   not  look 
like  an  abeyance'  of  the  muses  in  the  former  period  and  their 
rapid  return  in  the  latter  ;  and,  if  the  statistics  were  taken 
from  as  far  back  as  1640,  there  would  be  no  difference.     Let 
it  be  supposed,  however,  that  Dryden  meant  only  the  finer 
muses.     That  might  help  him  a  little,  but  not  much.     During 
the  twenty  years  preceding  the  Restoration  the  most  conspic- 
uous and  active  of  the  muses  in  England  had  certainly  been  the 
Muse  of  newspaper-editorship  and  political   pamphleteering, 
if  there  be  such  a  lady  in  the  mythological  company ;  and 
the  fall  in  the  statistics  of  the  book-trade  after  the  Restoration 
is  certainly  to  be  accounted  for  to  a  great   extent  by  the 
banishment  of  this  particular  muse  when  Charles  came  in, — 
i.  e.,  more  prosaically,  by  the  suppression  after  the  Restoration 
of  all  pamphlet- writing  not  in  harmony  with  the  re-established 
system  in  Church  and  State.     That  would  not  have  disturbed 
Dryden's  view  of  things.       This   particular  muse  that  had 
reigned  for  twenty  years  was  no  muse  in  his  eyes,   but   a 
wretched  hag  and  impostor,  whose  usurpation  had  kept  out 
the  true  muses.    Well,  but  what  of  those  ladies  ?    We  have  seen 
the  facts  for  ourselves.     However  much  the  finer  muses  had 
been  fluttered  by  the  Civil  Troubles,  they  had  never  actually 
taken  flight.     That  they  had  was  part  of  Dryden's  delusion, 
as  he  might  have  found  easily  on  inquiry.     We  should  not 
have  expected  him,  indeed,  in  his  Essay  on  Poetry,  to  have 
thought  of  the  muses  of  philosophy,  miscellaneous  speculation, 
history,  and  oratory ;  and  hence  we  need  not  be  surprised  that 
what  had  been  done  in  very  various  prose  between  1640  and 
1660   did   not   occur  to  him.     But  how,   in   thinking  more 

vol.  vi.  c  c 


386         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

especially  of  the  poetical  muses,  had  he  come  to  ignore 
Herrick,  Milton,  Jasper  Mayne,  Fanshawe,  Chamberlayne, 
Vaughan,  and  others,  all  of  whom  had  done  and  published  a 
good  deal  of  what  he  would  himself  have  called  very  good 
verse?  Partly,  no  doubt,  it  was  because  he  felt  himself 
entitled  to  claim  some  of  the  verse-writers  whom  he  had 
not  named,  as  well  as  some  of  the  prose- writers  he  had  no 
occasion  to  name,  as  Royalists,  whose  misfortune  it  had  been, 
and  not  their  will,  to  write  and  publish  in  the  conditions 
of  the  Civil  Troubles.  That,  however,  is  not  the  question. 
The  question  is  not  whether  or  to  what  extent  the  muses 
had  been  in  the  Opposition  during  the  time  of  the  Puritan 
ascendancy,  but  whether  they  or  any  of  them  had  actually  fled  ? 
Our  enumeration  of  names,  with  the  recollection  which  they 
will  suggest  of  important  books  published  in  London  between 
1640  and  1660,  is  a  sufficient  answer  in  the  negative.  There 
had  been  a  preponderance  of  polemical  writing,  but  other 
kinds  had  by  no  means  ceased,  or  even  languished  appreciably 
and  continuously.  The  fact  is  that  Dryden's  knowledge  was 
deficient.  When  he  wrote  his  essay,  he  had  probably  never 
read  Herrick's  poems,  or  Milton's  collected  minor  poems  in 
the  volume  of  1645,  or  Henry  Vaughan's,  or  others  of  the 
finest  through  the  period  of  supposed  dearth.  For,  when  he 
comes  to  the  supposed  return  of  the  muses  at  the  Restoration, 
whom  does  he  name  as  their  living  and  reappearing  represen- 
tatives? Still  Waller,  Denham,  Cowley,  and  Davenant,  all 
of  whom  wei*e  in  effect  pre-Restoration  writers.  Strange  that, 
in  looking  about  for  representatives  of  reviving  English  non- 
dramatic  poetry  in  the  halcyon  days  between  1660  and  1667, 
Dryden  should  have  been  driven  to  name  four  elderly  gentle- 
men whose  fame  had  come  down,  or  had  been  acquired,  through 
the  preceding  time  of  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Commonwealth,  and 
the  Protectorate,  and  three  of  whom  had  been  glad  to  shelter 
themselves  and  their  industry,  with  what  fame  they  had,  under 
the  Protectoral  government.  In  short,  Dryden's  delusion, 
adopted  by  our  literary  historians  ever  since,  was  caused  by 
the  fact  that  one  very  substantial,  but  also  very  gaudy,  form 
of  literature,  which  had  been  in  abeyance  for  nearly  twenty 


books  from  1660  to  1667.  387 

years,  did  undeniably  come  back  into  London  with  Charles. 
All  our  traditional  talk  about  a  return  of  the  muses,  &c,  at 
the  Restoration  resolves  itself  into  the  fact  that  the  Dramatic 
Muse  had  returned.  The  theatres  were  then  re-opened,  and 
there  was  thus  again  a  great  business  of  Acted  Drama  to 
attract,  employ,  and  educate  free  and  uncovenanted  English 
talent.  The  wonder  is  that  in  the  seven  years  between  1660 
and  1667  there  should  have  been  no  new  dramatists  superior 
to  Davenant,  Lord  Orrery,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  and  Lacy,  to 
contest  the  success  with  Dryden.  Wilson,  with  all  his  real 
faculty,  more  compact  and  deep  in  some  respects  than  Dryden's, 
had  not  been  among  the  successful  dramatists. 

That  there  was  no  special  fertility  of  literary  production,  out 
of  the  Drama,  in  the  first  seven  years  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second  will  appear  more  distinctly  if  we  inquire  what 
non-dramatic  writings  remembered  now  as  of  any  mark  did 
appear  among  the  633  publications,  or  thereabouts,  registered 
as  the  total  produce  of  those  seven  years,  so  far  as  it  came 
within  the  cognisance  of  the  regular  book-trade.  Neglecting 
mere  books  of  information,  and  also  the  dramatic  entries  in 
the  registers,  1  make  out  the  following  as  an  authentic  list 
of  those  non-dramatic  productions  of  the  seven  years  that 
might  be  thought  worth  recollection  now  on  their  own 
account  in  a  general  history  of  English  literature : — the  third 
and  concluding  volume  of  Stanley's  History  of  Philosophy, 
ready  before  the  Restoration,  though  not  registered  till  June 
1660 ;  Heylin's  anti-Puritanical  History  of  the  Reformation 
of  the  Church  of  England,  registered  in  July  1660  and  pub- 
lished in  1661 ;  Flatman's  burlesque  of  the  Rump  called 
Bon  Juan  Lamberto,  registered  in  December  1660 ;  Cowlej^'s 
Discourse  by  way  of  Vision  concerning  the  Government  of  Oliver 
Cromwell,  with  other  Prose  Essays  of  his,  published  in  1661 ; 
Waller's  poem,  of  about  150  lines,  entitled  On  St.  James's  Park, 
as  lately  improved  by  his  Majesty,  registered  for  publication  by 
itself  in  April  1661  ;  Boyle's  Physiological  Essays  and  his  Con- 
siderations touching  the  Style  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  registered 
in  April  and  May  1661  ;  llvdibras,  the  first  part  registered  in 
November  1662  and  the  second  in  November  1663  ;  another 

c  c  2 


388  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

volume  of  Cowley's,  entitled  Verses  written  upon  several  occasions, 
registered  in  August  1663  ;  Poems  by  Mrs.  Katherine  Philips, 
registered  in  November  1663  ;  Scarronides ;  or  Virgile  Travestie  : 
a  Mock  Poem,  heing  the  First  Book  of  YirgiVs  Eneis  in  English 
Burlesque,  by  Charles  Cotton,  Esq.,  registered  in  March 
1663-4;  enlarged  edition  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  Bissuasive  from 
Popery,  1664 ;  Dr.  Henry  More's  Modest  Inquiry  into  the 
Mystery  of  Iniquity,  1664;  new  edition  of  Baker's  Chronicle, 
with  Continuation  to  the  Coronation  of  Charles  II.  by  Edward 
Phillips,  registered  in  February  1664-5 ;  Dryden's  Annus 
Mirabilis,  registered  Jan.  21,  1666-7;  Dryden's  Essay  on 
Bramatic  Poesy,  registered  Aug.  7,  1667 ;  and  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost,  registered  Aug.  20,  1667.  This  enumeration, 
it  will  be  seen,  proceeds  on  a  pretty  liberal  notion  of  what 
might  be  memorable.  Throw  out  what  it  may  seem  unneces- 
sary to  have  included,  and  we  are  reduced  to  Butler's  Hudibras, 
Cowley's  Prose  Essays  and  a  few  new  Poems  of  his,  Dryden's 
Annus  Mirabilis  and  his  Essay  on  Bramatic  Poesy,  and  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost.  This  last  was  certainly  a  vast  accession.  But 
it  came  unexpectedly,  and  from  an  alien  quarter. 

One  ought  never  to  be  too  sure  in  the  assertion  of  a  negative. 
While,  therefore,  it  may  be  considered  proved  that  the  notion 
of  any  extraordinary  new  fertility  in  English  literature  after 
the  Restoration  is  a  delusion,  let  it  be  supposed  that  there 
may  have  been  good  things  between  1660  and  1667  which 
have  escaped  us  in  the  Registers  or  are  not  there  chronicled. 
Let  it  be  remembered  also  that  a  great  deal  of  what  was 
really  done  in  those  seven  years  may  not  have  made  its  ap- 
pearance till  afterwards.  Old  Hobbes  was  still  speculating 
and  scribbling ;  Jeremy  Taylor  was  still  thoughtful  and 
eloquent  in  his  Irish  bishopric  ;  Henry  More,  Cudworth,  and 
others  were  still  philosophically  inquisitive  and  studious  ; 
Baxter,  Owen,  and  others  were  still  pugnacious  and  indus- 
trious ;  Henry  Vaughan  and  other  recluse  spirits  were  still 
poetically  meditative  ;  Pepys  was  collecting  gossip  ;  Anthony 
Wood  and  other  antiquaries  were  engaged  in  researches ; 
Barrow,  and  Tillotson,  and  South,  and  Stillingfleet,  and  other 
younger  divines  and  scholars,  were  preaching,  arguing,  and 


LYRICS   AND   FUGITIVE   VERSES.  389 

making  their  way.  All  this,  whether  registered  in  the  book 
form  or  not  during  the  seven  years,  ought  to  count  as  so 
much  activity  of  the  muses  through  that  period.  Besides, 
was  there  not  a  quantity  of  clever  versifying  by  wits  about 
the  Court,  fugitive  in  its  nature,  but  well  calculated  to  keep 
up  the  idea  that  the  muses  inhabited  the  bowers  of  Lady 
Castlemaine  ?  Sir  Charles  Sedley  and  Lord  Buckhurst  ought 
not  to  go  unmentioned,  the  one  the  Lisideius  of  Dryden's 
essay,  the  other  the  Eugenius  of  that  essay,  and  also,  for 
a  month  in  1667,  the  predecessor  of  King  Charles  in  the  pos- 
session of  Nell  Gwynn.  They  were  both  to  live  long  and  to 
distinguish  themselves  in  various  ways  as  they  grew  older, 
Buckhurst  to  be  very  honourable  under  his  later  title  of  the 
Earl  of  Dorset  and  Middlesex.  For  the  present,  however, 
they  were  simply  the  two  most  abandoned  young  scamps 
about  town,  known  not  only  for  such  "  frolics  "  as  fights  with 
the  night-watchmen,  but  also  as  comrades  in  the  most  out- 
rageous and  indescribable  act  of  drunken  indecency  recorded 
in  the  police  annals  of  London.  They  had  been  fined  ^500 
each  for  this  offence,  but  do  not  seem  to  have  suffered  a  whit 
in  general  estimation.  After  the  laugh  had  passed,  they  went 
about  everywhere  as  gaily  as  ever,  the  witty  Sedley  and  the 
witty  Buckhurst  the  naughtiest  and  most  delightful  gen- 
tlemen in  Court  society,  the  valued  friends  of  Dry  den,  and 
the  observed  of  Pepys  when  he  sat  near  either  of  them  in  the 
theatre.  And,  what  is  strange,  one  can  find  something  to 
like  in  the  reprobates  yet.  Sedley,  besides  six  plays,  not 
written  till  after  our  present  date,  has  left  us  a  number  of 
short  poems  and  songs,  most  of  them  worthless  or  unfit  for 
reading,  but  one  or  two  not  unpleasant.  Let  us  vote  this 
dainty  little  thing  to  have  been  written  by  him  in  Davenant's 
laureateship : — 

"  Hears  not  my  Phyllis  how  the  birds 

Their  feathered  mates  salute  ? 
They  tell  their  passion  in  their  words : 

Must  I  alone  be  mute1?" 
Phyllis,  without  frown  or  smile, 
Sat  and  knotted  all  the  while. 


390  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  The  god  of  love  in  thy  bright  eyes 
Does  like  a  tyrant  reign  ; 
But  in  thy  heart  a  child  he  lies, 

Without  his  dart  or  flame." 
Phyllis,  without  frown  or  smile, 
Sat  and  knotted  all  the  while. 

"  So  many  months  in  silence  passed, 

And  yet  in  raging  love, 
Might  well  deserve  one  word  at  last 

My  passion  should  approve." 
Phyllis,  without  frown  or  smile, 
Sat  and  knotted  all  the  while. 

"  Must  then  your  faithful  swain  expire, 

And  not  one  look  obtain, 
Which  he,  to  soothe  his  fond  desire, 

Might  pleasingly  explain  1" 
Phyllis,  without  frown  or  smile, 
Sat  and  knotted  all  the  while. 


Though  Lord  Buckhurst  has  left  us  far  less  than  Sedley, 
who  does  not  know  his  famous  song,  said  to  have  been  written 
at  sea  in  one  of  the  ships  of  the  Duke  of  York's  fleet  the  night 
before  the  great  battle  of  June  3,  1665  ?  Whether  punctually 
that  night  or  not  matters  little.  No  Restoration  lyric  ex- 
presses more  finely  the  best  spirit  of  the  Restoration  gallantry ; 
and,  thinking  of  Lady  Castlemaine  and  of  the  rest  at  White- 
hall, and  of  the  young  fellow  addressing  them  from  between- 
decks  far  off,  one  could  read  it  even  with  tears  : — 

To  all  you  ladies  now  on  land 

We  men  at  sea  indite ; 
But  first  would  have  you  understand 

How  hard  it  is  to  write. 
The  Muses  now  and  Neptune  too 
We  must  implore  to  write  to  you, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la. 

For,  though  the  Muses  should  prove  kind, 

And  fill  our  empty  brain, 
Yet,  if  rough  Neptune  rouse  the  wind 

To  wave  the  azure  main, 
Our  paper,  pen,  and  ink,  and  we 
Boll  up  and  down  our  ships  at  sea, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la. 


SCIENCE   AND   THE    ROYAL   SOCIETY.  391 

Then,  if  we  write  not  by  each  post, 

Think  not  we  are  unkind; 
Nor  yet  conclude  your  ships  are  lost 

By  Dutchmen  or  by  wind  : 
Our  tears  we'll  send  a  speedier  way; 
The  tide  shall  bring  them  twice  a-day, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la. 

The  King,  with  wonder  and  surprise, 

Will  swear  the  seas  grow  bold, 
Because  the  tides  will  higher  rise 

Than  e'er  they  used  of  old ; 
But  let  him  know  it  is  our  tears 
Bring  floods  of  grief  to  Whitehall  Stairs, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la. 

To  pass  our  tedious  hours  away, 

We  throw  a  merry  main, 
Or  else  at  serious  ombre  play  : 

But  why  should  we  in  vain 
Each  other's  ruin  thus  pursue  1 
We  were  undone  when  we  left  you, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la. 

But  now  our  fears  tempestuous  grow, 

And  cast  our  hopes  away  ; 
Whilst  you,  regardless  of  our  woe, 

Sit  careless  at  a  play  : 
Perhaps  permit  some  happier  man 
To  kiss-  your  hand  or  flirt  your  fan, 
With  a  fa  la  la  la  la  '. 

"  Science,  as  well  as  Poetry,"  says  Scott  in  his  Life  of  Dryden, 
"  began  to  revive  after  the  iron  dominion  of  military  fanaticism 
"  was  ended."  The  remark  is  made  to  introduce  the  Royal 
Society  as  one  of  the  institutions  of  the  Restoration. 

Here,  too,  sycophancy  to  the  Restoration  has  obscured  the 
facts.  The  real  beginnings  of  the  association  which  afterwards 
took  shape  and  name  as  the  Royal  Society  date,  as  we  know, 
from  1645,  the  very  crisis  of  the  Civil  War,  when  the  German 
Theodore  Haak,  and  Dr.  John  Wallis,  then  clerk  of  the  West- 
minster Assembly,  and  Dr.  John  Wilkins,  then  a  Presbyterian 
minister,  and  Dr.  Jonathan  Goddard,  then  a  physician  of  parlia- 
mentarian eminence,   and  a  number  of  other  Londoners,  all 

>  For  Bucklmrst  and  Sedley  from  1663,  Oct.  4, 1664,  Fet>.  18, 1666-7,  July 
1660  to  1667  see  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  731—  13  and  14,  1667;  Johnson's  Life  of 
733 ;  Pepys,  Feb.  22,  1661-2,  July  1,       Dorset  (Bucklmrst). 


392  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

apparently  on  the  same  side  of  politics,  held  weekly  meeting's, 
sometimes  in  Goddard's  lodgings  in  Wood  Street,  sometimes  at 
the  Bull  Head  Tavern  in  Cheapside,  and  sometimes  in  Gresham 
College,  for  talk  on  subjects  of  mathematical  and  physical 
science.  The  fame  of  the  meeting's  having  spread,  and  Hartlib, 
and  young-  Boyle,  and  Petty,  and  others,  having  attached  them- 
selves to  the  society  as  regular  members  or  as  correspondents, 
there  were  the  most  enthusiastic  expectations  of  the  effects  to 
be  produced  by  this  Invisible  College,  as  it  was  called,  not  only 
in  advancing1  mathematical  and  experimental  science,  but  also 
in  reforming"  the  universities  and  the  notions  and  methods  of 
education.  About  the  year  1649  some  of  the  chief  brethren 
having  been  removed  to  high  university  posts  in  Oxford,  the 
college  had  divided  itself,  as  we  saw,  into  two  sections.  There 
was  the  Oxford  section,  calling-  itself  The  Philosophical  Society 
of  Oxford,  and  consisting  of  Wilkins,  Wallis,  Petty,  and  Boyle, 
with  such  new  recruits  as  Ward,  Bathurst,  and  Willis,  and  in 
time  young  Christopher  Wren  and  young  Robert  Hooke,  meet- 
ing regularly  in  Petty's  rooms,  or  Wilkins's,  or  Boyle's  ;  and 
there  was  still  the  remnant  of  the  parent  club  in  London, 
meeting  generally  at  Gresham  College,  and  receiving  from 
time  to  time  such  recruits  as  Viscount  Brouncker,  Sir  Paul 
Neile,  and  Mr.  John  Evelyn.  The  two  sections  were  in  corres- 
pondence, and  a  member  of  either  was  welcome  if  he  appeared 
at  a  meeting  of  the  other.  It  would  be  difficult  to  estimate 
the  amount  of  observation  in  matters  of  natural  history,  and 
physical  and  chemical  experimentation,  and  invention  of  instru- 
ments, and  anatomical  and  physiological  research,  and  general 
scientific  speculation,  much  of  it  whimsical,  but  all  in  a  hopeful 
direction,  that  had  gone  on  among  the  associated  savants  of 
The  Invisible  College  both  in  Oxford  and  London  before  there 
was  an  idea  that  the  Stuarts  would  ever  return.  It  would, 
indeed,  be  no  paradox  to  assert  that  a  passion  for  what  was 
called  the  New  or  Verulamian  Philosophy,  a  disposition  to 
the  physical  sciences  and  to  all  forms  of  what  is  sometimes 
designated  distinctively  as  "Useful  Knowledge,"  together  with 
a  desire  to  recast  or  radically  reform  the  schools  and  univer- 
sities, so  as  to  make  them  seminaries  and  nurseries  of  such 


SCIENCE    AND    THE    ROYAL    SOCIETY.  393 

knowledge  rather  than  of  mere  classical  learning1  and  scholastic 
metaphysics,  was  one  of  the  most  pronounced  characteristics 
of  that  wave  of  the  English  mind  which  is  vaguely  named 
the  Puritan  Revolution.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that 
those  who  use  the  word  "  Puritanism "  merely  to  define 
a  supposed  temporary  mood  of  English  sanctimoniousness, 
or  even  to  define  the  domination  of  Calvinistic  theology 
for  a  time  in  the  British  Islands,  know  nothing  whatever  of 
what  Puritanism  was  historically  and  included  intellectually. 
Puritanism  was  a  revolt  from  authority,  clothing  itself  at 
first  in  whatever  doctrines  of  a  fervid  theology  or  ideas  of 
popular  church-discipline  were  at  hand  to  suit,  but  passing 
on,  by  the  usual  law  of  development,  into  a  wonderful  multi- 
plicity of  forms  and  phases,  with  abundant  inclusion  of  the 
most  abstruse  scientific  inquisitiveness  and  the  coolest  philo- 
sophical free-thinking. 

The  intellectual  leisure  of  the  Restoration,  however,  just 
because  it  was  compulsory,  just  because  it  was  occasioned  by 
the  arrest  and  prohibition  of  many  rousing  forms  of  specula- 
tion, was  undoubtedly  favourable  to  a  concentration  of  energy 
upon  the  physical  and  experimental  sciences.  At  all  events, 
the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  of  London  is  one  of  the 
few  creditable  occurreues  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  It  came 
about  thus : — Wren  having  been  in  London  since  1657  as 
astronomy  professor  at  Gresham  College,  and  Wilkins,  Wallis, 
Goddard,  and  others  having  been  brought  back  to  London 
at  the  Restoration,  by  the  loss  of  their  university  appoint- 
ments, or  by  other  causes,  the  division  of  the  scientific  brethren 
into  an  Oxford  section  and  a  London  section  was  virtually 
at  an  end,  and  the  parent  society  of  London  again  included 
the  majority 1.  Their  place  of  rendezvous,  of  course,  was 
Gresham  College,  where  Wren's  astronomy  lectures  and  Mr. 
Rooke's  geometry  lectures,  which  had  been  interrupted  by  the 
anarchy  of  1658-9,  had  been  resumed  with  great  acceptance. 
Wren's  lectures  were  the  attraction  on  Wednesdays ;  and  it 
was  after  one  of  them,  on  Wednesday,  Nov.  28,  1660,  that 

J  Weld's  History  of  the  Royal  Society  (1848),  I.  30—54;  but  see  ante,  Vol.  III. 
pp.  661— GGti,  and  Vol.  V.  pp.  230—231,  p.  486. 


394  LIFE    OF    MILTON-    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

the  proposal  for  a  new  organization  "  for  the  promoting  of 
physico-mathematical  experimental  learning,"  was  proposed 
and  adopted.  These  persons  following,  "  according  to  the  usual 
custom  of  most  of  them,"  having  heen  present  at  the  lecture, 
and  having  afterwards,  "  according  to  the  usual  manner,"  re- 
solved themselves  into  a  meeting  for  private  conversation, — 
"  viz.  the  Lord  Brouncker,  Mr.  Boyle,  Mr.  Bruce,  Sir  Robert 
"Moray,  Sir  Paul  Neile,  Dr.  Wilkins,  Dr.  Goddard,  Dr. 
"  Petty,  Mr.  Ball,  Mr.  Rooke,  Mr.  Wren,  Mr.  Hill,"— it  was 
resolved  to  attempt  the  establishment  of  a  scientific  society  on 
a  broader  basis  than  had  been  tried  before,  to  consist  of  regular 
weekly  meetings,  every  Wednesday  thenceforward,  of  the  per- 
sons then  present,  and  such  other  persons  as  might  be  deemed 
eligible  and  might  be  willing  to  pay  ten  shillings  of  entry- 
money  and  one  shilling  a  week  of  subscription.  Thirty-nine 
persons  not  present  were  suggested  as  likely  and  desirable 
members,  and  their  names  were  written  down.  Among  them 
were  Lord  Hatton,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  Mr.  Evelyn,  Denham, 
Dr.  Ward,  Dr.  Wallis,  Dr.  Bathurst,  Dr.  Willis,  Dr.  Cowley 
and  about  a  dozen  other  physicians,  Mr.  Jones,  and  Mr. 
Oldenburg.  These  two  last,  Boyle's  promising  young  nephew 
and  his  tutor,  had  just  returned  from  their  foreign  tour1. 

For  a  time  one  of  the  passions  of  the  new  Society  seems  to 
have  been  for  the  erection  and  endowment  of  a  London  College 
of  Science,  with  professorships,  a  museum,  laboratories,  &c, 
that  should  supersede  and  surpass  Gresham  College,  and  be  a 
rebuke  and  example  to  the  two  old-fashioned  Universities. 
This  also,  as  we  know,  had  been  the  passion  of  some  of  the 
leading  Puritans  of  the  Long  Parliament  as  long  ago  as  1641, 
when  there  had  been  communications  between  Hartlib  and 
the  pansophic  Comenius  on  the  subject,  and  Comenius  had 
actually  come  to  London  to  advise  and  superintend  (see  ante, 
Vol.  III.  pp.  221-224).  Not,  however,  in  the  form  of  a  new 
building  with  an  apparatus  of  professorships  and  scholarships, 
but  in  the  easier  form  of  a  series  of  weekly  meetings,  still 
chiefly  in  Gresham  College,  for  the  reading  and  criticism  of 

1  Weld's  History  of  the  Royal  Society,  I.  54 — 67 ;  where  there  are  extracts  from 
the  Society's  Records. 


SCIENCE    AND   THE   ROYAL   SOCIETY.  395 

papers  and  the  exhibition  of  curiosities  and  experiments,  was 
the  Society  of  1660  to  attain  its  celebrity.  The  King  having 
at  once  signified  his  approbation  of  the  Society  through  Sir 
Robert  Moray,  and  the  meetings  having  been  continued  under 
Wilkins's  presidency  or  Moray's,  and  many  papers  having  been 
read  and  many  experiments  performed,  and  the  King  having 
occasionally  shown  his  interest  in  the  proceedings  by  a  gift  of 
loadstones,  or  of  some  of  Prince  Rupert's  drops,  or  by  a  question 
as  to  the  cause  of  the  shrivelling  of  the  sensitive  plant,  there 
was  an  increasing  competition  for  the  honour  of  membership 
through  the  year  1661,  accompanied  by  an  extraordinary 
steadiness  of  many  of  the  members  in  not  paying  their  sub- 
scriptions. On  the  15th  of  July  1662  a  Royal  Charter 
incorporating  the  Society  passed  the  great  seal ;  but,  as  this 
was  somewhat  defective,  there  was  a  second  and  enlarged 
charter  on  April  22,  1663.  From  that  date  The  Royal 
Society  was  fully  in  existence,  as  an  express  foundation  of 
King  Charles  the  Second,  with  its  president,  its  council,  its 
various  powers  and  privileges,  and  its  statutory  anniversary 
of  St.  Andrew's  day,  the  30th  of  November,  in  every  year  for 
ever.  Though  some  of  Charles's  personal  tastes  were  in  the 
direction  of  anatomy  and  nautical  mechanics,  he  does  not 
appear  to  have  done  much  more  for  the  Society  than  call 
himself  its  founder  and  present  it  with  the  silver-gilt  mace 
which  it  still  possesses  and  uses.  There  is  no  proof  that  he 
ever  attended  one  of  the  meetings.  There  was  a  vague  talk 
about  a  large  endowment  in  the  shape  of  Irish  lands,  but  it 
came  to  nothing.  The  accommodation  at  Gresham  College, 
with  an  occasional  option  of  another  place  of  meeting,  had  to 
suffice  ;  and  for  current  expenses,  including  those  for  apparatus 
and  experiments,  the  members  had  to  tax  themselves  in  dona- 
tions or  increased  rates  of  subscription.  There  was  still  a 
remarkable  backwardness  among  many  of  them  in  the  matter 
of  payment  \ 

i  Weld's  History  of  the  Royal  Society,  of    his    taste    for    anatomy    there    is 

I.   6S— 141,    with    extracts    from    the  this  story  in   Pepys  :— Feb.  7,  1662  -3. 

Records  there,  and  the  two  charters  in  "  Creed  and  I  and  Captain  Ferrers  to 

the  Appendix  to  Vol.  II.— King  Charles  "  the    Park,   and  there   walked   finely, 

had  a  taste  for  ship-buildiBg  and  kin-  "seeing  people  slide,  we  talking  all  the 

dred  parts  of  practical  mechanics  ;  and  "  while  ;    and   Captain   Ferrers  telling 


396  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

The  first  President  of  the  Society  under  the  charter  was 
Viscount  Brouncker.  He  remained  in  office  till  1677.  The 
first  Council  consisted  of  these  twenty  of  the  fellows  in  addition 
to  the  President: — Sir  Robert  Moray,  Robert  Boyle,  William 
Brereton,  Sir  Kenelm  Dig-by,  Sir  Gilbert  Talbot,  Sir  Paul 
Neile,  Henry  Slingsby,  Sir  William  Petty,  Dr.  Timothy 
Clarke,  Dr.  John  Wilkins,  Dr.  George  Ent,  William  Erskine, 
Dr.  Jonathan  Goddard,  William  Ball,  Matthew  Wren,  John 
Evelyn,  Thomas  Henshaw,  Dudley  Palmer,  Abraham  Hill, 
and  Henry  Oldenburg-.  The  total  number  of  Fellows  on  the 
20th  of  November  1663  was  131,  of  whom  18  were  noblemen, 
22  baronets  or  knights,  32  doctors  (chiefly  of  medicine),  2 
bachelors  of  divinity,  2  masters  of  arts,  47  esquires,  and  8 
foreigners.  Among  the  fellows  were  Cowlejr,  Denham,  Pepys, 
Aubrey,  Sprat,  and  Dryden.  The  election  of  the  last  had 
taken  place  in  November  1662,  before  he  had  produced  his 
first  play  and  while  he  was  comparatively  undistinguished. 
The  most  diligent  and  indefatigable  of  the  aristocratic  members 
were  Lord  Brouncker,  who  was  exemplary  in  his  presidency, 
and  of  some  reputation  on  his  own  account  for  mathematical 
ability,  and  Sir  Robert  Moray,  who  had  been  president  before 
the  incorporation  and  continued  to  support  the  Society  in  all 
ways  by  his  influence  at  Court.  Of  the  rest  no  one  was  more 
prominent  than  Boyle,  or  more  visibly  led  and  directed  the 
proceedings  at  first  by  his  papers  and  experiments.  Boyle, 
however,  was  not  yet  permanently  resident  in  London, 
but  was  still  much  in  Oxford,  and  therefore  often  in  con- 
nection with  the  Society  only  by  correspondence.  Wallis 
and  Christopher  Wren  were  also  much  at  Oxford,  where 
Wren  had  been  appointed  to  the  Savilian  professorship  of 
astronomy.  Sir  William  Petty,  a  leading  spirit  when 
present,  was  called  away  for  a  long  while  by  'his  business 

"  me,  among  other  Court  passages,  how  "  chance    should  be."     Feb.  17.   "  Mr. 

'•'  about  a  month  ago,  at  a  ball  at  Court,  "  Pickering  tells  me  the  story  is  very 

"  a  child  was  dropped  by  one  of  the  "  true  of  a  child  being  dropped  at  the 

''  ladies  in  dancing,  but  nobody  knew  "  ball  at  Court ;  and  that  the  King  had 

"  who,  it  being  taken  up  by  somebody  "  it  in  his  closet  a  week  after,  and  did 

"  in  their  handkercher.    The  next  morn-  "  dissect  it,  and,  making  great  sport  of 

"  ing  all  the  Ladies  of  Honour  appeared  "it,  said  that  in  his  opinion  it   must 

"  early  at  Court  for  their  vindication,  so  "  have  been  a  month  and  three  hours 

"  that  nobody  could  tell  where  this  mis-  "  old." 


SCIENCE    AND   THE   ROYAL   SOCIETY.  397 

in  Ireland.     On  the  whole,  the  Society  could  hardly  have  held 
together  as  it  did  through  all  its  difficulties  but  for  the  exer- 
tions  of  Oldenburg  and  Hooke.     Oldenburg-,  whom  we  have 
seen  proposed  as  one  of  the  original  members  in  November 
1660,  doubtless  on  Boyle's  recommendation,  had  thrown  such 
energy   into   the   affairs    of  the   Society  that   he    had    been 
appointed  joint-secretary  with  Wilkins  in   the  first  Charter 
of  Incorporation ;  and  on  the  12th  of  November  166.2  Hooke, 
who  had  been  for  some  years  in  Boyle's  employment  at  Oxford, 
had  been  appointed  cui-ator   to   the   Society,  with  a  special 
charge  of  the  apparatus    and  the  experiments.       Hooke,   a 
deformed  little  man,  of  twenty-seven  years  of  age  at  the  time 
of  his  appointment,   was  to  do  wonders  in  his  post  by  his 
mechanical  inventiveness;  but  the  man  of  general   business 
was  Oldenburg.      He  was  thirty-six  years   of  age  when  ap- 
pointed ;  and,  though  nominally  joint-secretary  with  Wilkins, 
he  had  the  whole  burden  of  the  secretaryship.     "We  have  his 
own  account  of  the  duties  of  the  secretary,  .as  follows  : — "  He 
"  attends  constantly  the  meetings  both   of  the  Society  and 
"  Council ;    noteth  the  observables  said  and  done  there  ;    di- 
"  gesteth  them  in  pj  ivate  ;  takes  care  to  have  them  entered  in 
"  the  journals  and  register-books  ;   reads  over  and  corrects  all 
"  entries  ;  solicits  the  performances  of  tasks  recommended  and 
"  undertaken  ;  writes  all  letters  abroad  and  answers  the  returns 
"  made  to  them,  entertaining  a  correspondence  with  at  least 
"  fifty  persons;  employs  a  great  deal  of  time  and  takes  much 
"  pains   in    satisfying   foreign    demands    about    philosophical 
"matters;    disperseth  far  and    near   store  of  directions  and 
"  inquiries  for   the   Society's  purposes,    and    sees  them   well 
"  recommended."     To  these  duties  was  added,  for  a  time,  that 
of  editing  the  transactions  of  the  Society.     The  first  number 
of  these  celebrated  Philosophical  Transactions,   so    edited    by 
Oldenburg,  appeared  on  the  6th  of  March  1664-5.     For  all 
this  Oldenburg  received   not  a  farthing.     Not  till  1669  did 
they  vote  him  a  salary  of  <^40  a  year l. 

Interrupted,  like  everything  else,  by  the  Great  Plague  and 

1  First  and  Second   Charters   of  the       History  of  the  Society,  with  the  History 
Royal  Society  in  Appendix   to  Weld's       itself,  I.  141—178,  and  259—261. 


398  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

the  Great  Fire  of  1665-6,  the  Society  had  accomplished  before 
the  year  1667  a  good  deal  of  work,  much  of  it  crude,  but  all 
very  interesting-  now  in  the  history  of  English  science.  From 
the  very  nature  of  its  labours  and  speculations  it  had  become 
the  object  of  much  popular  lampoon  and  burlesque.  This  ill 
feeling  inevitable  in  the  infancy  of  such  institutions,  already 
existed  in  considerable  accumulation  in  1667,  but  was  to 
manifest  itself  more  openly  after  the  publication  in  that  year 
of  Sprat's  History  of  the  Institution,  Design,  and  Progress  of  the 
Royal  Society.  There  was  some  boldness  in  such  a  publication 
only  five  years  after  the  Society  had  been  incorporated;  and  a 
prefixed  ode  by  Cowley  in  honour  of  the  Society,  rebuking-  the 
attacks  already  made  on  it,  did  not  diminish  the  provocation 
to  farther  antagonism  \ 

It  would  be  ungracious  to  close  our  account  of  the  Literature 
of  the  first  seven  years  of  the  Restoration  without  some  notice 
of  the  London  booksellers  and  publishers  of  those  days. 

At  one  time  or  another  between  1640  and  1660  there  had 
been,  as  I  compute,  about  200  persons  in  London  known  not 
only  as  booksellers  or  printers,  or  as  combining  both  trades, 
but  also  as  regular  or  occasional  publishers.  About  fifty  of 
these  at  least  were  alive  and  still  in  business  at  the  Restora- 
tion, with  such  repute  in  the  book-trade  as  they  had  acquired 
by  their  previous  dealings.  The  most  conspicuously  Royalist 
among  them  had  been  Richard  Royston,  the  publisher  of  the 
Eikon  Basilike  and  of  other  things  for  the  royal  family,  and 
the  publisher  also  of  most  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  writings  ;  next 
to  whom  for  fidelity  to  that  side  of  things  was  perhaps  Henry 
Seile,  the  publisher  of  some  of  Heylin's  writings,  and  of 
several  of  the  strongest  Royalist  pamphlets  heralding  the 
Restoration.  Matthew  Simmons,  the  first  publisher  for  the 
Commonwealth,  and  consequently  the  publisher  of  Milton's 
Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates  and  Eikonoklastes,  had  been 
dead  for  some  time,  having  left  the  honour  and  the  emoluments 
of  official  printing  and  publishing  for  the  Republic  and  then 

1  Weld's  History  of  the  Eoyal  Society,  tered  for  publication  by  James  Allestree, 
I.  72 — 200  ;  Cowley's  Works.  Sprat's  under  licence  from  Secretary  Morrice, 
History  of  the  Royal  Society  was  regis-        July  25,  1067. 


BOOKSELLEES  AND  PUBLISHERS  FROM  1640  TO  1660.     399 

for  Oliver  to  Thomas  Newcome  and  William  Dugard,  both  of 
them  converts  to  the  Republic  early  in  Milton's  secretaryship. 
Dugard,  after  having-  been  in  trouble  for  helping  Royston  to 
print  the  EiJcon  Basililce,  and  for  threatening  an  English  edition 
of  the  Befensio  Begia  of  Salmasius,  had  signalised  his  conver- 
sion, as  we  know,  most  remarkably,  by  printing,  for  the  Repub- 
lican Council  of  State,  Milton's  Befensio   contra   Salmasium, 
the  French  translation  of  his  Eilconoklastes,  and  much  besides  ; 
while  Newcome  had  been  the  publisher  of  Milton's  Befensio 
Secunda  and  of  his   Treatise  of  Civil  Power  in  Ecclesiastical 
Causes,  and  had  been  steadily  the  printer  of  Needham's  bi- 
weekly newspaper  from  1651  to  1660.     Latterly  Henry  Hills 
and  John  Field  had  divided  with  Newcome  the  business  of 
government  printing  for   Oliver ;   and   Robert  Ibbetson  also 
had  dealt  in  news-pamphlets  and  miscellanies  on  the  Common- 
wealth side.     As  an  extreme  opinionist  of  the  Republican  sort 
one  recognises  Livewell  Chapman,  the  publisher  of  Harring- 
ton's Oceana,   and  also  of  those    two    latest  pre-Restoration 
pamphlets  of  Milton  which  were  probably  too  violent  for  New- 
come, — his  Means  to  remove  Hirelings  out  of  the  Church  and  his 
Beady  and  Easy  Way  to  establish  a  Free  Commonicealth.     Even 
among  those  who  did  not  profess  to  be  specially  political  pub- 
lishers, but  dealt  in  theological  or  general  literature,  one  can 
discern  the  personal  bias,  in  some  cases,  easily  enough.   Thomas 
Underhill,  who  had  published  the  first  three  of  Milton's  anti- 
Episcopal  or  Smectymnuan  pamphlets  in  1641,  and  also  his 
Tract  on  Education  in  1644,  had  remained  a  stiff  Presbyterian 
and  anti-Tolerationist,  and  so  had  parted  from  Milton  long 
ago  ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  John  Rothwell,  the  pub- 
lisher of  the  two  last  of  Milton's  Smectymnuan  pamphlets  in 
1641  and  1642.     John  Stafford  had  published  Thomas  Fuller's 
books  ;  one  of  Baxter's  publishers  was  Nevill  Symons,  who 
had  come  to  London  from  Kidderminster  ;  and  Prynne  had 
dealt  with  Edward  Thomas.     Very  solid  men  of  business  must 
have    been   Abel    Roper,    who   published   for    Dugdale,    and 
Thomas    Roycroft,   who    had    published    Walton's    Polyglott 
and  some  of  Ogilby's  illustrated  books.     The  first  volume  of 
Rushworth    had   come,   I   think,   from    the   shop    of  George 


400  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

Thomason,  who  is  immortal  independently  for  the  vast  collec- 
tion of  contemporary  pamphlets  he  had  accumulated  in  his 
cellars,  with  so  much  trouble  and  expense  to  himself,  but 
so  greatly  to  the  benefit  of  posterity  and  the  British  Museum. 
Francis  Grove  inclined  to  popular  ballad-sheets  ;  and  Nathaniel 
Brooks,  as  we  have  had  occasion  to  see,  hovered  between 
drollery  and  the  finer  literature.  Thomas  Dring  had,  for 
some  time  before  the  Restoration,  shown  a  creditable  prefer- 
ence for  the  finer  literature  in  his  transactions ;  but,  all  in  all, 
the  chiefs  of  the  London  book-trade,  in  poetry  and  whatever 
else  the  phrase  "  the  finer  literature  "  can  include,  had  been 
Humphrey  Moseley,  Richard  Marriott,  and  Henry  Herring- 
man.  But  of  these  three  chiefs  one  was  still  the  chief. 
Marriott  and  Herringman  would  have  knelt  to  Humphrey 
Moseley  \ 

Our  first  acquaintance  with  Moseley  was  in  1645,  when 
he  published,  from  his  shop  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  the 
collection  of  Milton's  minor  English  and  Latin  poems,  pre- 
fixing to  the  little  volume  a  tasteful  paragraph  in  his  own 
name,  expounding  his  principles  and  aspirations  in  the  pub- 
lishing business  and  his  confidence  in  Milton's  genius  (Vol. 
III.  pp.  448-459).  "  It  is  the  love  I  have  to  our  own 
"  language  that  hath  made  me  diligent  to  collect  and  set 
"  forth  such  pieces,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  as  may  renew 
"  the  wonted  honour  and  esteem  of  our  English  tongue," 
had  been  Moseley 's  words  in  that  paragraph.  From  the 
principle  so  announced  in  1645  he  had  never  swerved.  By 
solicitation  of  what  he  liked,  rather  than  by  accepting  chance 
offers,  he  had  drawn  to  him  almost  every  living  writer  of 
genuine  merit  or  promise  in  poetry  or  in  any  other  form 
of  non-controversial  literature.  He  had  acquired  a  property, 
in  many  cases  by  original  publication,  and  in  others  by  sub- 
sequent purchase,  in  the  poetry,  plays,  or  other  writings  of 
Shirley,  Richard  Brome,  Carlell,  Stapylton,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby, 
Howell, Waller,  Denham,  Davenant,  Cowley,  Cockayne, Stanley, 
Fanshawe,  and  Henry  Vaughan  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  his 

1  Digested  from  my  notes  from  the  accounts  of  Milton's  publishing  trans- 
Stationers'  Registers  for  the  period  from  actions  and  other  particulars  already 
1649  to  1660 ;  with  references  to  the       given  in  various  places  in  these  volumes. 


HUMPHREY    MOSELEY.  401 

ambition  to  possess  the  whole  of  some  of  these  writers,  or  at 
least  of  their  poetry.     He  had  acquired  copyrights  in  works  of 
such  recently  deceased  English  celebrities  as  Donne,  Suckling, 
Crashaw,  Carew,  Cartwright,  May,  and  Herbert  of  Cher-bury; 
and  in  the  resuscitation  of  select  pieces  of  the  older  literature 
of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacoban  age  his  assiduity  had  been 
unequalled.     More  than   once   in   the   Stationers'   Registers, 
through  the  time  of  the  Civil  Wars,  the  Commonwealth,  and 
the  Protectorate,  one  is  attracted  by  the  assignment  to  a  new 
proprietor  of  a  batch  of  plays  by  Marlowe,  Decker,  Shake- 
speare,  Chapman,   Beaumont  and    Fletcher,    Heywood,    Ben 
Jonson,  Webster,  Massinger,  Ford,  Middleton,   Rowley,  and 
Tourneur ;  and  in  such  cases,  as  in  most  individual  entries  of 
the  same  kind,  it  is  Moseley  as  a  matter  of  course  that  owns 
the  transaction.     He  had  not  disdained  a  philosophical  treatise 
now  and  then  ;  and  latterly,  I  find,  he  traded  also,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  in  translations  of  Italian  historical  works  of 
repute,  and  in  translations  of  Spanish  and  Italian  novels,  and 
of  the  contemporary  French  heroic  romances.     It  was  chiefly 
from  Moseley's  shop  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  that  the  English 
public,  from  1650  to  1660,  obtained  their  copies  of  those  in- 
terminable Cleojiatras,  Cassandras,  Clelias,  Grand  Scipios,  and 
Grand  Gyruses,  which  were  then  regarded,  on  both  sides  of  the 
channel,  as  the  perfection  of  amusing  prose-fiction.     But,  in- 
deed, everything  very  good  was  to  be  obtained  at  that  shop, 
everything  that   was  not  a  pamphlet   or  a  sermon.     These 
Moseley  abhorred.     Once  or  twice,  in  a  moment  of  weakness, 
he  did  publish  a  sermon  ;  but  he  could  endure  nothing  of  the 
pamphlet  kind,  unless  perhaps  it  might  be  some  oldish  thing 
appertaining   rather    to   the   philosophy  of  politics   than  to 
current  politics,  and  bearing  the  name  of  Raleigh  or  Bacon. 
He  was  a  publisher  for  the  finer  muses  only ;  and  that  they 
had  been  visiting  him  so  much  in  the  heart  of  London  during 
the  twenty  years  of  Puritan  ascendancy  is  one  fact  more  for 
those  who  persist  in  the  delusion  that  they  had  then  forsaken 
the  British  Islands  \ 

1   My    notes    from    the    Stationers'       170   MS.   pages    of    small    octavo   for 
Registers.   These  notes  extend  to  about       the  period  1640—1660,  and  the  name 

VOL.  VI.  D  d 


402 


LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOEY    OF    HIS    TIME. 


The  election  to  the  Mastership  and  the  two  Wardenships 
of  the  Stationers'  Company  took  place  in  the  month  of  July 
every  year.  The  men  appointed  to  those  offices  in  the 
Corporation  were  generally  seniors  in  the  trade,  and  were 
always  men  of  eminence  in  it  on  one  account  or  another, 
though  often  rather  as  salesmen  of  books  and  stationery  than 
as  publishers.  At  the  election  of  July  1659,  however,  when 
Mr.  William  Lee  was  chosen  master,  and  Mr.  Richard  Thrale 
one  of  the  wardens,  it  had  so  happened  that  the  other  warden- 
ship  came  to  Humphrey  Moseley.  Thus  in  the  very  year  of 
the  Restoration  Moseley  was  one  of  the  chief  office-bearers 
in  the  trade  of  which  he  had  so  long-  been  an  ornament.  For 
aught  I  know,  he  may  have  thought  it  a  pleasure,  as  well  as 
a  duty,  to  be  in  his  place,  as  one  of  the  Wardens  of  the 
Stationers'  Company,  in  that  part  of  the  immense  triumphal 
procession  of  Charles's  entry  into  London,  on  the  29th  of 
May  1660,  which  consisted  of  600  representatives  of  the 
different  London  Companies,  all  on  horseback,  in  black  velvet 
coats,  with  gold  chains,  and  each  company  preceded  by  its 
footmen  in  liveries.  At  all  events,  before  his  term  of  war- 
denship  expired,  he  gave  proof  that  he  did  not  mean  to  be 
less  energetic  in  the  business  of  bookselling  and  publishing 
under  the  Restoration  than  he  had  been  through  the  Com- 
monwealth and  the  Protectorate.  We  have  already  noted 
his  remarkable  registration,  on  the  29th  of  June,  1660,  of 
thirty-six  old  dramatic  copyrights  as  wholly  his  own ;  and 
we  may  now  add  that  on  the  same  day  he  registered  his  joint- 
property  with  Humphrey  Robinson  in  another  large  batch  of 
dramatic  copyrights,  his  joint  property  with  Thomas  Dring 
in  Stanley's  History  of  Philosophy  and  in  four  volumes  of 
a  translation  of  The  Grand  Cyrus,  and  his  joint  property  with 
Dring  and  Herringman  in  two  volumes  of  a  translation  of 
D'Urfe's  FAstree. 


Moseley,  MosePy  occurs  and  recurs  page 
after  page,  always  in  connexion  with 
hooks  of  the  kind  described.  The 
largest  registration  by  Moseley  was  on 
the  9th  of  September,  1653,  when  he 
entered  forty-one  separate  books  as  his, 
paying  20s.  6d.  for  the  entry.  They  are 
almost  all  Elizabethan  or  Jacobau  Plays, 


and  include  these — "  The  History  of 
Cardenio  by  Mr.  Fletcher  and  Shake- 
speare "  ;  "  The  Merry  Devil  of  Edmon- 
ton, by  Wm.  Shakespeare  "  ;  "  Henry 
the  First  and  Henry  the  Second,  by 
Shakespeare  and  Davenport."  For 
another  curious  Shakespearian  registra- 
tion of  Moseley's  see  ante,  p.  352. 


DEATH    OF   HUMPHREY  MOSELEY.  403 

Gn  the  3 1st  of  January  1660-1  the  news  among-  the  book- 
sellers was   that  Humphrey  Moseley  was  dead.     He   left  a 
widow,  Anne  Moseley,   and  an  unmarried   daughter  of  the 
same   name,   and   there  are   traces   of  a  continuation  of  his 
business  for  some  time  in  their  hands.     But  the  sovereignty 
of  the  book- trade  was  then  open  to  competition.     Most  of  the 
remaining  booksellers    abstained  from    the    competition    and 
were  content  to  go  on  in  their  old  tracks.    In  general  business 
Royston  continued  eminent.     Thomason  was  alive  till  1666; 
Seile  was  then  dead,  having  left  a  widow  in  his  business  ;  poor 
Dugard  was  then  also  dead,  having  left  some  scholarly  copy- 
rights to  his  daughter,  Lydia  Dugard ;  Livewell  Chapman  and 
some  of  the  others  are  not  heard  of  at  all,  or  are  hardly  heard 
of,  after  the  Restoration  ;  but  to  1667  and  beyond  there  were 
persevering  survivors   in  Allestree,  Brooks,  Andrew  Crooke, 
Dring,  Fletcher,  Garth  wait,  Hills,  Norton,  Humphrey  Robin- 
son,   Sawbridge,    Ralph   Smith,    and    Nevill   Symons.      One 
hears   also    of    a    John    Martin,    a    Randal    Taylor,    a    John 
Redmayne,  a  George  Hurlock,  a  Robert  Powlett,  a  Henry 
Mortlock,  a  Samuel  Thomson,  a  Samuel  Simmons,  a  Robert 
Boulter,  and  others,  as  either  new  men  in  the  trade  between 
1660  and  1667,  or  as  busier  in  those  years  than  they  had 
been  before.      Meanwhile   the   only  signs    of  a  real  contest 
for  Moseley 's  place  as  the  trade-chief  of  the  finer  literature 
were  between   Marriott    and    Herringman.     Both  had  been 
emulous  in  Moseley 's  footsteps  before  the  Restoration,  catch- 
ing  up    things    that    Moseley  let   go.      Marriott,  who    had 
been  in  business  as  long  ago  as   1645   in  partnership  with 
his  father,   had   acquired    copyrights  or  part  copyrights  in 
Quarles,  Donne,  Wottons  Remains,  Dr.  Henry  King's  Poems, 
and  Sermons  by  Hales  of  Eton  ;   and  Herringman,  who  had 
been  in  business  since    1653,  possessed  copyrights  in  some 
writings  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  and   Howell,   in   several  old 
plays,    in    the   Musarum   Del/tits,    in    the    poems    of  Jasper 
Mayne,  in    Lord  Broghill's  Part/tenissa,  and  in  Davenant's 
Siege   of  Bhodes  and    others    of  Davenant's   pre-Restoration 
operas.     Herringman  had  also  published  together,  in  January 
1658-9,  the  three  obituary  panegyrics  on  Oliver  Cromwell 

D  d  a 


404  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

bv   Marvell,   Dryden,    and  Sprat ;    and,  in  April    1660,   the 
month  before  the  Restoration,  he  had  advertised  that  volume 
of  Sir  Robert   Howard's  Poems  which,  when  it  did  appear 
a  few  weeks  afterwards,  was  found  to  contain  conveniently  a 
panegyric  on  King  Charles  and  a  panegyric  on  Monk.     On 
the  other  hand,  Waller's  more  famous  poem  to  the  King  on 
his  return  had  been  published  by  Marriott.     On  the  whole, 
at  the  time  of  Moseley's  death,  while  the  advantage  was  with 
Herringman,  Marriott's  chances  were  considerable ;  and  the 
publication  from  his  shop  of  the  First  Pari  of  Hudibras  in 
1662    was    another    incident   in   his    favour.      Somehow   he 
could  not  follow  up  that  success.     The  Second  Part  of  Hudi- 
bras, a  year  after  the  first,  was  not  published  by  him,  but 
by  Martin  and  Allestree ;  and,  though  he  published  the  Poems 
of  Mrs.  Katherine  Philips  instead,  that  was  a  poor  substitute. 
Meanwhile  Herringman  had  been  gaining  ground  remarkably. 
Already  in  possession  of  Davenant,  Lord  Orrery,  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  and  Dryden,  he  had  brought  round  him  also  Cowley 
and  Boyle,  having  published  the  essays  of  both  in  1661,  and 
a  volume    of  Cowley's  poems  in   1663.     In  April  1664  he 
acquired  the  copyright  of  all  Waller's  poetry ;  and  from  that 
time  his  superiority  to  Marriott,  and  his  title  to  be  regarded 
as  Moseley's  successor   in    the   primacy  of  the  book-trade, 
admitted  of  no  dispute.     He  was  to  publish  more  and  more 
for  Waller,  for  Howard,  for  Dryden,  and  for  other  poets  and 
dramatists;    the   scientific   connexion    he    had    won   through 
Boyle  drew  round  him  the   chiefs  of  the   Royal  Society  as 
well  as  the  wits  of  the  Court ;    Hudibras  and  The  Poems  of 
Mrs.  Katherine  Philips  were  to  be  his  when  he  chose  ;  and, 
whenever   any   stock    of  old    plays    and    poems  was   in    the 
market,    and    especially   when    Anne    Moseley,   withdrawing 
from  business,  wished  to  dispose  of  any  of  her  late  husband's 
copyrights  in  such  things,  who  so  ready  to  purchase  as  Her- 
ringman ?     In  fact  Herringman  and  his  shop  are  one  of  the 
most  vivid  traditions  of  the  Restoration.     The  shop  was  "at 
the  sign  of  the  Blue  Anchor  in  the  Lower  Walk  of  the  New 
Exchange," — this  New  Exchange,  so  called  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  Old  Exchange  in  the  City,  being  on  the  south  side 


HERKINGMAN    AND    HIS   SHOP.  405 

of  the  Strand,  on  the  site  of  the  present  Adelphi.  Any  time 
before  the  Great  Plague  and  the  Great  Fire,  but  perhaps  more 
distinctly  after  those  events  than  before,  this  shop  of  Herring- 
man's  was  the  chief  literary  lounging-place  in  London.  There, 
in  the  year  1667,  when  Dry  den's  Annus  Mirabilis  had  been 
added  to  his  previously  published  Rival  Ladies  and  Indian 
Emperor,  you  might  have  seen,  if  you  were  lucky  in  your 
moment,  Dryden  himself,  and  Boyle,  and  Cowley,  and  Sir 
Robert  Howard,  and  Waller,  and  Butler,  and  half  a  dozen 
more  celebrities,  dropping  in  together  or  one  after  another  l. 

If  it  had  been  late  in  1667,  you  would  have  missed  one  of 
the  best  of  them  for  ever.  "  Yesterday  in  the  evening,"  says 
the  London  Gazette  of  August  4,  1667,  "  the  body  of  Air. 
"  Abraham  Cowley,  who  died  the  28th  past,  was  conveyed 
"  from  Wallingford  House  to  Westminster  Abbey,  accom- 
"  panied  by  divers  persons  of  eminent  quality,  who  came  to 
"  perform  this  last  office  to  one  who  had  been  the  great  orna- 
"  ment  of  our  nation,  as  well  by  the  candour  of  his  life  as  the 
"  excellency  of  his  writings."  Just  a  fortnight  later,  on  the 
13th  of  August  1667,  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor  died  in  Ireland. 
In  Cowley,  dead  at  the  age  of  forty-nine,  and  Jeremy  Taylor, 
dead  at  the  age  of  fifty-four,  the  literature  of  Davenant's 
laureateship  had  lost  two  whom  it  could  ill  spare.  But  a  few 
months  more  and  Davenant  himself  was  to  be  gone,  leaving 
the  Laureateship  vacant. 

1   The  date   of    Moseley's    death   is       and  sights  of  Herringman's  publications 

from  Smith's  Obituary ;  the  rest  from       and  title-pages, 
my  notes  from  the  Stationers'  Registers 


CHAPTER  III. 

milton's   life   feom    1661    to    1667: 

WITH 

PARADISE    LOST. 

How  long  Milton  remained  in  his  temporary  house  in 
Holborn,  near  Red  Lion  Fields,  is  uncertain.  We  have 
supposed  him  to  have  been  still  there  at  the  coronation 
of  Charles  in  May  1661 ;  and  he  may  have  remained  there 
for  some  months  longer.  Hardly,  however,  to  the  end  of 
1661  ;  lor  Phillips's  words  are  that  he  "  staid  not  long-  " 
in  his  Holborn  house  before,  "  his  pardon  having  passed  the 
seal,  he  removed  to  Jewin  Street."  It  is  not  difficult  to 
account  for  the  choice  so  made  of  a  new  place  of  residence. 
If  a  bustling  thoroughfare  like  Holborn  was  unsuitable  for  the 
blind  ex-Secretary  of  the  Commonwealth,  much  less  could  he 
return  to  Petty  France,  or  to  any  other  purlieu  of  West- 
minster. He  remembered  therefore  that  quiet  quarter  of  the 
City,  just  beyond  the  walls,  and  not  far  from  his  native  Bread 
Street,  where  he  had  first  set  up  as  a  householder  on  his  own 
account  one-and-twenty  years  ago,  and  where  he  had  spent 
seven  of  the  busiest  years  of  his  private  life,  when  he  was  a 
zealous  adherent  of  the  Long  Parliament  through  the  Civil 
Wars  and  a  pamphleteer  in  that  interest,  but  did  not  foresee 
his  more  intimate  official  connexions  with  the  governments 
that  were  to  succeed.  He  would  go  back  now  to  that 
neighbourhood,  and  be  again  well  at  a  distance  from  White- 
hall and  its  associations. 


MILTON  S   REMOVAL   TO   JEWIN   STREET.  407 

Jewin  Street,  where  a  house  was  accordingly  found  for  him, 
still  exists.  It  is  a  narrowish,  slightly  winding1,  and  not 
untidy  street,  going  off  from  Aldersgate  Street  on  the  right 
as  you  leave  the  City,  and  connecting  that  street  with  Red 
Cross  Street  and  the  vicinity  of  Cripplegate  church.  Itg-oes 
off  from  Aldersgate  Street  only  a  few  paces  from  the  site  of 
the  "  pretty  garden  house  "  there,  "  at  the  end  of  an  entry," 
where  Milton  had  lived  between  1640  and  1645,  and  into 
which  he  had  brought  Mary  Powell  for  her  short  stay  with  him 
after  their  marriage  ;  and  the  very  next  turn  out  of  Aldersgate 
Street,  on  the  same  side  farther  up,  is  Barbican,  where  he  had 
resided  from  1645  to  1647,  in  the  larger  house  he  had  taken 
for  the  purposes  of  pedagogy  after  his  wife  had  gone  back  to 
him,  and  in  which  his  father-in-law  and  his  own  father  had 
died.  In  Jewin  Street,  therefore,  Milton  was  beside  those 
two  former  houses  of  his,  and  so  close  to  either  that,  but  for 
his  blindness,  he  could  have  passed  from  one  to  the  other  in  a 
few  minutes,  and  revived  his  recollections  of  them  by  looking 
at  their  doors  and  windows.  As  it  was,  he  could  but  be  led 
about  in  the  space  between  them. 

No  house  extant  in  the  present  Jewin  Street  is  remembered 
as  that  once  occupied  by  Milton.  We  can  fix  approximately, 
however,  the  part  of  Jewin  Street  in  which  the  house  stood. 
Though  the  street  is  by  no  means  a  long"  one,  it  is  not  all 
included  in  one  and  the  same  city  parish,  or  even  in  one 
and  the  same  city  ward.  The  part  of  Jewin  Street 
nearest  Aldersgate  Street  is  in  the  parish  of  St.  Botolph, 
in  the  ward  of  Aldersgate  ;  but  the  rest  of  Jewin  Street, 
or  the  part  nearest  Red  Cross  Street,  is  in  the  parish  of 
St.  Giles,  in  the  ward  of  Cripplegate.  If,  therefore,  the 
house  to  which  Mr.  ex-Secretary  Milton  removed  in  1661  had 
been  in  the  part  of  Jewin  Street  nearest  Aldersgate  Street,  he 
Would  have  become  once  more  a  parishioner  of  St.  Botolph's, 
Aldersgate,  the  same  parish  to  which  he  had  belonged  when 
he  was  first  a  London  householder ;  but,  if  the  house  was 
towards  the  Red  Cross  Street  end  of  Jewin  Street,  then  he 
became  again  a  parishioner  of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate,  as  he 
had  been  when  living  in  Barbican.     The  latter  was  the  fact. 


408  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOEY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

The  part  of  Jewin  Street  to  which  Milton  removed  was  the 
inner  end,  where  there  are  still  some  remaining"  houses  of  his 
date,  which  at  that  time  may  have  had  more  of  garden  ground 
behind  them  than  now ;  and  for  all  the  rest  of  his  life,  first 
in  this  house  and  then  in  another,  he  was  to  be  a  parishioner 
of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate.  The  vicar  of  the  parish  at  that 
date  was  a  certain  popular  and  energetic  Dr.  Samuel  Annesley. 
He  was  of  Oxford  training,  and  of  Presbyterian  antecedents, 
about  forty  years  of  age,  first  cousin  to  the  Earl  of  Anglesey, 
and  of  much  distinction  recently  among  the  clergy  of  Oliver's 
established  church,  though  perhaps  better  likely  to  be  remem- 
bered now  by  the  fact  that,  through  his  youngest  daughter,  yet 
to  be  born,  he  was  the  grandfather  of  John  and  Charles  Wesley1. 

in  jewin  street:    1661-1664. 

One  remembers  the  predictions  of  the  consequences  of  the 
Restoration  so  boldly  hazarded  by  Milton  in  his  great  pamphlet 
of  warning  published  on  the  eve  of  that  event  (ante,  V. 
pp.  645-655,  677-688).  So  far  as  those  predictions  had  not 
already  been  fulfilled  by  the  incidents  of  the  first  year  of 
the  Restoration,  they  were  fulfilled  to  the  letter,  as  we  know, 
during  the  next  three  years,  when  Clarendon  and  the  Bishops 
were  no  longer  checked  by  the  Presbyterianism  of  the  Con- 
vention Parliament,  but  had  an  instrument  more  to  their  mind 
in  the  succeeding  Cavalier  Parliament.  Of  the  incidents 
of  the  continued  Clarendonian  administration  during  those 
three  years  Milton,  in  his  retirement  in  Jewin  Street,  can 
have  been  no  uninterested  observer.  The  first  batch  of  Acts 
passed  by  the  Cavalier  Parliament  in  July  1661, — their  Act 
for  the  suppression  of  all  questioning  of  the  Established  Go- 
vernment or  assertion  of  the  legality  of  the  Long  Parliament 
and  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant,  their  Act  for  repealing 
the  disqualification  of  persons  in  holy  orders  for  civil  offices 


1  Stow's  London  by  Strype  (1730),  Ath.  IV.  509—514,  and  Fasti,  II.  114 ; 
Book  III.  pp.  70 — 123  (Cripplegate  Tombstone  of  Mrs.  Susanna  Wesley, 
Ward  and  Aldersgate  Ward) ;  Fai-  mother  of  the  Wesleys,  in  Bunhill 
thorne's  Map  of  London  in  1658  (re-  Fields  Burying  Ground  ;  Calamy's  Non- 
printed  1878)  ;  Visits  to  Jewin  Street  conformists'  Memorial  (edit.  1802),  I. 
and  its  neighbourhood ;  Wood,  by  Bliss,  124—128. 


milton's  estimate  of  the  restoration.         409 

and  dignities,  their  Act  for  curtailing  the  right  of  petitioning 
Parliament  or  the  King,  their  Act  restoring  the  power  of  the 
Militia  to  the  King,  and  their  Act  of  farther  penalties  against 
the  surviving  Regicides  and  others, — must  have  prepared  him 
for  such  later  Acts  of  their  First  Session  as  the  Corporations 
Act  of  December  1661,  and  the  Act  against  Quakers,  the  Act 
of  Uniformity,  the  Counties  Militia  Act,  and  the  new  Press 
Act,  all  of  May  1662.  These  pieces  of  legislation,  with  such 
contemporary  proofs  of  the  ruthless  mood  of  the  Court  and  the 
executive  as  were  furnished  by  the  disinterring  of  the  dead 
Commonwealth's  men  and  Cromwellians  from  their  graves  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  the  hanging  and  quartering  of  the 
Baptist  preacher  John  James  for  imprudent  speaking  in  his 
pulpit,  the  carting  of  three  of  the  spared  Regicides  from  the 
Tower  to  Tyburn  and  back  with  ropes  round  their  necks,  and 
the  hanging  and  quartering  at  Tyburn  of  the  three  fugitive 
Regicides,  Barkstead,  Corbet,  and  Okey,  that  had  been  cap- 
tured in  Holland,  verified  to  the  utmost  those  parts  of  Milton's 
predictions  which  had  prophesied  bloody  personal  revenges, 
a  general  policy  of  Absolutism,  a  miserable  disappoint- 
ment of  the  hopes  of  the  Presbyterians,  and  the  reinstitution 
in  England  of  unmitigated  Prelacy,  with  liberty  or  breathing- 
room  for  nothing  else.  The  Act  of  Uniformity  by  itself, 
cancelling  at  one  stroke  the  King's  Declaration  from  Breda 
and  his  subsequent  promises,  and  turning  into  ridicule  all  the 
dreams  of  the  Baxters,  Calamys,  Mantons,  and  others,  and  all 
their  exertions  in  behalf  of  a  limited  Episcopacy  that  should 
comprehend  the  Presbyterians  and  the  old  Anglicans  in  one 
establishment,  was  a  sufficient  vindication  of  Milton's  fore- 
sight in  that  particular.  Then,  in  the  interval  between  the 
passing  of  that  Act  and  its  fatal  execution  on  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's day  in  the  same  year,  there  was  the  arrival  of  the 
prophesied  Queen,  "  outlandish  and  a  Papist,"  in  the  person  of 
the  Portuguese  Catharine,  to  add  to  the  foreign  and  Roman 
Catholic  influence  at  Court  already  represented  by  the  Queen- 
mother,  and  to  complicate  the  King's  relations  with  Lady 
Castlemaine.  There  was  also  the  trial  of  Vane  and  Lambert, 
with  the  beheading  of  Vane,  Milton's  admired  friend  of  many 


410  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

years.  The  terrible  St.  Bartholomew's  day  itself  came  at 
last,  Auo*.  24,  166.2.  Then  Milton  knew  of  the  wrench  to 
Eno-lish  society  for  generations  yet  to  come,  occasioned  by  the 
ejection  or  silencing  of  more  than  2000  parish-pastors,  Uni- 
versity men,  and  lecturers,  mostly  Presbyterians,  but  some  of 
them  Baptists,  that  had  held  livings  in  Oliver's  broad  Church 
of  the  Commonwealth,  and  had  hoped  to  retain  them  in  the 
moderate  Episcopal  Church  promised  at  the  Restoration. 
He  could  think  of  those  2000  men,  in  their  new  condition  of 
Nonconformists,  at  a  loss  what  to  do  for  the  future  support  of 
themselves  and  their  families,  many  of  them  trying  still  to 
subsist  by  private  preaching  and  ministration  to  adherents 
from  among  their  flocks,  but  many  scattering  themselves 
hither  and  thither  on  the  hard  chance  of  other  occupations. 
The  question  of  comprehension  of  even  moderate  dissenting 
orthodoxy  within  the  Established  Church  was  then  at  an  end, 
and  the  only  remaining  question  was  whether  there  should  be 
anything  like  a  toleration  or  indulgence  for  the  ejected  and 
for  their  opinions  and  worship  outside  of  the  Establishment. 
Or,  rather,  that  question  also  was  practically  decided.  By  the 
Act  of  Uniformity  itself  it  was  regulated  that  all  persons 
ejected  by  the  Act  should  cease  from  public  preaching  any- 
where or  in  any  manner  under  the  penalty  of  three  months' 
imprisonment  for  each  offence,  and  should  also  be  incapacitated 
for  schoolmastering  or  private  tutorship  anywhere  under 
severer  penalties ;  the  old  Acts  enforcing  attendance  at 
the  established  worship  in  the  regular  churches  were  still 
available  when  necessary  ;  and  had  not  the  special  Act  called 
the  Act  against  Quakers,  passed  in  the  same  month  with  the 
Act  of  Uniformity,  prohibited,  not  only  for  Quakers,  but  also 
for  all  who  should  refuse  oaths  tendered  by  the  existing  autho- 
rities, or  should  persuade  others  to  such  refusal,  the  right  of 
meeting  even  in  small  private  conventicles,  under  pain  of  fine, 
imprisonment,  and  ultimate  banishment  to  the  plantations  ? 
One  had  not  to  wait  for  the  general  Conventicles  Act  of  May 
1664,  expressly  extending  to  all  Nonconformists  whatever 
this  prohibition  of  private  meetings  for  worship  already 
operative    against    Quakers    and    other    extreme    sectaries. 


milton's  estimate  op  the  restoration.         411 

That  Act  could  be  foreseen ;  and,  whatever  talk  there 
might  be  meanwhile  of  a  possible  indulgence  for  Presby- 
terians and  other  moderate  Nonconformists,  as  distinct  from 
the  Quakers  and  other  Fanatics,  all  were  practically  silenced 
and  at  the  mercy  of  the  magistracy.  At  the  close  of  1662, 
though  the  General  Conventicles  Act  and  other  Acts  of  the 
same  ferocious  series  were  yet  to  come,  Milton  could  have  no 
doubt  that  he  had  been  right  in  his  mournful  augury  of  a 
relapse  of  England  by  the  Restoration  into  a  state  of  religious 
and  civil  servitude  so  abject  and  profound  that  no  recovery 
from  it  could  be  expected  in  his  own  life-time.  His  memor- 
able words  to  that  effect  bad  been  these  : — "  If  we  return  to 
"  Kingship,  and  soon  repent  (as  undoubtedly  we  shall,  when  we 
"  begin  to  find  the  old  encroachments  coming  on  by  little  and 
"  little  upon  our  consciences,  which  must  needs  pi*oceed  from 
"  King  and  Bishop  united  inseparably  in  one  interest),  we  may 
"  be  forced  perhaps  to  fight  over  again  all  that  we  have  fought, 
"and  spend  over  again  all  that  we  have  spent,  but  are  never 
"  likely  to  attain  thus  far  as  we  are  now  advanced  to  the 
"  recovery  of  our  freedom,  never  likely  to  have  it  in  posses- 
sion as  we  now  have  it,  never  to  be  vouchsafed  hereafter 
"  the  like  mercies  and  signal  assistance  from  Heaven  in  our 
"cause."  The  vision  in  these  words  stretches  through  the 
whole  reign  of  Charles,  and  through  the  next  reign,  and  at 
least  to  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

And  on  whom  in  Milton's  view  lay  the  responsibility  for  a 
degradation  of  the  body-politic  and  the  soul-politic  of  England 
so  rapid,  deep,  and  disastrous?  Doubtless  he  thought,  first 
of  all,  of  Charles  himself,  with  his  strange  hereditary  claims 
to  the  royalty,  his  strange  personal  endowment  of  brutal  ideas 
and  appetites  for  turning  the  possession  to  account,  and  his 
congenial  crew  of  courtiers,  wits,  and  courtesans,  in  ruffles 
and  silks,  rioting  or  languishing  in  Whitehall.  Doubtless 
also  he  thought,  more  at  large  and  more  sadly,  of  the  nation 
itself  as  the  primary  culprit,  and  had  not  ceased  yet  from  that 
mood  of  disgust  and  amazement  with  which  he  had  witnessed 
the  tide  of  unreasoning  royalist  reaction  rise  in  the  "  mis- 
guided multitude  "  two  years  ago.     As  to  the  Presbyterians 


412  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

and  their  clergy,  who  had  lent  themselves  to  this  passion  of 
the  miscellaneous  populace,  and  sought  to  manage  it  in  the 
interest  of  their  own  vain  dream  of  a  royalty  duly  prelimited 
and  constrained  into  respectability  and  fidelity  to  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant,  one  had  little  now  to  say.  Their  part 
was  over ;  they  had  failed  egregiously  and  confessedly,  and 
were  reaping  their  punishment.  Nor  was  it  worth  while  to 
be  reckoning  up  those  Oliverian  politicians  and  army-officers, 
such  as  Monk,  Montague,  Howard,  Annesley,  Broghill,  Coote, 
Ashley  Cooper,  and  Ingoldsby,  who  had  wheeled  round  to 
Charles,  more  or  less  cunningly,  in  the  anarchy  succeeding 
Richard's  Protectorate,  had  negotiated  with  Charles  before 
the  event,  and  had  constituted  themselves  its  active  and  im- 
mediate instruments  in  England  or  in  Ireland.  To  think  of 
such  men  merely  as  renegades,  and  to  apportion  among  them, 
under  that  name,  the  guilt  of  the  transaction  in  which  they 
had  figured,  was  but  a  vulgar  satisfaction.  In  any  case  the 
name  "  renegades  "  would  hardly  have  been  a  fit  description 
for  men  who  had  but  done  according  to  their  lights  in  attach- 
ing themselves  to  what  seemed  to  them  inevitable  and  might 
be  for  the  best;  and,  besides,  the  actual  Restoration,  as  it 
stood  consummated  in  1662,  was  not  what  they  had  schemed 
or  contemplated,  but  was  a  something  that  had  come  in  upon 
them,  as  upon  others,  irresistibly  since  1660,  and  on  the 
current  of  which  they  must  be  content  to  swim.  Let  them 
swim  in  it,  in  their  new  dignities,  as  Duke  of  Albemarle, 
Earl  of  Sandwich,  Earl  of  Carlisle,  Earl  of  Anglesey,  Earl  of 
Orrery,  Lord  Ashley,  Lord  Montrath,  and  Sir  Richard  In- 
goldsby ;  and  let  history  remember,  under  these  new  names, 
only  as  much  as  it  pleased  of  their  pre-Restoration  ante- 
cedents !  Not  among  such  men  could  one  distribute  much  of 
the  responsibility  for  what  had  been  done  between  1660  and 
1662.  That  responsibility  must  rest  with  those  who  had 
really  during  that  time  shaped  the  counsels  of  the  restored 
monarchy  in  all  main  matters.  Who  were  they  ?  To  Milton, 
making  this  inquiry,  the  figures  that  must  have  presented 
themselves  behind  the  King  and  his  libertines,  or  mingling 
with  them,  and  going  out  and  in  among  them,  were  those 


MILTON    AND    CLAKENDON.  413 

of  the  bishops    and    prelatic    doctors.     He    thought    of  the 
Sheldons,  the  Morleys,  the  Henchmans,  with  their  retinue  of 
Gunnings,  Pearsons,    Earles,  Heylins,   Hackets,  and    others. 
Were  not  these  the   men  who  had  pressed  on  for  full  and 
absolute  Episcopacy  and  nothing  else,  returned  unweariedly 
to  the  charge  again  and  again,  consulted  among  themselves 
so  as  to   evade  and   neutralize    the    King's  Declarations   of 
Comprehension  and  Toleration,  and  secured  that  there  should 
not  be  the  slightest  concession  to  the  suppliant  Presbyterians  ? 
"They  would  request  us/'  Milton  had  written  in  1641  of  the 
bishops  and  prelatic  doctors  and  University  men  who  were 
then  struggling  for  the  preservation  of  Episcopacy, — "  they 
"  would  request  us  to  endure  still  the  rustling  of  their  silken 
"  cassocks,  and  that  we  would  burst  our  midriffs  rather  than 
"  laugh  to  see  them  under  sail  in  all  their  lawn  and  sarcenet, 
"  their  shrouds   and    tackle,   with  a  geometrical   rhomboides 
"  upon  their  heads ;    they  would  bear  us   in  hand   that  we 
"  must  of  duty  still  appear  before  them  once  a  year  in  Jeru- 
"  salem,  like  good  circumcised  males  and  females,  to  be  taxed 
"  by  the  poll,  to  be  sconced  of  our  headmoney,  our  twopences, 
"in  their  chandlerly  shop-book  of  Easter."     And  lo!    now 
the  silken  cassocks,  the  lawn  and  the  sarcenet,  and  all  the 
other  shrouds  and  tackle  of  Anglican  ecclesiastical  costume, 
with  the  old   geometrical   rhomboides    itself,   were   back   in 
England,  in  circumstances  that  made  it  death  to  laugh   at 
them.     The    special   loathing   of  Episcopacy   and    its   para- 
phernalia not  being  yet  extinct  in  Milton,  one  can  imagine 
his  private   estimate  of  Sheldon  and  the  other  churchmen, 
who  had  found  nothing  better  to  do  than  re-edify  in  England 
the    entire   ecclesiastical    system    which    had    been   shattered 
twenty  years  ago,  avenging  thereby  the  memories  of  Laud, 
Hall,  and  Wren,  and  constituting  themselves,  with  whatever 
differences  of  real  belief,  the  successors  and  executors  of  those 
antediluvians.      There  was,    however,  one  more  central  and 
representative  personage  still,  who  had  cooperated  with  the 
Sheldons,  Morleys,  and   Henchmans,  and  without  whose  co- 
operation their  intentions  would  have  been  ineffectual.     To 
Milton,    as   to   all    others,  the   all-responsible   chief  of  the 


414         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Restoration,  as  it  had  been  perfected  in  1662,  was  the  Earl 
of  Clarendon.  There  are  reasons  why  Milton  and  Clarendon 
should  be  sometimes  recollected  together  in  the  history  of 
England.  They  were  exactly  coevals.  They  had  been  born 
in  the  same  year ;  and  they  were  to  die  in  the  same  year, 
after  having-  lived  through  exactly  the  same  sixty-five  years 
of  English  time.  Till  1660  their  relations  to  each  other  had 
been  of  the  slenderest.  To  Milton,  the  Parliamentarian  and  the 
official  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate,  Clarendon 
had  been  only  the  exiled  Hyde,  the  chief  counsellor  of  Charles 
and  intriguer  for  his  desperate  cause  abroad,  while  Hyde, 
on  his  part,  had  taken  cog-nisance  of  Milton  but  now 
and  then,  when  there  was  reason  to  refer  to  the  circulation 
in  foreign  countries  of  the  Eikonolclastes  or  the  Defensio 
contra  Salmasium.  But  now,  in  1662,  when  they  were  both 
in  their  fifty-fourth  year,  they  were  nearer  each  other,  and  in 
relations  that  must  have  been  greatly  impressive  to  at  least 
one  of  them.  To  Clarendon,  indeed,  moving  in  velvet  between 
Worcester  House  and  Whitehall,  Milton  can  have  been  now 
nothing.  He  was  the  blind  scribe  of  the  Commonwealth, 
an  undoubtedly  able  man,  whom  it  ha'd  been  thought  un- 
necessary to  hang,  and  who  had  removed  himself  out  of  the 
way,  no  one  need  inquire  whither.  To  Milton  in  Jewin 
Street,  on  the  other  hand,  the  great  Clarendon  could  by  no 
means  be  an  object  of  the  like  indifference.  Was  it  not  the 
very  definition  of  the  condition  of  England  at  that  moment 
that  they  were  all  living  under  a  Clarendonian  administra- 
tion ?  In  Church,  as  well  as  in  State,  was  not  all  that  one 
beheld  in  1662  the  work  chiefly  of  Clarendon? 

Of  the  catastrophe  of  St.  Bartholomew's  day  Milton's 
opinions  must  have  been  peculiar.  To  the  mere  expulsion  of 
never  so  many  ministers  and  preachers  from  their  livings  in 
the  Church  he  could  have  had  no  objection  ;  or,  if  he  had 
objected,  it  would  have  been  because  only  a  proportion  had 
been  expelled  and  not  the  whole  body  at  once.  In  his  Dis- 
establishment tract  of  1659,  called  Considerations  touching  the 
likeliest  means  to  remove  Hirelings  out  of  the  Church,  his  pro- 
posal had  virtually  been  such  a  simultaneous  ejection  of  the. 


MILTON   AND   THE    ST.  BARTHOLOMEW    EJECTION.       415 

whole  body  of  the  clergy  from  their  living's  at  an  appointed 
hour  and  day,  without  compensation  of  any  kind,  the  Church 
revenues  thenceforward  to  be  confiscated  for  general  state  pur- 
poses, and  the  ejected  to  be  told  that  they  must  depend  for  their 
livelihood  entirely  on  their  voluntary  preaching  of  the  Gospel, 
or  otherwise  on  their  industry  and  their  wits.  Immediate 
disestablishment,  or  instantaneous  separation  of  Church  and 
State,  being  thus  his  avowed  ideal,  he  would  gladly,  in 
suitable  circumstances,  have  heard  of  the  ejection  not  only  of 
2000  of  the  clergy,  but  of  all  the  10,000  or  more  that  were 
drawing  stipends  in  England.  In  suitable  circumstances, 
also,  he  might  have  accepted  a  partial  disestablishment  as 
an  instalment  of  his  ideal,  and  so  have  reconciled  himself  to 
the  ejection  of  2000  only  to  begin  with.  But  the  ejection  of 
St.  Bartholomew's  day  had  nothing  in  common  with  Milton's 
notion  of  ejection  as  a  means  towards  the  abolition  of  a  State- 
Church.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  not  an  ejection  with  a 
view  to  disestablishment  at  all,  but,  on  the  contrary,  with 
a  view  to  the  refoundins:  and  refortification  of  the  State- 
Church  in  what  seemed  to  him  its  worst  form.  For  the  2000 
Presbyterians,  semi-Presbyterians,  Independents,  and  Baptists 
ejected,  there  were  to  be  brought  in  as  many  of  the  Prelatic 
sort,  so  that  the  entire  body  of  the  State  clergy  should  be 
zealots  for  High  Episcopacy  and  practitioners  of  the  cor- 
responding ritual.  But,  farther,  there  was  to  be  no  public 
preaching  whatever,  no  liberty  of  meetings  for  worship,  apart 
from  the  State-Church  so  re-organized.  The  ejection  of  the 
Nonconformists  was  not  ejection  only,  but  ejection  and 
silencing.  The  world  was  not  to  be  all  before  them  where 
to  choose  their  place  of  rest.  They  were  not  to  be  allowed  to 
form  voluntary  congregations  from  among  their  old  flocks,  or 
to  go  over  the  country  as  itinerant  preachers,  subsisting  on 
what  might  be  voluntarily  offered  them  ;  they  were  not  even 
to  earn  their  livings  as  schoolmasters  or  tutors  in  families; 
the}'-  were  to  live  as  they  could  find  the  means  in  unac- 
customed ways  ;  or,  if  they  still  persisted  in  private  ministerial 
practice  from  house  to  house,  it  was  to  be  with  the  police  on 
the  watch,  dogging  their  daily  footsteps,  and  dragging  them 


416  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

to  fines  or  imprisonment.  And  so,  whatever  had  been 
Milton's  former  quarrel  with  Presbyterians,  Independents,  or 
Baptists,  whether  on  the  ground  of  their  consenting"  to  be 
hirelings  in  a  State-Church,  and  thus  helping  to  keep  up  that 
institution  of  his  abhorrence,  or  on  the  ground  of  their  too 
narrow  ideas  of  the  religious  liberty  to  be  accorded  to  others, 
what  could  lie  do  now  but  join  in  the  general  pity  for 
so  many  good  men  in  the  straits  to  which  they  had  been 
reduced  ? 

Of  the  victims  of  the  St.  Bartholomew  Milton  must  have 
known  not  a  few  personally,  or  by  their  public  reputation. 
As  an  inhabitant  of  Jewin  Street,  and  parishioner  of  St.  Giles's, 
Cripplegate,  he  cannot  but  have  been  interested  in  the  fact 
that  Dr.  Annesley,   the  popular  vicar  of  that  great  parish, 
was  one  of  those  turned  adrift.     Among  the  rest  he  would 
remember  especially  the  three  survivors  of  his  old  friends  of 
the  Smectymnuus  brotherhood — Dr.  Edmund  Calamy,  ejected 
from   his  perpetual  curacy  of  Aldermanbury,  London,  after 
having   resisted    the    temptation    of  a   bishopric ;    Matthew 
Newcomen,  ejected  from  his  vicarage  of  Dedham  in  Essex; 
and    Dr.  William    Spurstow,    ejected    from  his   vicarage    of 
Hackney.     Among   those   who    had   been    Presbyterian    col- 
leagues of  these   three  in    the  Westminster  Assembly,  and 
notable  men  there,  he  would  remember,  for  various  reasons, 
Simeon  Ashe,  now  ejected  from  St.  Bride's,  London,  Thomas 
Case,    ejected    from    St.  Mary  Magdalen,  Milk  Street,   and 
Dr.  Lazarus  Seaman,  the  Orientalist,  ejected  from  Allhallows, 
Bread   Street,    Milton's    own    native    parish.     Of    the    five 
original    Independents    of  the   Westminster  Assembly    only 
three  survived,  and  these  were  all  among  the  sufferers, — Dr. 
Thomas  Goodwin,  now   silenced  in  London,  whither  he  had 
removed  after  having  been  deprived  of  his  Presidentship  of 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford ;    Philip  Nye,   to    whose    punish- 
ment in  his  character  as   one  of  the  excepted  from  the  In- 
demnity Act  there  had  been  added  ejection  from  his  London 
living   of    Bartholomew,    Exchange ;    and    William    Bridge, 
ejected  at  Yarmouth.     Among   the   later   adherents    to   In- 
dependency in  the  Westminster  Assembly  now  among   the 


milton's  acquaintances  among  the  ejected.    417 

ejected  Milton  would  note  at  least  Joseph  Caryl,  of  St. 
Magnus,  London  Bridge,  the  commentator  on  the  Book  of 
Job,  and  one  of  his  old  opponents  in  the  Divorce  controversy. 
On  personal  or  on  general  grounds  he  would  think  also,  of 
course,  of  such  Presbyterian  or  Independent  celebrities,  not  of 
the  Westminster  Assembly,  as  Owen,  Baxter,  Manton,  Bates, 
Matthew  Poole  and  Howe,  of  the  Baptists  Tombes  and  Jessey, 
and  of  the  freethinking  John  Goodwin,  his  own  associate  in 
obloquy,  long*  out  of  the  Established  Church  already,  but 
now  incapacitated  also  for  his  voluntary  ministry  in  Coleman 
Street.  But,  indeed,  who  can  tell  in  how  many  of  the  ejected 
and  silenced  all  over  the  country  Milton  may  have  felt  an  in- 
terest ?  Of  these  one  was  certainly  John  Oxenbridge,  late  fellow 
of  Eton  College,  to  whose  house,  when  Marvell  was  living  with 
him  as  tutor  to  Cromwell's  ward,  Milton  had  sent  three 
copies  of  his  Defenslo  Secunda.  Ejected  from  his  fellowship  at 
the  Restoration,  Oxenbridge  found  himself  under  farther  per- 
secution by  the  Uniformity  Act,  and  had  again  a  life  of  weary 
wandering  before  him.  Also,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  a  certain 
Richard  Heath,  one  of  the  ejected  Nonconformist  ministers 
of  Shrewsbury,  and  mentioned  as  an  Oriental  scholar  who 
had  assisted  Walton  in  some  portions  of  his  Polyglott,  was  the 
same  Richard  Heath  whom  we  have  known  as  probably  one 
of  Milton's  pupils  in  the  Barbican,  and  subsequently  one  of 
his  correspondents  \ 

Among-  those  who  had  remained  in,  or  been  brought  back, 
to  be  the  dutiful  episcopal  clergy  of  the  Church  of  the  Res- 
toration, as  well  as  among-  those  who  had  been  cast  outj 
Milton  must  have  been  able  to  reckon  up  some  interesting-  to 
himself  personally.  He  had  not  forgotten,  of  course,  Robert 
Pory,  his  old  schoolfellow  in  St.  Paul's  and  chum  in  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge.  Better  days  had  now  dawned  on  this 
nearly  oldest  of  all  Milton's  acquaintances.  Not  only  had 
he  stepped  back  into  his  former  London  living  at  the  Res- 
toration, but,  by  the  favour  of  Archbishop  Juxon,  with  whom 

1  See  ante,  VoL  III.  p.  057  and  Vol.  been  educated  at  Milton's  own  College, 

IV.  p.  40H.     If  I  am  right  in  identifying  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  after  leav- 

Heatb    of   Shrewsbury  with   Milton's  ing  Milton's  house  in  Barbican, 

former  pupil  and  correspondent,  he  had 

VOL.  VI.  E  e 


418         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

he  claimed  some  kin,  he  had  been  collated  to  the  Arch- 
deaconry of  Middlesex ;  had  held  also,  from  1660  to  1662, 
the  rectory  of  St.  Botolph,  Bishopsgate,  and  the  prebend  of 
Willesden ;  and  was  now,  as  D.D.,  to  receive  a  yet  richer 
rectory  in  Hertfordshire,  which,  with  his  archdeaconry  and  a 
canonship-residentiary  of  St.  Paul's,  he  was  to  enjoy  to  his 
death  in  1669. — Of  those  who  had  been  coevals  with  Pory 
and  Milton  at  Cambridge  one  remembers  in  this  connexion 
Thomas  Fuller,  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  Henry  More.  The  first 
had  lived  to  benefit  so  far  by  the  Restoration  as  to  recover 
his  prebend  of  Salisbury,  be  appointed  chaplain  in  ordinary  to 
the  King,  and  created  D.D.,  but  not  long  enough  to  obtain 
the  bishopric  which  would  have  been  deemed  his  due,  or  to 
have  his  moderate  and  tolerant  soul  pained  by  the  cruelty  of 
the  St.  Bartholomew.  He  had  died  Aug.  16,  1661,  in  the  fifty- 
fourth  year  of  his  age.  Jeremy  Taylor,  who  had  been  a 
greater  sufferer  than  Fuller  through  the  Commonwealth,  had 
received  his  fit  recompence  of  a  bishopric,  though  an  Irish 
one,  and  was  now,  as  Bishop  of  Down  and  Connor,  under 
Bramhall's  primacy  in  Ulster,  subjecting  his  Scottish  clergy 
in  that  diocese  to  the  new  episcopal  discipline  with  a  vigour 
that  could  hardly  have  been  predicted  from  his  Liberty  of 
Prophesying ',  published  in  1647.  Dr.  Henry  More,  as  we 
know,  remained  on  in  his  fellowship  in  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  under  his  friend  Cudworth's  mastership. — One 
would  like  to  know  whether  Andrew  Sandelands,  that  fellow 
of  Christ's  who  had  left  the  college  before  More  entered  it, 
but  whom  Milton  had  known  there,  and  who  had  been 
Milton's  correspondent  afterwards  in  such  extraordinary  cir- 
cumstances (ante,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  487-494),  was  now  alive,  to  be 
restored  to  his  Yorkshire  rectory,  or  otherwise  to  reap  the 
benefit  of  his  former  Royalism,  and  connexion  with  the 
Marquis  of  Montrose.  I  have  obtained  no  trace  of  him,  and 
think  it  probable  that  he  had  died  before  the  Restoration, 
while  the  skull  of  Montrose,  for  which  he  had  so  touchingly 
petitioned  Milton  in  1652,  remained  still  exposed  in  the 
High  Street  of  Edinburgh. — In  Jewin  Street  itself  Milton 
was  in  contact  with  one  eminent  example  of  the  substitution 


MORUS    IN   PARIS.  419 

of  a  new  man  in  a  parish  for  one  of  the  ejected  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew. The  successor  of  Dr.  Annesley  in  the  vicarage  of 
St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  was  Dr.  John  Dolben,  a  nephew  of  the 
once  famous  Archbishop  Williams.  He  had  been  made  canon 
of  Christ  Church  and  was  already  Archdeacon  of  London 
when  he  received  the  valuable  living  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate; 
within  the  same  year  he  was  to  be  Dean  of  Westminster, 
as  his  famous  uncle  had  been  :  and  ere  loner  he  was  to  be 
Bishop  of  Rochester,  on  his  way  to  his  famous  uncle's  last 
post  in  life,  the  Archbishopric  of  York.  The  tenure  of  Dr. 
Dolben's  pastorate  of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate,  was  from 
November  1662  to  March  1663-4,  when  he  was  succeeded  by 
John  Pritchett,  a  veteran  also  in  favour  on  account  of  his  past 
fidelity  to  Royalty  and  Episcopacy.  Pritchett,  in  succession 
to  Dolben,  was  to  have  the  pastoral  care  of  Cripplegate  parish 
during  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  Milton's  life ;  for,  though  he 
was  to  be  promoted  to  the  Bishopric  of  Gloucester  in  1672, 
it  was  to  be  with  liberty  to  hold  his  Cripplegate  vicarage 
and  other  benefices  in  commendam  1. 

We  already  know  what  the  Restoration  had  done  for 
Milton's  great  adversary,  the  naturalized  Frenchman,  Dr. 
Peter  Du  Moulin,  author  of  the  Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor  ad 
Ccelum  (ante,  p.  213).  What  is  more  curious  is  that  there 
seemed  a  chance  in  1662  that  there  would  be  naturalized 
in  England,  in  connexion  with  the  Church  of  England,  as 
French  preacher  and  chaplain  at  Court,  Du  Moulin's  famous 
substitute  and  scapegoat  in  the  Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor  affair, 
Alexander  Morus: — Confirmed  at  last  in  his  ministry  of  the 
Protestant  church  of  Charenton  by  the  decision  of  the 
national  French  Protestant  synod  of  Loudun  in  the  end  of 
1659  (ante,  Vol.  V.  pp.  633-635),  Morus  had  for  two  years 
been  a  great  man  in  the  Parisian  world.  His  pulpit  oratory 
was  something  unprecedented.  The  peculiarity  of  his  preach- 
ing, in  respect  of  matter,  "  consisted,"  says  Bayle,  "  in  sallies 
"  of  imagination,  which  contained  ingenious  allusions,  with 
"  an  air  of  paradox  well   calculated    to  surprise    the   hearer 

1  Newconrt's  Repertorium,  1.  83  (for       hen  and  Pritchett)  ;  Memoirs  of  Fuller, 
Tory),  and  I.  64, 182,  and  358  (for  Dol-       Taylor,  and  More. 

e  e  2 


420  LIFE   OF   MILTON    A.ND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  and  keep  his  attention  on  the  stretch.  But  the  manner  of 
"  his  delivery  constituted  the  principal  charm.  Hence  it 
"  happens  that  on  paper  his  sermons  are  very  far  indeed  from 
"  being"  so  admirable,  and  that  most  of  those  who  have  sought 
"  to  imitate  him  have  made  themselves  ridiculous."  In 
Morus,  in  fact,  Paris  then  possessed  one  of  those  great  popular 
preachers,  not  unknown  in  later  times,  whose  reputation  de- 
pends not  only  on  fine  voice  and  elocution,  but  also  on  liberal 
deviation  from  the  conventionalities  of  pulpit  decorum.  Then, 
as  now,  there  were  critics  disposed  to  carp  at  such  an  erratic 
style  of  pulpit  oratory,  and  Morus,  in  the  midst  of  his  fame, 
had  not  a  few  detractors.  His  co-pastor  M.  .Daille,  who  had 
stood  by  him  in  his  late  difficulties,  had  turned  against  him 
after  nearer  acquaintance.  That,  it  was  hinted,  might  be 
owing  to  chagrin  on  the  part  of  the  good  M.  Daille  at  being 
eclipsed  by  a  colleague ;  but  there  was  much  variety  of 
opinion  generally  about  Morus  and  his  eloquence.  "  It  was 
"  disputed  among  people  of  good  taste  whether  what  was  best 
"  in  him  was  solid  or  merely  superficial,  and  whether  he  ought 
"  to  be  called  a  flash  or  a  light."  With  these  criticisms  of  his 
style  of  preaching  there  mingled,  of  course,  despite  his  ac- 
quittal by  the  synod  of  Loudun,  recollections  of  the  old 
scandals  against  his  character.  Morus,  therefore,  in  all  his 
new  Parisian  celebrity,  was  by  no  means  yet  at  his  ease. 
The  Restoration  of  Charles  II.  to  his  British  dominions  seems 
consequently  to  have  come  upon  him  as  an  event  that  might 
have  a  bearing  on  his  own  fortunes.  Was  his  present  position 
in  Paris  the  best  attainable  ?  Was  he  not  a  Scot  by  descent, 
and  had  he  not  worked  and  suffered,  in  a  manner  that  had 
made  him  notorious  over  Europe,  in  the  cause  of  English 
Royalty  during  its  eclipse  ?  Long  ago,  before  he  had  left 
Geneva,  and  afterwards  through  his  changes  of  abode  in 
Holland,  there  had  been  overtures  for  bringing  him  over  to 
London  as  pastor  for  the  French  church  there,  or  for  inviting 
him  to  the  principalship  or  a  theological  professorship  in  one 
of  the  Scottish  universities ;  and  what  if  now  the  offers  should 
take  higher  shape  ?  There  is  proof  that  Morus,  about  this 
time,  did    feel   some   such   fascination    towards   the    British 


MORUS   IN   LONDON.  421 

Islands.     He  had  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  Lord  Hollis, 
the  first  ambassador  for  Charles  at  the  French  court ;  and  there 
is  extant  in  manuscript  a  Latin  letter  of  his  to  the  Scottish 
Earl  of  Lauderdale,  of  date  Jan.  1,  1660-1.     "To  the  most 
"  noble  and  illustrious  Lord,  the  Earl  of  Lauderdale,  Alexan- 
"  der  Morus,  S.P.D.",  is  the  heading-  of  this  letter,  the  whole 
strain  of  which    is    disagreeably  characteristic.      "  Although 
"  none  of  those  who  know  me  can  doubt  with  what  joy  my 
"  mind   was    suffused  by    that    revolution    of  affairs  for  the 
"  better   among  you  which  has  been  brought  about  by  the 
"  marvellous  providence    of  God,  yet  I  have  thought  it  my 
"  duty  to  tender    some    sign  of  my  congratulation    on  this 
"  new  year's  day  to  you  in  chief,  most  illustrious  Earl,  who, 
"  having  so  long  and  so  grievously  suffered  for  the   King, 
"  have  risen  again  with  the  King  himself,  and,  liberated  by 
"  the  hand  of  God,  now  walk  abroad  adorned  also  with  the 
"  royal  munificence.     God  be  my  witness,  who  has  restored  so 
"  bright  a  light  from  such  darkness,  what  true  sighs  I  fetched 
"  from  my  inmost  breast  when  first  I  heard  that  }tou  were 
"  thrown  into  prison  by  that  servant   of  Satan  and  wicked 
"  parricide  ;  nor  shall  I  lie  if  I  say  that  I  was  in  Christian 
"  sympathy   with  you  all    through  your  incarceration,   inas- 
"  much  as  I  never  prayed  to  God  all  that  time  but  you  were 
"  some  part  of  my  prayer."     So  the  letter  proceeds,  to  the 
length  of  about  as  much  more,  wishing  prosperity  to  the  Earl 
in  future  and  a  worthy  exercise  of  his  great  abilities.     There 
is  no  hint  whatever  in  the  letter  of  any  reason  why  it  should 
have  been  written,  save  generally  that  Morus  in  Paris  desired 
that  his  existence  should  be  remembered  by  the  powerful  Earl 
of  Lauderdale,  whether  by  the  King's  side  in  London,  where 
he  usually  was,  or  on  his  visits  of  business  to  Scotland.     We 
are  thus  prepared  for  the  sequel. — In  the  month  of  September 
in  the  same  year,  some  fresh  complaint  against  Morus  having 
been  made  to  the  consistory  of  the  Parisian  church,  he  asked 
leave  of  absence  for  a  short  stay  in  England.     He  did  arrive 
in  England  in  December  1661  ;  and  in  Evelyn's  Diary,  under 
the  date    of  Sunday  the  12th  of  January   1661-2,  we  read 
as    follows: — "At    St.   James's    chapel    preached,    or   rather 


422  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"harangued,  the  famous  orator  Monsieur  Morus,  in  French. 
"  There   was  present  the  King-,  Duke,   French  Ambassador, 
"  Lord  Aubigny,   Earl   of  Bristol,    and   a   world   of  Roman 
"  Catholics,  drawn  thither  to  hear  this  eloquent  Protestant." 
Nor  was   this   all.     The  great   fast-day  sermon   before    the 
King  and  Court  on  the  30th  of  January  1661-2,  the  anni- 
versary of  the  Royal  Martyr,  was  also  in  French,  and  by  M. 
Morus.     His  text  was  Romans  viii.  28,  "  And  we  know  that 
"  all  things  work  together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God, 
"  to   them  who  are  the   called   according  to  his   purpose  " ; 
and  the  eloquent  sermon  itself  in  the  original  French  may  be 
yet  read  by  the  curious. — There  seems  to  have  been  no  at- 
tempt, however,  on  the  part  of  the  King,  Lauderdale,  or  any 
of  the  rest,  to  detain  M.  Morus  in  England.     He  was  back  in 
Paris  in  June  1662,   and   once   more   among   thorns.      The 
Parisian  consistory,  or  congregational  court,  having  taken  up 
the  complaint  against  him  that  had  been  in  progress  during 
his  absence,  he  w7as  at  once  suspended  from  the  pastoral  office 
till  it  should  be  farther  investigated.     There  ensued  such  a 
riot  next  Sunday  in  the    church    of  Charenton  between  his 
partisans  in  the  congregation  and  his  enemies  that  the  service 
had  to  be  stopped ;  there  was  an  appeal  in  consequence  to  the 
civil  courts,  with  the  result  of  a  reference  of  the  case  to  a 
"colloquy" — i.e.  to  a  conference  of  the  neighbouring  Protes- 
tant churches,  analogous  to  a  "  presbytery  "  in  Scotland  or 
"  classis  "  among  the  English  Presbyterians  ;  by  that  colloquy 
the   suspension  was    confirmed ;    and  not  till  May  1664  was 
Morus  reinstated  in  his  pastorate  by  a  judgment  given  in  his 
favour  at  last  by  the  Synod  of  the  province  of  Berri.    Hence- 
forward there  is  nothing   more   concerning  him  that  needs 
record  here,    save    that,   after   four   final  years   of  unabated 
fame  among  the  Parisians   for   peculiar  pulpit   oratory,  but 
unabated  division  of  serious  public  opinion  all  the  while  re- 
specting his  real  worth,  he  died   in  September  1670,  in   a 
manner  reported  by  his  admirers  as  most  Christian-like  and 
edifying,  in  the  house  of  the  Duchess  de  Rohan  *. — Farewell, 

1   Bayle's    Dictionary,   Art.    Morus ;       derdale   Papers  among  Add.  MSS.   in 
Brace's  Life  of  Morus,  235—352  ;  Lau-       British    Museum,  Vol.  23,  115   f.   1 ; 


BISHOP   GAUDEN   OF   EXETEK.  423 

then,  at  this  point,  to  poor  Morus,  one  of  the  most  singular 
personages,  and  surely  one  of  the  most  pitiable,  within  the 
horizon  of  this  History !  One  wonders  how  he  spent  his  six 
months  in  London.  Hearing  that  Milton  was  living  in  a  poor 
and  neglected  way  in  a  street  called  Jewin  Street,  did  he 
give  himself  the  pleasure  of  strolling  in  that  direction  some 
afternoon  and  passing  and  repassing  Milton's  door  ?  If  so, 
hush  !  The  door  opens  ;  Milton  comes  out,  leaning  on  the 
arm  of  an  attendant ;  and,  as  they  walk  slowly  away,  the 
attendant  tells  Milton  of  a  dark  foreign-looking  man  on  the 
footway  opposite,  staring  after  them  steadily. 

There  was  one  ecclesiastic  in  Clarendon's  new  Church  of 
England  whose  relations  to  Milton,  though  Milton  cannot  yet 
have  been  aware  of  the  fact,  were  more  extraordinary  than  those 
of  either  Du  Moulin  or  Morus.  This  was  Dr.  John  Gauden, 
who  had  been  made  Bishop  of  Exeter  in  November  1660, 
when  the  new  episcopate  was  first  arranged  by  the  addition  of 
the  necessary  number  of  new  men  to  the  nine  surviving  pre- 
Restoration  bishops.  The  story  of  Dr.  Gauden  and  his 
behaviour  in  that  bishopric  is,  strangely  enough,  part  and 
parcel  of  Milton's  biography  in  Jewin  Street. 

Born  in  Essex  in  1605,  Gauden  had  been  educated  in  arts 
at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  but  had  transferred  himself 
to  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  for  his  divinity  studies.  In  these 
he  had  been  very  diligent  and  distinguished ;  and,  after  hav- 
ing been  known  as  a  successful  college  tutor,  he  had  become 
chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Warwick.  His  connexion  with  this 
great  Parliamentarian  peer  led  to  his  being  invited  to  preach 
before  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  19th  of  November  1610, 
when  the  Long  Parliament  was  in  the  first  flush  of  its  revenges 
against  Laud,  Strafford,  and  the  other  agents  of  "  Thorough  "  ; 
and  for  his  sermon  on  this  occasion,  sufficiently  Puritan  for  the 
temper  of  the  moment,  he   had  received  the  thanks  of  the 

Evelyn's  Diary  of  date.— To  the  infor-  been  added  some  new  material   from 

mation,    abundant   enough,    heretofore  records  preserved  in  Geneva  and  Am- 

accessible  about  Morus,  in  13ayle,  Bruce,  sterdam.     See  Appendix  II.  to  Vol.  III. 

Milton's  anti-Moras  pamphlets,  Morus's  of  Professor   Stern's  Milton  und  Seine 

own  writings,  and  the  other  authorities  Zeit. 
we  have  had  occasion  to  cite,  there  has 


424  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

House.  Made  D.D.  in  164-1,  he  had  already  held  one  or  two 
inferior  benefices  when,  in  1642,  he  was  collated  to  the  valu- 
able rectory  and  deanery  of  Bocking  in  his  native  county,  by 
express  order  of  the  Lords'  House  addressed  to  Archbishop 
Laud  in  his  prison.  He  held  the  living-  all  through  the  time 
of  the  Civil  Wars,  with  the  reputation  of  a  moderate  Parlia- 
mentarian, not  objecting  to  the  Covenant,  if  he  had  not  even 
signed  it  himself,  but  latterly  more  and  more  a  sympathizer 
with  the  unfortunate  King  and  his  family,  and  a  Prelatist  in 
essentials  rather  than  a  Presbyterian.  A  notable  appearance 
of  his  at  a  critical  moment  had  been  in  a  ti*act  printed  by 
Royston  early  in  1648-9  under  the  title  of  "  The  Religious  and 
Loyal  Protestation  of  John  Gauden,  Dr.  in  Divinity,  against  the 
present  purposes  and  proceedings  of  the  Army  and  others  about  the 
Trying  and  Destroying  of  our  Sovereign  Lord  the  King :  Sent  to  a 
Colonel  to  be  presented  to  the  Lord  Fairfax  and  his  General 
Council  of  Officers  the  first  of  January,  1648."  As  only  Dr. 
Hammond  besides,  among-  the  Prelatic  clergy,  had  ventured 
on  a  similar  protest,  while  as  many  as  forty-seven  Presbyterian 
ministers  had  protested  on  the  same  occasion,  the  bold  act  was 
remembered  to  Gauden's  credit  among-  the  Royalists.  It  did 
not  deprive  him,  however,  of  his  rectory  of  Bocking.  He 
continued  in  that  living-  as  one  of  those  clergy  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate 
who  yet  retained  their  principles  of  moderate  episcopacy,  while 
disusing  the  liturgy  and  otherwise  conforming  to  necessity. 
Of  a  considerable  series  of  publications  which  came  from  his 
pen  in  Oliver's  Protectorate  the  chief  were  JLierapistes,  or  a 
Defence  by  tvay  of  Apology  of  the  Ministry  and  Ministers  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  1653,  The  Case  of  the  Ministers'  Maintenance 
by  Tithes  in  the  same  year,  and  A  Petitionary  Remonstrance 
to  Oliver  in  1665  on  behalf  of  the  Episcopal  clergy,  then 
threatened  by  the  well-known  temporary  edict  of  his  Highness. 
Of  some  celebrity  as  an  author  by  these  publications,  Gauden 
was  no  less  celebrated  as  a  preacher  ;  and  among  his  published 
sermons  was  one  preached  in  1657-8  at  the  funeral  of  Crom- 
well's son-in-law,  Mr.  Robert  Rich,  grandson  and  heir-apparent 
of  the  Earl  of  Warwick.     After  Cromwell's  death  there  had 


BISHOP   GAUDEN   OF   EXETER.  425 

been  few  more  stirring-  men  for  the  Restoration  than  Dr. 
Gauden  of  Booking-.  Ecclesm  Angllcance  Suspiria,  setting  forth 
her  former  constitution  compared  with  her  present  condition,  was 
one  of  his  publications  in  1659  ;  on  the  26th  of  February  1659 
-60,  just  after  the  reseating-  of  the  secluded  members,  he  had 
preached  the  thanksgiving  sermon  for  that  event  before  Monk, 
and  the  Lord  Mayor,  Aldermen,  and  Council  of  the  City  ;  on 
the  first  day  of  the  Convention  Parliament,  April  25,  1660,  he 
had  been  selected,  tog-ether  with  Calamy  and  Baxter,  to  preach 
before  the  Commons  on  the  solemn  fast  of  the  following- 
Monday  ;  and  thanks  to  Dr.  Gauden  for  this  sermon  were  part 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  House  on  May  1,  the  very  day  when 
the  King's  letters  were  read  there  and  the  Restoration  deter- 
mined. There  was  little  surprise,  therefore,  when  Dr.  Gauden, 
who  had  meanwhile  added  the  Mastership  of  the  Temple  to  his 
Essex  rectory,  and  had  also  become  one  of  his  Majesty's 
chaplains,  appeared  as  one  of  the  new  bishops.  The  Arch- 
bishopric of  Canterbury  fell  to  Juxon,  and  the  rich  Bishopric 
of  Winchester  to  Duppa ;  but,  if  Sheldon  obtained  the 
Bishopric  of  London,  and  Morley  that  of  Worcester,  who 
could  suppose  the  Bishopric  of  Exeter  too  much  for  Gauden 1  ? 
Gauden  went  to  Exeter  in  December  1660.  In  the  London 
Mercurhis  Publlcus  of  Jan.  3,  1660-1,  there  is  an  account  of  his 
joyful  reception  in  that  cathedral  city.  Before  that  account 
appeared,  however,  Lord  Chancellor  Hyde  had  received  a  com- 
munication from  Gauden  which  must  have  startled  him.  He 
had  probably  never  received  another  such  communication  in 
his  life.  It  is  dated  "  Exeter,  St.  Thomas's  day  [i.e.  Dec.  21] 
1660,"  and  is  signed  "  The  Unhappy  Bishop  of  Exon."  The 
letter  is  of  considerable  length.  "  My  Lord,"  it  opens,  "  hav- 
"  ing  made  a  tedious  and  chargeable  journey  to  Exeter,  and 
"  having  been  received  with  very  great  favour  and  respect  from 
"  the  gentry  and  people  of  all  sorts,  yet,  to  my  infinite  regret, 
"I  find  my  fears  verified  that  it  is  no  preferment,  butabanish- 
"  ment  of  me,  not  only  from  my  country,  friends,  and  acquaint- 
ance,  but  from   all   kind   of  happiness,    which    I    formerly 

'  Wood's  Ath.  III.  612—618  ;  Biog.       Journals  of  April  25  and  May  1, 1660  ; 
Britanu.,    Article   Gauden  ;    Commons       Thomason  Pamphlets  of  1659  and  1660. 


426         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  enjoyed  with  great  content,  in  a  most  elegant  competency  as 
"  to  estate,  dwelling,  and  reputation.  Now,  to  my  horror,  I 
"find  myself  condemned  to  all  degrees  of  infelicity  by  the 
"  distresses  of  that  condition  to  which  I  am  exposed.  Here 
"  is  no  house  yet  free  to  receive  me  as  Bishop  ;  if  it  were  free, 
"  yet  it  is  so  horribly  confused  and  unhandsome  that  it  seems 
"  a  prison  rather  than  a  palace,  unless  I  will  be  so  foolish  as 
"  to  lay  out  a  vast  sum  of  money  to  make  it  fit  for  use ;  and, 
"  when  this  is  done  (that  I  may  with  more  splendour  be  un- 
"  done),  there  is  not  a  revenue  competent  to  keep  house  with 
"  any  honour  and  hospitality.  I  find  it  most  certain  (which 
"  I  at  first  told  your  Lordship)  that  the  revenue  is  short  of 
"  ^'600  per  annum,  and  this  so  broken  with  the  incumbrances 
"  of  purchasers  that  neither  rent  nor  fines  are  expectable  for  a 
"  long  time  in  any  such  proportion  as  can  support  me.  So 
"  that,  in  good  earnest,  my  Lord,  unless  I  had  the  art  of  living 
"  like  a  cameleon,  by  the  air  of  good  words,  I  conclude  myself 
"  to  be  destroyed,  with  all  mine,  by  this  my  most  unhappy  en- 
gagement to  be  Bishop  of  Exeter."  After  more  in  the 
same  strain,  the  letter  proceeds,  "  I  make  this  complaint  to 
"  your  Lordship  because  you  chiefly  put  me  upon  this  adven- 
"  ture.  Your  Lordship  commanded  me  to  trust  in  your  favour 
"  for  an  honourable  maintenance  and  some  such  additional 
"  support  as  might  supply  the  defects  of  the  Bishopric.  If 
"  this  may  not  be  had,  I  must  not  return  again  to  Exeter, 
"  unless  I  will  be  in  love  with  beggary  and  contempt.  I  have 
"  not  so  little  sense  of  my  relations  as  to  sacrifice  them  with 
"  myself  upon  the  high  place  of  episcopal  honour  ;  nor  am  I 
"  so  unconscious  to  the  service  I  have  done  to  the  Church  and 
"  his  Majesty's  family  as  to  bear  with  patience  such  a  ruin 
"  most  undeservedly  put  upon  me.  Are  these  the  effects  of  his 
"  liberal  expressions  who  told  me  I  might  have  what  I  would 
"  desire  ?     .  For  my  past  credulity,  folly,  and  expenses, 

(i  I  must  bear  them  as  well  as  I  can.  I  shall  ever  be  able  so 
"  far  to  vindicate  myself  as  to  let  the  world  see  that  I  deserved 
"  either  not  to  have  been  made  a  bishop  against  my  will  or  to 
"  be  entertained  in  that  office  to  my  content.  But  I  find  no 
"  regard  is  had  of  me  ;  which  makes  me  thus  to  represent  to 


gauden's  letters  to  clarendon.  427 

"  your  Lordship  the  prospect  of  my  unhappy  affairs  at  present. 
"  If  the  King  and  your  Lordship  do  not  think  me  worthy  of 
"  a  support  becoming  this  station,  I  beseech  you  give  me  leave 
"  to  degrade  myself,  and  resign  the  honour,  yea  the  burthen, 
"  which  I  cannot  bear ;  nor  can  my  nearest  relation,  whose 
"  happiness  is  dearer  to  me  than  my  own.  I  must  not  see  her 
"  soul  sink  under  the  just  apprehension  she  hath  of  being 
"miserable  because  mine.  Her  pious,  loyal,  and  generous 
"  spirit  is  too  conscious  to  what  I  have  done,  both  known  and 
"  unknown  to  the  world,  in  order  to  buoy  up  the  honour  of 
"  the  Royal  Family,  the  Church  and  Episcopacy,  to  bear  with 
"  any  temper  the  straits  to  which  she  sees  me,  with  herself  and 
"  her  children,  exposed.  I  will  run  upon  any  rock,  short  of 
"  sin,  rather  than  see  her  perish,  who  hath  deserved  of  me 
"  beyond  all  the  world.  If  your  Lordship  will  not  concern 
"  yourself  in  my  affairs  (who  can  easily  find  ways  to  ease  them, 
"  and  by  your  repeated  expressions  invited  me  to  repose  myself 
"  on  your  care  of  my  content),  I  must  make  my  last  complaint 
"  to  the  King  ;  and,  if  his  Majesty  have  no  regard  for  me,  but 
"  leaves  me  to  deplore  and  perish,  as  neither  a  considerable 
"  enemy  nor  friend,  I  will  yet  retire  to  God  and  my  own  con- 
"  science,  where  I  have  the  treasure  of  those  thoughts  which  I 
"  am  sure  every  one  cannot  own  who  think  themselves  so  much 
"  worthier  than  myself,  whom  they  joy  to  see  thus  driven  upon 
"  a  banished  and  beggarly  condition,  while  themselves  swim  in 
"  plenty.  There  needs  some  commendam  of  ^'400  per  annum 
"  at  least  to  be  added  to  the  revenue  of  Exeter;  nor  will  this 
"make  me  live  so  well  as  I  did  before.  I  moved  your  Lordship 
"  once  for  the  Savoy,  which  I  presume  the  Bishop  of  London 
"  will  not  keep,  nor  would  I  desire  it  if  I  were  so  well  provided 
"  for  as  he  is.  If  nothing-  be  done,  I  must  be  undone  if  I  live 
"  here ;  from  whence  I  hasten  to  retreat  with  extreme  grief 
"  and  horror,  as  from  a  precipice.  Let  me  be  degraded  from 
"  this  unwelcome  dignity,  and  restored,  as  Dr.  Gauden,  to  my 
"  living  of  Booking  V 

Evidently  there   was  some  mystery  here.     No   one  could 
have  sent  such  a  letter  to  the  Chancellor  without  the  con- 

1  Clarendon  State  Papers  (1786),  Vol.  III.  Supplement,  pp.  xxvi — xxvii. 


428         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

sciousness  of  some  extraordinary  claim.  What  was  it  ?  This 
appears  from  subsequent  letters  from  Gauden  to  the  Chan- 
cellor. Not  quite,  indeed,  from  his  very  next  letter,  dated 
"Morrow  after  Christmas  day,  1660,"  and  signed  "The  Sad 
"  Bishop  of  Exeter."  It  is  in  the  same  strain  as  the  former, 
written  five  days  before.  "  My  Lord,"  it  begins,  "  I  yesterday 
"spent  the  saddest  Christmas  day  that  ever  I  did  in  my  life, 
"among  strangers,  in  a  place  where  I  have  not  an  house  to 
"  live  in  " ;  and  the  rest  is  equally  lugubrious.  He  repeats 
that  he  would  never  have  accepted  the  Bishopric  of  Exeter 
but  for  the  persuasions  and  promises  of  the  Chancellor  ;  but 
he  also  throws  the  responsibility  on  Sheldon,  Bishop  of 
London,  and  Morley,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  both  of  whom  had 
often  assured  him,  he  says,  that  the  bishopric  was  worth  no 
less  than  ^J1000  or  ^1200  a  year.  He  is  sure  now,  on  more 
exact  calculation  than  when  he  last  wrote,  that  it  is  not  worth 
more  than  ^J500  a  year  at  the  utmost ;  he  finds,  therefore, 
that  he  has  "  come  to  an  high  rack  and  empty  manger  "  ;  and 
he  repeats  his  protest  that,  unless  his  income  is  augmented  by 
some  in  commendam  benefice  added  to  the  bishopric,  he  must 
consider  himself  defrauded.  "  I  am  sorry,"  he  continues,  "  to 
"  see  myself  reduced  to  this  after-game.  Dr.  Morley  once 
"  offered  me  my  option,  upon  the  account  of  some  service  that 
"  he  thought  I  had  done  extraordinary  for  the  Church  and 
"  Royal  Family ;  of  which  he  told  me  your  Lordship  was 
"  informed.  This  made  me  modestly  secure  of  your  Lord- 
"  ship's  favour,  though  I  found  your  Lordship  would  never 
"  own  your  consciousness  to  me,  as  if  it  would  have  given  me 
"  too  much  confidence  of  a  proportionable  expectation."  He 
mentions  again  the  Savoy  in  London  as  a  convenient  addi- 
tional benefice  for  which  he  had  already  petitioned  the 
Chancellor,  and  which  would  be  more  fitly  attached  now,  he 
thinks,  to  the  poor  bishopric  of  Exeter  than  to  Sheldon's  rich 
bishopric  of  London.  But  again  he  concludes  with  general 
whining  and  threatening.  "  If  I  must  perish,  poor,  banished, 
"  and  forsaken,  yet  I  know  how  to  perish  with  honour."  This 
letter  not  having  produced  the  necessary  effect,  Gauden  again 
takes  up  his  pen  on  the  21st  of  January  1660-1,  and  writes  a 


GAUDEN    AND   THE   EIKON  BASILIEE.  429 

letter  to  the  Chancellor,  beginning  "  My  Lord,  give  me  leave 
"  once  more,  in  my  serenest  temper,  to  express  my  sense  of 
"  my  affairs  at  Exeter."  In  this  letter  he  reiterates  at  length 
his  demand  either  for  something  better  than  Exeter  or  for 
some  addition  of  at  least  ^500  a  year  to  its  revenues  ;  but 
now  he  throws  off  all  reserve  as  to  the  ground  of  his  claims  upon 
the  King's  gratitude  and  munificence.  "  Nor  will  your  Lord- 
"  ship  startle  at  this  motion,"  he  says,  "  or  waive  the  pre- 
"  senting  it  to  his  Majesty,  if  you  please  to  consider  the 
"  pretensions  I  may  have  beyond  any  of  my  calling,  not  as 
"  to  merit  but  duty  performed  to  the  Royal  Family.  True,  I 
"  once  presumed  your  Lordship  had  fully  known  that  arcanum; 
"  for  so  Dr.  Morley  told  me  at  the  King's  first  coming,  when 
"  he  assured  me  the  greatness  of  that  service  was  such  that  I 
"  might  have  any  preferment  I  desired.  This  consciousness 
"  of  your  Lordship  (as  I  supposed)  and  Dr.  Morley  made  me 
li  confident  my  affairs  would  be  carried  on  to  some  proportion 
"  of  what  I  had  done  and,  he  thought,  deserved.  Hence  my 
"  silence  of  it  to  your  Lordship,  as  to  the  King  and  Duke  of 
"  York ;  whom,  before  I  came  away,  I  acquainted  with  it, 
"  when  I  saw  myself  not  so  much  considered  in  my  present 
"disposure  as  I  did  hope  I  should  have  been.  What  sense 
"  their  royal  goodness  hath  of  it  is  best  to  be  expressed  by 
"  themselves  ;  nor  do  I  doubt  but  I  shall,  by  your  Lordship's 
"  favour,  find  the  fruits  as  to  something  extraordinary,  since 
"  the  service  was  so, — not  as  to  what  was  known  to  the  world 
"  under  my  name  in  order  to  vindicate  the  Crown  and  the 
"  Church,  but  tvhat  goes  under  the  late  blessed  King's  name:  the 
"  EUw  or  Portraiture  of  his  Majesty  in  his  Solitudes  and  Suffer- 
"  iugs.  This  Book  and  Figure  was  wholly  and  only  my  invention, 
"  making  and  design,  in  order  to  vindicate  the  King's  wisdom, 
"  honour,  and  piety.  My  wife  indeed  was  conscious  to  it,  and 
"  had  an  hand  in  disguising  the  letters  of  that  copy  which  I 
"  sent  to  the  King  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  by  the  favour  of  the 
"  late  Marquis  of  Hertford,  which  was  delivered  to  the  King 
"  by  the  now  Bishop  of  Winchester.  His  Majesty  graciously 
"  accepted,  owned,  and  adopted  it,  as  his  sense  and  genius, 
"  not  only  with  great  approbation,  but  admiration.     He  kept 


430  LIFE   OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  it  with  him  ;  and,  though  his  cruel  murderers  went  on  to 
"  perfect  his  martyrdom,  yet  God  preserved  and  prospered  this 
"  book,  to  revive  his  honour  and  redeem  his  Majesty's  name 
"  from  that  grave  of  contempt  and  abhorrence,  or  infamy,  in 
"  which  they  aimed  to  bury  him.  When  it  came  out,  just 
"  upon  the  King's  death,  good  God !  what  shame,  rage,  and 
"  despite  filled  his  murderers ;  what  comfort  his  friends ! 
"  How  many  enemies  did  it  convert !  How  many  hearts  did 
"  it  mollify  and  melt !  What  devotions  it  raised  to  his  pos- 
"  terity,  as  children  of  such  a  father  !  What  preparations  it 
"  made  in  all  men's  minds  for  this  happy  Restoration,  and 
"  which  I  hope  shall  not  prove  my  affliction  !  In  a  word,  it 
"  was  an  army,  and  did  vanquish  more  than  any  sword  could. 
"  My  Lord,  every  good  subject  conceived  hopes  of  restora- 
"  tion,  meditated  revenge  and  reparation.  Your  Lordship 
"  and  all  good  subjects,  with  his  Majesty,  enjoy  the  real  and 
"  now  ripe  fruits  of  that  plant :  O  let  not  me  wither,  who  was 
"  the  author,  and  ventured  wife,  children,  estate,  liberty,  life, 
"  and  all  but  my  soul,  in  so  great  an  achievement,  which  hath 
"  filled  England  and  all  the  world  with  the  glory  of  it.  I  did 
"  lately  present  my  faith  in  it  to  the  Duke  of  York,  and  by  him 
"  to  the  King.  Both  of  them  were  pleased  to  give  me  credit, 
"  and  own  it  as  a  rare  service  in  those  horrors  of  times.  True, 
"  I  played  this  best  card  in  my  hand  something  too  late;  else  I 
"  might  have  sped  as  well  as  Dr.  Reynolds  and  some  others. 
"  But  I  did  not  lay  it  as  a  ground  of  ambition,  nor  use  it  as 
"  a  ladder,  thinking  myself  secure  in  the  just  value  of  Dr. 
;<  Morley,  who  I  was  sure  knew  it,  and  told  me  your  Lordship 
"  did  so  too,  who  I  believe  intended  me  something  at  least  com- 
"petent,  though  less  convenient,  in  this  preferment.  All  that 
"  I  desire  is  that  your  Lordship  would  make  that  good  which 
"  I  think  you  designed,  and  which  I  am  confident  the  King 
"  will  not  deny  me,  agreeable  to  his  royal  munificence,  which  pro- 
;t  miseth  extraordinary  rewards  to  extraordinary  services.  Cer- 
"  tainly  this  service  is  such,  for  the  matter,  manner,  timing,  and 
"  efficacy,  as  was  never  exceeded,  nor  will  ever  be  equalled1." 

1  Clarendon  State  Papers,  Vol.  III.,       ment  that  the  King's  munificence  pro- 
Supplement,  pp.  xxvii— xxx.  The  state-       mised  "  extraordinary  rewards  to  extra- 


GAUDEN   AND   THE   ElKON  BASILIEE.  431 

There  are  yet  three  more  letters  from  Gauden  in  Exeter  to 
the  Chancellor  in  London.  The  first,  of  date  Jan.  25,  1660-1, 
is  merely  to  introduce  an  official  of  the  diocese  who  is  going 
to  London  on  business ;  but  it  reminds  the  Chancellor  of  the 
writer's  disconsolate  condition.  The  next,  dated  Feb.  20,  re- 
news his  complaint  at  more  length,  and  with  some  additional 
particulars  and  suggestions.  "A  Bishop,"  he  says,  had 
"  need  have  ^2000,  at  least  <j£j1500,  a  year,  to  live  here  as  is 
"  fitting;  where,  in  earnest,  there  is  not  ^500  per  annum  in 
"  constant  revenue/'  He  intimates  also  that  he  is  shortly  to 
make  a  journey  to  Booking,  to  remove  his  goods  from  his 
dear  old  rectory,  "the  saddest  journey  that  ever  I  did." 
Unless  something  is  done  for  him,  he  hints  darkly  that  he  has 
one,  and  but  one,  course  left.  "  But  I  will  not  despair,"  he 
adds,  "  till  I  return  back  to  Exeter,  after  I  have  preached  on 
"  Easter  Day  before  the  King,  and  have  waited  on  your 
"  Lordship.  But  I  wish  never  to  return  again  to  Exeter,  if 
';  it  be  not  more  to  my  own  and  my  relations'  content  than 
"  these  last  two  months  have  been."  In  the  last  letter,  dated 
March  6,  he  again  announces  that  he  is  preparing  to 
come  to  London,  and  prays  the  Chancellor  for  some  answer 
before  he  leaves  Exeter.  "  If  I  were  enabled  any  way  to  live 
"  here  as  becomes  me/'  he  says,  "  I  would  cheerfully  apply  to 
"  settle ;  but  I  easily  see  how  impossible  it  is  for  me  so  to  do 
'•  without  ruin  and  dishonour  unless  I  have  some  augmenta- 
f-  tion  to  bear  the  charges  of  so  dear  a  place,  wThere  I  am 
"  exposed  to  answer  all  men's  civility  and  expectations.  If 
"  there  be  no  help  for  me,  I  beseech  your  Lordship  to  tell  me 
"  so,  that  so  I  may  from  despair  take  counsel,  and  bury  myself 
"  in  some  private  obscurity  by  his  Majesty's  permission,  there 
"  to  pray  for  his  Majesty  and  prepare  to  leave  a  most  unpleas- 
';  ing  world  1." 

The  first  five  of  these  six  letters  of  Gauden  seem  to  have 
been  received  and  read  by  Hyde  without  a  word  of  reply. 

ordinary  services  "  is  a  clever  reference  "ordinary  manner  do  not  oblige  their 

by  Gauden  to  a  phrase  in  a  speech  of  "Princes  to  reward  them  in  an  extra- 

his  Majesty  to  the  two  Houses  on  the  "ordinary  manner"  (Lords  Journals  of 

13th  September,  1660:  "I  am  none  of  date.) 

"  thr.se  who  think  that  subjects  by  per-  '  Clarendon  State  Fapers,  Vol.  Ill, 

"  forming    their    duties    in    an    extra-  Supplement,  pp.  xxx — xxxii. 


432  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

He  was  probably  consulting"  with  the  King-,  the  Duke  of  York, 

Secretary   Nicholas,    Duppa,    Sheldon,    and    Morley   on   the 

troublesome  subject.    For  Gauden,  it  appears,  had  not  trusted 

entirely  to  his  letters  to  Hyde,  but  had  written,  on  the  17th 

of  January,  to  the  Duke  of  York,  begging  his  mediation  with 

the  King*.     He  had  also,  it  would  seem,  applied  to  the  King 

himself  directly  or  through  Secretary  Nicholas  ;  for  there  had 

been  this  message  to  him  from   the  King  in  a  letter  from 

Secretary  Nicholas,  dated  Jan.  19  :    "As  for  your  own  par- 

"  tieular,  he  desires  you  not  to  be  discouraged  at  the  poverty 

"  of  your  bishopric  at  present ;  and,  if  that  answer  not  the 

"  expense  that  was  promised  you,  his  Majesty  will  take  you 

"  so  particularly  into  his  care  that  he  bids  me  to  assure  you 

"  you  shall   have  no  cause  to    remember   Bocking."      But, 

after  Gauden's  sixth  letter,  of  March  6,  1660-1,  announcing 

his  speedy  arrival  in  London,  Hyde  thought  it  best  to  let  the 

Bishop  have  an  answer  from  himself,  in  anticipation  of  their 

meeting.      On  the  13th  of  March,  accordingly,  he  wrote  as 

follows  :  "  My  Lord  :  I  do  assure  you  upon  my  credit  all  your 

"  letters  make  a  deep   impression    on   me,  though  it  is  not 

"  possible  for  me  to  acknowledge  them  particularly,  as  I  ought 

"  to    do,  being    not    only  oppressed  with    severe  weight   of 

'  business,  but  of  late  indisposed  in  my  health.    I  am  heartily 

'  glad  that  we  are  like  shortly  to  meet  and  confer  together ; 

'  and  then  I  doubt  not  but  that  I  shall  appear  very  faultless 

1  towards  you,  how  unfortunate  soever  I  have  been  in  con- 

'  tributing  somewhat  to  your  uneasiness, — which  I  was  far 

'  from  pressing  upon  you  when  I  once  found  the  overture  was 

c  unacceptable  to  you.     I  do  well  remember  that  I  promised 

'  you  to  procure  any  good  commendam  to  be  annexed  to  that 

'  see, — which  I  heartily  desire  to  do,  and  long  for  the  oppor- 

'  tunity, — and  likewise  that  you  should  be  removed  nearer  to 

( this  town  with  the  first  occasion  :  for  which  undertaking  I 

'  have   likewise  good  authority.     If  the  bishops  who  have 

'  been  made   since  the  King's  return  feel  no  other  content 

'  than  from  the  money  they  have  yet  received  from  their 

'  revenue,  lam  sure  all  with  whom  I  am  acquainted  are  most 

miserable,  they  having  not  yet  received  wherewith  to  buy 


clarendon's  letter  to  gauden.  433 

"  their  bread.  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  fiud  when  we  meet  that 
"  it  is  in  my  power  to  contribute  anything-  to  your  Lordship's 
"  content.  In  the  meantime  I  do  assure  you  I  am  more 
"  afflicted  with  you  and  for  you  than  I  can  express,  and  the 
"  more  sensibly  that  it  is  the  only  charge  of  that  kind  is  laid 
"  against  me  ;  which,  in  truth,  I  do  not  think  that  I  do 
"  deserve.  The  particular  which  you  often  renewed  I  do  confess 
"  was  imparted  to  me  under  secrecy,  and  of  which  I  did  not  take 
"  myself  to  be  at  liberty  to  take  notice  ;  and,  truly,  when  it  ceases 
"  to  be  a  secret,  I  know  nobody  will  be  glad  of  it  but  Mr.  Milton. 
"  I  have  very  often  wished  I  had  never  been  trusted  with  it.  My 
"  Lord,  I  have  nothing  to  enlarge,  all  I  have  to  say  being  fitter 
"  for  conference  than  a  letter;  and  I  hope  shortly  to  see  you, 
"  when  you  will  find  me  very  ready  to  serve  you  as,  my  Lord,  your 
"  Lordship's  most  affectionate  servant,  Edward  Hyde,  C  V 

Gauden  did  come  to  London,  where  he  seems  to  have  re- 
mained through  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  1661,  residing  latterly 
in  Gresham  College,  but  much  about  the  Court.  He  took  a 
leading  part,  one  finds,  in  the  famous  Savoy  Conferences  of  that 
year,  between  the  twelve  chosen  bishops  with  nine  assessors 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  twelve  chosen  Nonconformist  chiefs 
with  nine  assessors  on  the  other.  "The  constantest  man1'  in 
attendance  after  the  first  meeting  on  April  15,  Baxter  tells 
us,  was  "Dr.  Gauden,  Bishop  of  Exeter  "  ;  and,  in  closing  his 
account  of  the  Conferences,  Baxter  pays  a  special  tribute  to 
Gauden  for  his  excellent  behaviour  in  them.  "  He  was  the 
"only  moderator  of  all  the  bishops,"  says  Baxter,  "except  our 

1  The  substance  of  Gauden's   Letter  the  words  given  from  Hyde's  letter,  in 

to  the  Duke  of  York  of  Jan.  17, 1660-1,  his  Life  of  Milton  in  1698,  and  again, 

and    of    Secretary  Nicholas's    message  more  fully,  in  his  Amyntor,  or  Defence 

Irom  the  King  to  Gauden  of  Jan.  19,  of  Milton's  Life  in  1609;  and  from  that 

and  also  the  purport  of  Hyde's  letter  to  time  the  abstract  of  Hyde's  letter,  with 

Gauden  of  March  13,  with  some  of  the  its  curious   words  of  reference  to   }!r. 

actual  words  put  in  italics  in  the  text,  Milton,  was  quite  familiar  by  repi  ated 

were  first  made  public  in  1693  in  a  quotation  in  hooks  long  before  Gauden's 

pamphlet  on  the  Eikon  Basilike  subject  own  letters  were  divulged  in  1786   in 

called  "  Truth  brought  to   Liyht."'     In  the  Clarendon  State  Paper?.     The  ori- 

that  pamphlet  an  account  was  given  of  ginal  of  Hyde's,  however,  did  not  ap- 

these  and  other  Gauden  papers,  as  then  pear  there  with  Gauden's  six,  to  which 

in  possession  of  a  Mr.  Arthur  North,  a  it  was  a  reply.     It  was  first  published 

merchant  in  Tower  Hill,  London.      He  complete  in  1824  ;   and  I  take  it,  and 

had    married  a   sister   of  the   wife   of  also  the  words  of  Secretary  Nicholas's 

Charles  Gauden,  one  of  the  Bishop's  message,  from  an  article  on  the  Eikon 

sons,  and  so  had  inherited  the  papers.  Basilike  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for 

Toland  referred  to  the  papers,  and  quoted  June  1826. 

VOL.  VI.  F  f 


434  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  Bishop  Reynolds :  be  showed  no  logic,  nor  meddled  in  any 
"  dispute  or  point  of  learning-,  but  a  calm,  fluent,  rhetorical 
"  tongue  ;  and,  if  all  had  been  of  his  mind,  we  had  been  recon- 
"  ciled."  While  attending  the  Savoy  Conferences,  Gauden 
also  found  time  to  write,  or  at  least  to  publish,  some  new 
pieces  in  explanation  of  his  views  of  ecclesiastical  policy. 
His  Anti-Baal-Berith ,  or  the  Binding  of  the  Covenant  and 
all  Covenanters  to  their  good  behaviour,  his  Considerations 
touching  the  Liturgy  of  the  Church  of  England,  his  Counsel 
delivered  to  44  Presbyters  and  Beacons  after  they  had  been  or- 
dained in  the  cathedral  church  of  Exeter,  and  A  Life  of  Mr. 
Richard  Hooker,  prefacing  a  new  edition  of  Hooker's  works, 
were  all  published  in  1661.  Meanwhile,  we  may  be  sure,  he 
was  looking  after  his  own  interests  with  Clarendon,  the  King, 
and  the  Duke  of  York,  and  pestering  them  on  every  opportu- 
nity with  his  claims  on  account  of  his  precious  secret.  Some- 
how they  appear  to  have  satisfied  him  or  persuaded  him  to  be 
patient;  for  it  is  not  till  near  the  end  of  1661  that  he  again 
becomes  clamorous.  On  the  28th  of  December  in  that  year, 
when  the  Cavalier  Parliament  had  been  sitting  again  for  a 
month  after  its  adjournment,  and  Gauden  had  duly  taken  his 
place  in  the  House  of  Lords  with  the  other  bishops,  he  began 
to  dun  Clarendon  again  in  a  letter  dated  from  Gresham 
College.  Duppa,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  was  then  ill  and  un- 
derstood to  be  dying :  might  not  that  bishopric,  which 
Gauden  had  thought  his  due  when  Duppa  got  it,  be  now 
promised  him  ?  "  My  truly  honoured  Lord, — The  daily  report 
"  of  my  friend  the  Bishop  of  Winchester's  decay  as  to  bodily 
"  strength  (whom  God  preserve  and  comfort)  doth  no  doubt 
"  give  the  alarm  or  watchword  to  many  Bishops,  especially 
"  them  of  us  who  have  high  racks  and  deep  mangers,  as  expect- 
"  ing  by  the  vacancy  of  that  great  see  some  advantageous 
"  tide  to  our  little  frigates.  For  upon  the  tenter  are  we  poor 
"  bishops  set  all  our  lives,  like  Pharaoh's  lean  kine.  We 
"  look  meagrely  and  eagerly  upon  the  opulency  of  others." 
The  Bishopric  of  Winchester  is  reputed  to  be  worth  ^5000 
or  ^6000  a  year.  But  Gauden  would  not  be  unconscionable. 
He    suggests   that   the    income    of  the  Bishopric    should  be 


GAUDEN  AND  THE  EARL  OF  BRISTOL.        435 

reduced  to  about  half,  the  other  half  being  employed  to  mend 
the  incomes  of  several  of  the  poorer  sees.  "  It  were  happy  if 
"  no  English  bishoprics  were  less  than  i£J1000  per  annum,  nor 
"  above  ^2000,  except  the  archbishoprics."  Winchester  with 
about  ^2000  a  year  would  be  perfectly  sufficient  for  himself ; 
and  he  need  not  remind  the  Chancellor  of  his  own  promises 
and  the  King's,  or  of  the  services  on  which  they  were  founded. 
"  All  the  world  knows  how  much  I  appeared  in  the  most  dark 
"  and  dangerous  times,  how  much  1  stood  in  the  gap  ;  and 
"  something  I  did  which  the  world  enjoyed,  but  knew  not  of." 
He  is  forced  now  not  to  be  wanting  to  himself,  "  not  to  rely 
too  much  on  other  men's  justice  and  ingenuity  "  ;  but  he  can- 
not doubt  that  the  Chancellor  will  second  his  application  to  the 
King  that  he  may  have  Winchester  when  it  is  vacant.  "  As 
"  I  am/'  he  adds,  "  I  can  do  little,  being  in  an  Arabic  or  ambu- 
"  latory  way  of  living,  without  any  convenient  habitation  or 
"  competent  maintenance  1." 

While  Gauden  was  waiting  for  the  death  of  Duppa,  he  made 
acquaintance  for  the  first  time  with  no  less  a  person  than  the 
great  Earl  of  Bristol,  the  chief  declared  Roman  Catholic  at 
Court,  Clarendon's  most  severe  critic,  and  all  but  his  rival  in 
the  real  counsels  of  the  King.  "  Most  noble  Lord,"  Gauden 
writes  to  the  Earl  on  the  20th  of  March  1661-2,  "  I  was  much 
"  surprised  yesterday,  at  the  Prince's  lodgings,  both  with  the 
"  admiration  of  your  knowledge  of  that  great  arcanum,  and  at 
"  the  most  generous  expressions  of  your  Lordship's  esteem  and 
"  favour  for  me;  in  both  which  I  do  the  more  rejoice  because 
"  they  have  given  me  an  opportunity  to  be  known,  under  a 
"■  character  not  ordinary,  to  a  person  whom  of  all  men  living 
"  I  have,  at  my  distance,  esteemed  one  of  the  most  aecom- 
"plished  by  nature,  education,  experience,  and  generous 
"  actions.  Nor  do  I  find  him  (as  I  have  two  other  persons) 
"  looking  with  any  oblique  or  envious  eye  upon  that  which 
"was  the  effect  of  a  just  and  generous  loyalty.  I  cannot 
"  imagine  what  key  your  Lordship  has  to  the  cabinet,  unless  the 

1  Baxter's  Life  (edit.  1696),  Part  II.       Clarendon  State  Papers,  Vol.  III.,Sup- 
305  and  363  ;  Lords  Journals  from  Nov.       pleuient,  pp.  xcv — xcvi. 
20, 1601 ;  Woods  Ath.  III.  612—618  ; 

F  f  % 


436  LIFE  OF  MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  King  or  Royal  Duke  have  lent  you  theirs  ;  nor  am  I  curious 
"  to  enquire,  because  I  know  it  dwells  with  a  very  valiant  and 
"  loyal  breast,  as  well  as  with  a  most  eloquent  tongue,  which 
"  only  speaks  of  those  things  which  are  worthy  of  it."  Only 
six  days  after  the  date  of  this  letter,  viz.  on  the  26th  of 
March  1662,  Duppa  died  ;  and  that  very  day  Gauden  addressed 
a  second  letter  to  the  Earl  from  Gresham  College.  "  The 
"  venerable  Bishop  of  Winchester,"  he  begins,  "  hath  this 
"  morning  left  all  human  affairs.  How  far  your  nobleness 
"  shall  see  fit  to  make  use  of  the  occasion  I  leave  to  your  great 
"  wisdom.  It  seems  a  good  omen  of  Providence  that  my  con- 
"  cerns  should  be  credited  to  so  generous  a  breast  and  so  potent 
"  a  speaker/'  Lest  this  should  not  be  enough,  another  letter 
to  the  Earl  follows  within  twenty-four  hours.  This  letter, 
which  is  longer  than  either  of  the  preceding,  is  an  argument 
to  the  effect  that  there  will  be  nothing  imprudent  or  incon- 
gruous in  appointing  him  to  such  a  very  high  post  as  the 
Bishopric  of  Winchester.  He  is  aware  that  the  great  secret  of 
the  authorship  of  the  Mkon  Basilike  must  on  no  account  be 
divulged,  and  that  any  very  extravagant  show  of  his  Majesty's 
favour  might  "  put  the  world  upon  a  dangerous  curiosity  "  in 
that  direction  if  he  had  not  other  and  universally  recognised 
claims.  But  these  he  had  in  abundance.  He  takes  the  liberty 
of  sending  the  Earl  one  bold  and  all  but  unique  manifesto  of 
his  for  Royalty  when  it  was  most  prostrate,  of  which  his 
Lordship  may  not  previously  have  seen  a  copy, — doubtless  his 
protestation  to  Fairfax  and  the  Army  in  January  1648-9 
against  the  King's  trial  and  intended  execution  ;  and  that  was 
but  a  sample  of  his  many  services  done  openly  and  with  his 
name.  "  Both  enemies  and  friends  saw  me  always  standing 
"  in  the  gap,  with  a  bold  and  diligent  loyalty,  doing  my 
"duty  by  preaching,  printing,  and  acting,  to  the  great  vexa- 
"  tion  and  confusion  of  those  great  tyrants  and  usurpers.  So 
"  that  my  confidence  in  his  Majesty's  special  favour  is  not 
"  built  on  that  hidden  foundation,  but  on  many  other  open  and 
"  ample  superstructures,  such  as  my  Hierapistes,  or  Defence  of 
"Clergy,  also  my  'hpa  Aaicpva,  The  Tears  of  the  Church  of  the 
"England;  besides  many  other  less  tracts  and  parrhesiastic 


GAUDEN   MADE   BISHOP    OF   WOECE8TEK.  437 

"  sermons  before  General  Monk  and  the  City,  also  before  the 
"  Parliament  restored  to  liberty,  and  these  in  the  very  paroxyms 
"  or  critical  points  of  English  affairs."     There  being-  such  asso- 
ciations with  the  name  of  Dr.  Gauden  in  all  men's  minds, 
there  could  be  no  amazement  in  the  general  world,  no  "  sole- 
cism  of  state,"  if  he  were  raised  to  the  see  of  Winchester, 
even  though  the  true  ground  for  the  promotion  were,  in  his 
Majesty's  esteem,  that  vast  anonymous  or  concealed  service 
"  which  is  consecrated  to  the  highest  merit,  reputation,  and 
"  honour  in  the  world,  as  the  Urn  of  the  Royal  Ashes  and  the 
"  Embalming  of  a  Martyred  King."      The  promotion,  in  any 
case,  cannot  be  too  much  for  him  if  it  fits  any  of  the  others 
he  sees  about  him ;  "  whom  I  cannot  think  giants,"  he  says, 
"  or  myself  a  pygmy."      However,  he  has  had  experience  of 
the   uncertainties  of   courts,  and  does  not    know  what    may 
happen. — To  this  the  Earl  of  Bristol  had  replied  in  a  letter 
expressing  the  greatest  regard  for  Gauden  and  his  interests, 
but  apparently  advising  him  to  take  disappointment  magnani- 
mously should  it  come  ;  for  in  a  short  note  of  April  1,  acknow- 
ledging the  letter,  Gauden  says,  "  I  suppose  these  things  are 
"  already  concluded  against  me  at  Court.      Possibly  there  will 
"  be  such  a  pretention  as  neither  Winchester  nor  Worcester 
"nor  the  Lord  Almoner's  place  will  be  bestowed  upon  me." 
— Gauden's  next  letter  to  the  Earl,  which  is  of  date  May  1, 
contains  nothing  expressly  about  the  personal  matter,  but  is 
chiefly  on  the  subject  of  a  toleration  or  indulgence  for  Quakers 
and  all  other  peaceable  Nonconformists  ;    on  which  subject 
Gauden  expresses  those  broad  and  liberal  views  which  he  un- 
derstood to  be  the  Earl's  own,  and  in  which   the  Earl,  as  a 
Roman  Catholic,  had  a  personal  interest.      In  the  intervening 
month  the  great  business  had  been  settled.     Gauden,  after  all, 
was  not  to  have  Winchester.      Morley  of  Worcester  had  been 
appointed  to  that  grand  bishopric  ;    and  Gauden    was  to  be 
content  with  being  Morley's  successor  in  the  less  lucrative, 
but  far  from  bad,  Bishopric  of  Worcester.      The  arrangement 
as  regards  Morley  was  complete  in  April  1662  ;  but  the  conge 
(Retire  for  the  election  of  Gauden  to  Worcester  was  not  issued 
till  May  13.      Clarendon,  who  cared  a  hundred  times  more 


438  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

for  Morley  than  for  Gauden,  had  managed  the  matter  in  his 
own  way  ;  and  there  is  a  tradition  that  the  King",  thinking" 
himself  pledged  to  Gauden  for  Winchester,  was  not  altogether 
satisfied,  and  expressed  the  same  in  handsome  terms  to  Gauden 
in  a  private  interview l. 

Gauden  remained  in  town  through  May  and  June   1662, 
seeing  the  passing  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity  and  the  other 
Acts  that  distinguished  tlie  conclusion  of  the  first  session  of 
the  Cavalier  Parliament,  and  also  the  arrival  of  the  Portuguese 
Queen,  with  other  metropolitan  events  of  those  months.     As 
late  as  July  9  he  dates  two  more  letters  to  the  Earl  of  Bristol 
from  Gresham  College.     But  that  month  he  was  in  Worcester) 
taking  possession  of  his  new  see,  the  receipts  of  which  during 
the  month  intervening  between  Morley 's  removal  from  it  and 
his   own   appointment   had   been   granted  him  by  a  special 
warrant  of  June  14.     He  was  at  Worcester  on  the  fatal  St. 
Bartholomew's   day,  Aug.   24,   and  may  have  had   his    own 
thoughts    over   that   result   of    Clarendon's,    Sheldon's,    and 
Morley's  policy  for  the  Church  of  England.       But  he  was  not 
long  to  be  Bishop  of  Worcester.     He  had  been  ill  for  some 
time  of  a  painful  internal  disease,  and  on  the  20th  of  Sep- 
tember 1662  he  died  at  Worcester,  aged  fifty-seven  years.     He 
was  buried  in  Worcester  Cathedral ;  where  there  is  or  was  a 
monument  to  him,  with  his  effigy  in  half,  holding  a  copy  of  the 
Eikon  Basilike  in  his  hand.     By  Clarendon,  and  by  the  King 
too,  at  the  time,  his  death  may  have  been  regarded  as  a  good 
riddance;  but  the  bishop  had  left  a  widow,  who  was  a  woman 
of  spirit,  and  not  likely  to  give  up  the  benefits  of  a  secret 
which   might  be   worth  so  much  to  herself  and  her  family. 
She  petitioned  the  King  for  a  half-year's  rents  of  the  bishopric, 
pleading  that  her  husband  had  made  little  by  so  short  a  tenure, 
and  that  his  removal  from  Exeter  to  Worcester  had  cost  him 
^200.     The  petition  was  refused  ;    Mrs.   Gauden,  with  her 
four  sons  and  a  daughter,  left  Worcester,  carrying  her  papers 
with  her  ;  and  the  successor  of  the  author  of  the  Eikon  Basilike 

1  Clarendon  State  Papers,  Vol.  III.       Toland's  Amyntor  (edit,  of  1761),  222— 
Supplement,  pp.  xcvi—  xcix  ;  Calendar       223. 
of  State  Papers  for  1662,  May  13  ;  and 


DEATH    OF   BISHOP   GAUDEN. 


439 


in  the  see  chanced  to  be  the  scholar  who  in  his  exile  had  trans- 
lated the  famous  book  into  Latin,  at  the  King's  request,  for 
circulation  on  the  continent.  This  was  Dr.  John  Earle,  who 
for  the  last  year  or  so  had  been  Dean  of  Westminster1. 

In  the  course  of  the  Gauden  affair,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
prime  minister  of  the  Restoration  had  deigned  one  glance 
in  the  direction  of  blind  Mr.  ex- Secretary  Milton.  "  Truly, 
when  it  ceases  to  be  a  secret,"  he  had  written  to  Gauden  on 
the  13th  of  March  1660-1,  "  I  know  nobody  will  be  glad  of  it 
but  Mr.  Milton."  The  words  are  not  unkindly  or  unrespectful, 
but  it  may  be  questioned  whether  they  do  not  miss  what 
would   have  been  Milton's  real  feeling  if  he  had  then  been 


1  Clarendon  State  Papers,  Vol.  III. 
Supplement,  pp.  xcix — c ;  Calendar  of 
Domestic  State  Papers  for  1662,  June 
14  ;  Wood, ut  supra  ;  Toland's  Amyntor, 
222  ;  Account  of  Gauden  in  Keunett's 
Register.  A  courageous  effort  to  revive 
belief  in  the  Royal  authorship  of  the 
Eikon  was  made  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Chris- 
topher Wordsworth,  Master  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  his  Who  Wrote 
Eikon  Basilike  ?  published  in  1824,  and 
its  sequel  in  1828  called  King  Charles 
the  First  the  A  uthor  of  the  Icon  Basilike 
further  jJroved.  The  two  volumes  are 
an  extraordinary  example  of  pertinacious 
self-bewilderment  and  love's  labour  lost. 
The  case  had  been  hardly  tenable  since 
the  publication  of  Toland's  proofs  of  the 
Gauden  authorship  in  1698  and  1699, 
following  the  True  Account  published 
in  1692  by  Gauden's  former  curate,  Dr. 
Anthony  Walker.  At  all  events  it  had 
been  untenable  since  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  public 
had  distinct  information  from  Bishop 
Burnet  that  he  had  been  told  by  King 
James  II.  himself  that  the  Eikon 
Basilike  was  not  of  his  father's  writing, 
and  when  there  was  the  significant  ad- 
ditional evidence  of  the  total  omission 
of  all  reference  to  the  Eikon  Basilike  in 
Clarendon's  History,  notwithstanding 
that  Clarendon  had  at  one  time  shared 
in  the  popular  admiration  of  the  book 
as  the  King's  own  and  spoken  of  it  as 
of  immortal  consequence  for  him  and 
his  cause  (see  ante,  Vol.  IV.  p.  131). 
But  since  1786,  when  the  Clarendon 
State  Papers  were  published,  with 
Gauden's  own  letters  among  them,  the 
case  might  have  seemed  absolutely 
hopeless,  till  Dr.  Wordsworth's  plead- 


ings gave  it  a  new  hearing.  Then  the 
Edinburgh  Review  article  of  June  1826, 
Archdeacon  Todd's  reasonings  in  1825 
and  1828,  and  Hallam's  long  note  ap- 
pended to  the  first  edition  of  his  Con- 
stitutional History,  again  dismissed  it 
from  court.  No  case  of  the  kind,  how- 
ever, it  would  appear,  can  ever  be  killed 
irrecoverably ;  and,  if  the  reader  wants 
to  see  the  latest  pleading  for  the  royal 
authorship  of  the  Eikon  Basilike,  he  will 
find  it  in  an  article  of  thirty-five  pages 
in  the  Church  of  England  Quarterly 
Beview  for  January  1879.  My  impres- 
sion is  that  any  candid  reader  of  that 
article,  which  repeats  the  substance  of 
the  reasonings  of  Dr.  Wordsworth  with 
some  additions,  will  form  from  the 
article  itself  an  opinion  directly  the  op- 
posite to  that  argued  for.  With  all  the  in- 
genuity shown  in  pointing  out  some  in- 
congruities among  the  Gauden  witnesses 
and  calling  contradictory  evidence  in 
the  shape  of  what  stray  persons  said 
between  1680  and  1700,  or  said  they 
had  heard  others  say  previously,  the 
total  effect  of  the  argument  for  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  royal  authorship  is  but 
as  a  feather-stroke  against  the  massive 
and  conclusive  consideration  which  re- 
maius,  and  which  stares  the  reader  in 
the  face  throughout  the  article,— viz. 
that  Gauden,  if  he  was  not  the  author 
of  the  Eikon  Basilike,  was  the  maddest 
and  most  impudent  liar  and  impostor  in 
English  history,  and  that  Clarendon, 
who  could  have  exposed  him,  crushed 
him,  made  him  bite  the  earth  or  stand 
in  a  pillory,  was  his  soft-headed  dupe, 
ami  a  sheer  idiot  and  coward  in  the 
whole  business. 


440  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

told  the  secret  in  full.  Would  it  have  been  any  great 
pleasure  to  Milton  to  have  his  own  shrewdness  in  his  first 
suspicions  as  to  the  fictitious  nature  of  the  Eikon  Basilike 
now  publicly  acknowledged,  when  at  the  same  time  it  would 
appear  that  in  answering  that  book  he  had  not  taken  up  a 
King's  gauntlet,  as  he  had  ventured  to  call  it,  though  with 
reserve,  in  the  preface  to  his  Eikonoklastes,  but  had  only  been 
dealing  with  a  rhetorical  concoction  by  a  rector  of  Booking  ? 
True,  the  exposure  of  the  fiction,  even  now,  could  not  be 
without  effect.  Would  not  the  royalists  resent  having  been 
deluded  into  such  enthusiasm,  such  days  of  adoration  and 
nights  of  weeping  and  sobbing,  by  a  deliberate  literary  trick  ; 
and,  whenever  they  looked  again  at  the  familiar  copies  of  the 
Eikon  Basilike  in  their  households,  would  it  not  be  with  a 
sense  of  shame  ?  All  this  was  possible ;  but  who  could  tell  ? 
If  the  King's  own  proclamation  had  gone  out  that  he  had 
ascertained  that  the  Eikon  Basilike  had  not  been  written  by 
his  father,  but  by  Dr.  Gauden  of  Booking,  but  that  his 
Majesty  now  thanked  Dr.  Gauden  for  that  splendid  secret 
service,  and  would  make  him  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  after 
Juxon's  death,  would  any  large  section  of  the  Royalists  have 
done  anything  else  than  approve  ? 

As  there  was  no  such  proclamation,  Milton,  in  Jewin 
Street,  whatever  he  knew,  had  to  suppress  his  knowledge. 
It  was  not  for  him  now  to  concern  himself  about  public 
matters,  or  to  publish  his  thoughts  about  that  or  this  oc- 
curring at  Whitehall.  He  must  employ  his  time  otherwise. 
Night  and  day,  evening  and  morning,  he  must  pursue  those 
quiet  studies  among  his  books  which  the  Clarendon  ad- 
ministration, with  all  its  faults,  did  not  and  could  not  forbid, 
and  his  leisure  for  which  was  far  from  unacceptable,  though 
it  had  come  in  no  such  calm  of  assured  and  confirmed 
Republican  liberty  as  he  had  fondly  imagined,  but  amid  the 
wrecks  of  liberty,  with  ghastly  heads  exposed  on  spikes  within 
a  mile  or  two  of  his  dwelling,  and  with  the  roar  of  Court 
debauchery  and  City  debauchery  close  to  his  ears. 

Before  the  end  of  1662  considerable  progress  must  have 
been  made  by  Milton  in  the  dictation  of  his  Paradise  Lost. 


PARADISE  LOST  IN   JEWIN    STKEET.  441 

As  he  had  begun  it  seriously  in  1658,  he  may,  notwithstand- 
ing the  terrible  interruptions  of  the  intermediate  years,  have 
brought  a  book  or  two  of  the  poem  complete  with  him  into 
Jewin  Street.  There  is  no  certainty  on  the  subject;  but,  if 
we  suppose  Books  I.  and  II.,  substantially  as  we  now  have 
them,  to  have  been  so  brought  into  Jewin  Street,  then  Milton 
had  already  put  on  paper  the  important  beginnings  of  his 
grand  story.  The  course  of  that  story  so  far  had  been  wholly 
in  the  regions  of  Hell  and  Chaos;  but  now  it  has  reached 
the  point  of  Satan's  first  advent  within  the  human  universe 
which  he  is  to  ruin.  Hence,  at  the  opening  of  Book  III., 
where  the  story  emerges,  as  it  were,  from  infra-mundane 
darkness  into  mundane  and  heavenly  light,  there  is  an  auto- 
biographic interjection  or  pause  : — 

Hail,  holy  Light,  offspring  of  Heaven  first-born  ! 

Or  of  the  Eternal  co-eternal  beam 

May  I  express  thee  unblamed  1  since  God  is  light, 

And  never  but  in  unapproached  light 

Dwelt  from  eternity, — dwelt  then  in  thee, 

Bright  effluence  of  bright  essence  increate  ! 

Or  hears't  thou  rather  pure  Ethereal  stream, 

Whose  fountain  who  shall  tell  1    Before  the  Sun, 

Before  the  Heavens,  thou   wert,  and  at  the  voice 

Of  God,  as  with  a  mantle,  didst  invest 

The  rising  "World  of  Waters  dark  and  deep, 

Won  from  the  void  and  formless  Infinite ! 

Thee  I  revisit  now  with  bolder  wing, 

Escaped  the  Stygian  Pool,  though  long  detained 

In  that  obscure  sojourn,  while  in  my  flight, 

Through  utter  and  through  middle  Darkness  borne, 

With  other  notes  than  to  the  Orphean  lyre 

I  sung  of  Chaos  and  Eternal  Night, 

Taught  by  the  Heavenly  Muse  to  venture  down 

The  dark  descent,  and  up  to  re-ascend, 

Though' hard  and  rare.     Thee  I  revisit  safe, 

And  feel  thy  sovran  vital  lamp ;  but  thou 

Revisit'st  not  these  eyes,  that  roll  in  vain 

To  find  thy  piercing  ray,  and  find  no  dawn  ; 

So  thick  a  drop  serene  hath  quenched  their  orbs, 


442  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

Or  dim  suffusion  veiled.     Yet  not  the  more 

Cease  I  to  wander  where  the  Muses  haunt 

Clear  spring,  or  shady  grove,  or  sunny  hill, 

Smit  with  the  love  of  sacred  song;   but  chief 

Thee,  Sion,  and  the  flowery  brooks  beneath, 

That  wash  thy  hallowed  feet,  and  warbling  flow, 

Nightly  I  visit :    nor  sometimes  forget 

Those  other  two  equalled  with  me  in  fate, 

So  were  I  equalled  with  them  in  renown, 

Blind  Thamyris  and  blind  Mseonides, 

And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old : 

Then  feed  on  thoughts  that  voluntary  move 

Harmonious  numbers ;   as  the  wakeful  bird 

Sings  darkling,  and,  in  shadiest  covert  hid, 

Tunes  her  nocturnal  note.     Thus  with  the  year 

Seasons  return  ;   but  not  to  me  returns 

Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 

Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom,  or  summer's  rose, 

Or  flocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine ; 

But  cloud  instead  and  ever-during  dark 

Surrounds  me,  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men 

Cut  off,  and,  for  the  book  of  knowledge  fair, 

Presented  with  a  universal  blank 

Of  Nature's  wrorks,  to  me  expunged  and  rased, 

And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out. 

So  much  the  rather  thou,  Celestial  Light, 

Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 

Irradiate ;   there  plant  eyes ;   all  mist  from  thence 

Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 

Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight. 

Wy  own  impression  from  this  passage  is  that  it  was  written 
before  the  Restoration,  in  the  house  in  Petty  France.  It  is 
possible,  however,  that  it  was  written  in  the  Jewin  Street 
house ;  in  which  case  I  should  take  it  as  marking-  Milton's 
resumption  of  the  poem  on  his  first  settlement  in  that  house 
in  1661.  If  we  do  so  assume  that  Books  I.  and  II.  were 
complete  before  the  Restoration,  and  that  Milton  recommenced 
in  Jewin  Street  with  the  invocation  which  opens  Book  III., 
it  would  be   interesting  to  know  how  far  he  had  advanced 


PABADISE   LOST   IN  JEWIN  STREET.         443 

beyond  that  point  before  the  end  of  1662.  Now,  it  is  at  the 
beginning-  of  Book  VII.,  or  exactly  half-way  through  the 
whole  poem,  that  there  occurs  the  next  memorable  pause  or 
passage  of  autobiographic  reference  : — 

Descend  from  Heaven,  Urania,  by  that  name 
If  rightly  thou  art  called,  whose  voice  divine 
Following,  above  the  Olympian  hill  I  soar, 
Above  the  flight  of  Pegasean  wing ! 
The  meaning,  not  the  name,  I  call ;   for  thou 
Nor  of  the  Muses  nine,  nor  on  the  top 
Of  old  Olympus  dwell'st ;  but,  heavenly-born. 
Before  the  hills  appeared  or  fountain  flowed, 
Thou  with  Eternal   Wisdom  didst  converse, 
Wisdom  thy  sister,  and  with  her  didst  play 
In  presence  of  the  Almighty  Father,  pleased 
With  thy  celestial  song.     Up  led  by  thee, 
Into  the  Heaven  of  Heavens  I  have  presumed, 
An  earthly  guest,  and  drawn  empyreal  air, 
Thy  tempering.     With  like  safety  guided  down. 
Return  me  to  my  native  element; 
Lest,  from  this  flying  steed  unreined  (as  once 
Bellerophon,  though  from  a  lower  clime) 
Dismounted,  on  the  Aleian  field  I  fall. 
Erroneous  there  to  wander  and  forlorn. 
Half  yet  remains  unsung,  but  narrower  bound 
Within  the  visible  Diurnal  Sphere. 
Standing  on  Earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole, 
More  safe  I  sing  with  mortal  voice,  unchanged 
To  hoarse  or  mute,  though  fallen  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fallen,  and  evil  tongues, 
In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compassed  round, 
And  solitude;   yet  not  alone,  while  thou 
Visit'st  my  slumbers  nightly,  or  when  Morn 
Purples  the  East.     Still  govern  thou  my  song. 
Urania,  and  fit  audience  find,  though  few  : 
But  drive  far  off  the  barbarous  dissonance 
Of  Bacchus  and  his  revellers,  the  race 
Of  that  wild  rout  that  tore  the  Thracian  bard 
In  Bhodope,  where  woods  and  rocks  had  eai-s 


444  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

To  rapture,  till  the  savage  clamour  drowned 
Both  harp  and  voice ;   nor  could  the  Muse  defend 
Her  son.     So  fail  not  thou  who  thee  implores ; 
For  thou  art  heavenly,  she  an  empty  dream. 

P.  L.  vir.  1-39. 

The  post-Restoration  tone  is  here  unmistakeable.  Not  only 
does  the  poet  tell  us  generally  that  he  has  fallen  on  evil  days, 
evil  tongues,  in  darkness  and  solitude,  and  surrounded  with 
dangers;  he  is  writing,  he  tells  us,  on  the  edge  of  another 
literature  than  that  to  which  he  would  or  could  belong,  a 
literature  which  is  no  literature  to  him,  but  "  a  barbarous 
dissonance  of  Bacchus  and  his  revellers,"  the  London  literature 
of  Davenant's  restored  laureateship.  The  precise  date  at 
which  the  passage  was  dictated  is  of  small  consequence.  If 
not  written  in  1662,  it  was  to  be  written  the  next  year  or 
the  next,  and  certainly  in  the  house  in  Jewin  Street.  In 
that  house,  now  unknown  and  probably  not  extant,  there 
must  have  been  the  composition  and  dictation  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  poem. 

The  house  in  Jewin  Street  being  of  so  much  importance  in 
Milton's  life  after  the  Restoration,  one  would  like  to  know 
something  of  the  domestic  conditions  of  Milton  and  his 
family  while  they  resided  there.  Let  the  date  of  our  inquiry 
still  be  the  year  1662. 

The  Restoration  had,  of  course,  brought  a  great  change  for 
the  worse  in  Milton's  pecuniary  circumstances.  Before  the 
Restoration,  according  to  the  best  calculation  from  all  the 
evidence,  he  possessed  about  a^4000  in  money  variously  in- 
vested, besides  small  pieces  of  house  property  in  London  (his 
native  house  in  Bread  Street  one  of  them)  and  small  pieces  of 
country  estate  (that  of  Wheatley  in  Oxfordshire,  held  by  extent 
upon  the  Powells,  being  one  of  them),  worth  in  all  perhaps 
^150  a  year ;  and  he  was  in  receipt,  moreover,  of  <^?200 
a  year  of  official  income  for  his  secretaryship.  It  was  as  if 
one  now-a-days  had  ^14,000  or  so  in  bank,  about  «^?500 
a  year  in  rental  from  other  sources,  and  j^PZOO  a  year  of 
official  income.     The  Restoration  made  havoc  of  that.     His 


milton's  pecuniary  circumstances  in  1662.     445 

official  income  then  ceased  entirely.  But  this  was  not  all. 
Part  of  his  investments,  as  we  know  (Vol.  V.  p.  703),  had 
been  in  government  securities ;  and  we  learn  definitely  from 
Phillips  that  the  sum  so  invested  was  ^2000,  "  which  he  had 
"put  for  security  and  improvement  into  the  excise  office,  but, 
"  neglecting-  to  recall  it  in  time,  could  never  after  get  it  out, 
"  with  all  the  power  and  interest  he  had  in  the  great  ones  of 
"  those  times."  The  words,  though  not  perfectly  precise, 
imply  that  the  loss  was  occasioned  by  the  Restoration.  Phillips 
also  mentions  "  another  great  sum "  lost,  apparently  about 
the  same  time,  "by  mismanagement  and  for  want  of  good 
advice."  Remember  also  Milton's  fees  to  the  sergeant- 
at-arms  on  his  release  from  custody  in  December  1660,  and 
other  incidental  expenses  and  disturbances  of  his  estate  at 
the  Restoration ;  and  it  will  be  a  fair  computation  that  there 
remained  to  Milton  after  the  Restoration  about  j^ISOO  in 
money,  with  yearly  rents  to  the  amount  of  about  ^100  from 
other  property.  The  rate  of  interest  on  money  in  those 
days  varied  very  much,  but  a  safe  rate  may  have  been  six  or 
seven  per  cent.  At  such  a  rate  Milton  would  derive  about 
cj£'100  a  year  from  his  capital  of  ^1500  ;  which,  added  to  his 
rental  from  other  property,  would  give  him  about  ^J200  a 
year  to  live  on,  without  touching  his  savings.  That,  I 
imagine,  is  about  the  state  of  his  affairs  in  the  year  1662. 
It  is  as  if  now-a-days  a  person  who  had  been  much  richer 
had  still  about  j£°700  a  year  left,  besides  about  j£J5000  in 
bank.  Thus,  though  Milton's  losses  had  been  "  such  as  might 
well  have  broke  any  person  less  frugal  and  temperate  than 
himself,"  Phillips's  farther  remark  that  he  had  still  "  a  con- 
siderable estate,  all  things  considered,"  seems  perfectly  ac- 
curate l. 

1  Besides  the  data  for  this  calculation  between  1662  and  the  year  of  his  death 

furnished  by  facts  in  Milton's  family-  there  were  to  be  farther  expenses  and 

history  already  known  to  us,  there  is  losses,   obliging   him    to    draw    on    his 

the  important  datum  of  the  value  of  capital,  it  seems  that  Phillips's  figure  of 

Milton's  estate  at  his  death.     Phillips's  £1500  for  that  capital,  though  not  right 

account  is  that  "he  is  said  to  have  died  for  1674,  may  have   been   about   righl 

worth  £1500  in  money,  besides  house-  for    1662.     In   such   matters    absolute 

lmld  goods."    But,  as   we  shall   find,  accuracy  is  impossible,  but  an  approach 

Phillips    was    here    misinformed,    and  to   the    probable    fact    is    better   than 

Milton's   estate   at  his   death   did  not  nothing, 
realize  quite  £1000.     As,  in  the  interval 


446  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

However  Milton's  three  daughters  may  have  been  disposed 
of  during-  his  time  of  abscondence,  and  afterwards  during-  his 
temporary  stay  in  Holborn,  they  were  certainly  with  him  in 
his  house  in  Jewin  Street.      In  the  end  of  1662,  Anne,  the 
eldest,  was  in  her  seventeenth  year,  with  a  handsome  face,  but 
lame  and  deformed,  and  with  a  defect  in  her  speech ;  Mary, 
the  second,  had  just   reached    her    fifteenth   year,    and   was 
active  enough ;  and  Deborah,  the  youngest,  and  the  likest  to 
her  father,   was  only  in  her  eleventh.      Motherless  for  ten 
years,  and  the  youngest  remembering  nothing  of  her  mother, 
the  education  of  the  poor  girls  had  been  none  of  the  best. 
They  had  received  some  kind  of  nursing  in  the  house  in  Petty 
France  in  the  first  years    of  their  father's  widowerhood  and 
blindness,  when  he   had    to  depend  on   servants  ;    they  had 
doubtless  been  better    tended  there   during  the  year  of  his 
second  marriage,  when  his  "  late  espoused   saint "  managed 
the  household;  but,  after  her  death,  when  the  youngest  was 
but  six  years  old,  they  had  again  been  left  to  such  homely 
teaching  as  could  be  given  by  any  day-governess,  with  irregu- 
lar lessons  from  their  blind  father.      "  None    of  them  were 
"  ever  sent  to  school,  but  all  taught  at  home  by  a  mistress 
"  kept  for  that  purpose,"  was  Deborah's  information  to  in- 
quirers long  afterwards  on  that  point.     Whether  their  grand- 
mother Mrs.  Powell  ever  looked  in  to  take  superintendence  of 
them  is  doubtful ;   but  there  is  evidence  which  suggests  that 
this  lady,  in  the  time  of  her  own  greater  or  less  indigence, 
passed  somewhere  in  Westminster  with  the  sons  and  daughters 
that  still  remained  about  her,  did  not  altogether  lose  sight  of 
the  three  children  of  the  daughter  she  had  lost.     It  is  just 
possible  that,  during  the    time  of  Milton's  abscondence  and 
danger,  the   girls  were   quartered  with   their  grandmother. 
Wherever  it  was,  the  training  had  not  been  such  as  to  im- 
prove them.      Nor   was   Milton's    own   method  with    them, 
when  they  returned  to  him  in  Jewin  Street,  a  fit  substitute 
for  the  motherly  supervision  they  required.     He  did  indeed 
devise  a  kind  of  drill  for  them,  which,  while  it  suited  himself, 
gave  them  the  advantage  of  being  constantly  with  him  and 
always  occupied.     The  eldest  could  read,  but  could  not  write, 


MILTON    AND   HIS   THREE   DAUGHTERS.  447 

her  bodily  deformity  having  prevented  that  accomplishment 
or  made  it  seem  needless  ;  the  second  could  read  well  and 
write  tolerably ;  the  youngest,  who  was  to  be  the  best  pen- 
woman  of  the  three,  and  the  best  book-woman,  can  have  had 
but  a  child's  scrawl  and  a  child's  power  of  reading  in  the 
Jewin  Street  days.  The  drill  to  which  Milton  began  in  those 
days  to  subject  them,  but  especially  the  two  youngest,  is 
described  by  Phillips.  He  made  his  daughters  "  serviceable 
"  to  him,"  says  Phillips,  "  in  that  very  particular  in  which 
"  he  wanted  their  service,  and  supplied  his  want  of  eye-sight 
"  by  their  eyes  and  tongues.  For,  though  he  had  daily  about 
"  him  one  or  other  to  read  to  him,  —  some,  persons  of  man's 
"  estate,  who  of  their  own  accord  greedily  catched  at  the 
"  opportunity  of  being  his  readers,  that  they  might  as  well 
"  reap  the  benefit  of  what  they  read  to  him  as  oblige  him  by 
"  the  benefit  of  their  reading;  others,  of  younger  years,  sent 
"  by  their  parents  to  the  same  end, — yet,  excusing  only  the 
"  eldest  daughter  by  reason  of  her  bodily  infirmity  and  diffi- 
"  cult  utterance  of  speech  (which,  to  say  the  truth,  I  doubt 
"  was  the  principal  cause  of  excusing  her),  the  other  two  were 
"  condemned  to  the  performance  of  reading  and  exactly  pro- 
nouncing of  all  the  languages  of  whatever  book  he  should 
"  at  one  time  or  other  think  fit  to  peruse :  viz.  the  Hebrew 
"  (and,  I  think,  the  Syriac),  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  the  Italian, 
"  Spanish,  and  French."  The  method  so  described  was  to 
continue  for  years,  and  can  by  no  means  have  reached  such 
extraordinary  effect  in  1662.  Even  then,  however,  remember- 
ing Milton's  notions  of  the  rapidity  with  which  languages 
might  be  taught,  one  can  imagine  the  second  daughter,  Mary, 
reading  French,  Latin,  and  Italian  texts  fairly  for  her  father, 
and  the  pretty  little  Deborah  in  her  first  prattle  towards 
being  a  polyglott.  There  were  girls  then,  and  there  have 
been  girls  since,  who  could  have  turned  such  training  to 
account,  however  sternly  given,  and  emerged  from  it  as  high- 
minded  and  unusually  learned  women.  For,  whatever  may 
have  been  Milton's  notions  of  the  capacity  of  women  or  of  the 
proper  education  for  them,  Phillips's  farther  account,  to  the 
effect  that  he  trained  his  daughters  merely  to  read  aloud  to 


448  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

him  in  any  Latin,  Greek,  or  foreign  book,  as  he  had  occasion, 
"  without  understanding1  one  word  "  themselves,  is  credible 
only  in  the  sense  that  it  roughly  describes  the  actual  result.  "  It 
"had  been  happy  indeed,"  as  Phillips  adds,  "  if  the  daughters 
"  of  such  a  person  had  been  in  some  measure  inheritrixes  of 
"  their  father's  learning  ; "  but  that  they  were  not  such  in- 
heritrixes may  have  lain  more  with  their  reception  of  his  drill 
than  with  his  intention  in  it.  They  found  it  irksome  ;  they 
found  their  lives  in  Jewin  Street  irksome  ;  the  poor  things 
were  in  dumb  rebellion.  One  knows  not  how  many  pictures 
and  engravings  there  have  been  by  artists,  or  how  many 
more  there  will  be,  representing  the  blind  Milton  seated  in 
state,  dictating  Paradise  Lost  to  one  or  other  of  his  three 
daughters,  all  reverently  grouped  round  him,  or  kneeling 
beside  him,  with  looks  of  affection  and  admiration.  The 
sad  fact  is  far  otherwise.  Already,  at  our  present  date,  we 
repeat,  they  were,  all  three,  in  dumb  rebellion.  The  crippled 
eldest,  whose  defect  in  speech  excused  her  from  reading, 
and  who  could  not  write  at  all,  was  in  secret  league  with 
the  second,  who  bore  for  the  present  the  chief  burden  of  the 
drudgery  of  reading,  but  can  have  been  of  small  use  as  an 
amanuensis ;  and  these  two  beguiled  the  innocent  little 
Deborah.  Have  you  ever  known,  reader,  in  a  household 
apparently  respectable,  but  ill-regulated,  little  deceits  and 
peculations  carried  on  by  some  of  the  members  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  head, — clandestine  traffickings  with  the  servants, 
or  with  the  people  who  come  round  with  bags  in  the  mornings 
or  afternoons?  There  was  something  of  the  sort  in  the  house 
in  Jewin  Street.  "  All  his  said  children  did  combine  together 
';  and  counsel  his  maid-servant  to  cheat  him  in  her  market- 
"  ings ;  "  and  "  his  said  children  had  made  away  some  of  his 
':  books,  and  would  have  sold  the  rest  of  his  books  to  the 
"dunghill  women."  These  horrible  statements  were  made  on 
oath  after  Milton's  death  by  a  witness  who  had  received  the 
information  from  himself,  and  in  a  context  which  referred 
the  facts  to  the  year  1662.  O  that  house  in  Jewin,  Street, 
with  the  blind,  self-absorbed,  great  man  in  it,  and  the  three 
girls  left  to  their  own  devices,   and  the  ragwomen  coming 


THE   POWELL   FAMILY   IN    1662.  449 

round  to  the  doors  !  The  poor  pitiable  orphans !  Anne  and 
Mary  have  chosen  for  themselves ;  but  will  no  one  take  away 
the  terrified  little  Deborah 1  ? 

The  grandmother,  Mrs.  Powell,  might  have  taken  all  three 
away  now,  if  that  would  have  been  any  benefit  to  them.    The 
struggle  which  she  had  carried  on  so  bravely  under  the  Com- 
monwealth for  the  recovery  of  the  wrecks  of  her  late  husband's 
property  at  Forest  Hill  or  elsewhere,  and  in  which  the  latest 
documents  in  her  suit  prove  that  she  had  some  beginnings 
of  success   in  the  Protectorate,  had  been  resumed  after  the 
Restoration,  and  then  naturally  with  more  favourable  chances. 
She  must  have  made  satisfactory  progress  before  the  10th  of 
May  1662 ;  for  on  that  day  there  was  a  new  proof  at  Doctors' 
Commons  of  the  will  of  the  late  Mr.  Powell,  of  Dec.  30,  1646, 
on  which  so  much  depended  (Vol.  III.  pp.  636-637).     In  that 
wrill  Richard  Powell,  the  eldest  son  of  the  deceased,  had  been 
appointed  sole  executor,  but  with  a  provision  that,  if  he  did 
not   accept  the  executorship,  then   the  widow  herself,  Mrs. 
Powell,  was  to  be  sole  executrix  instead.     Now,  on  the  first 
probate   of  the  will  on  the  26th  of  March  1647  (Vol.  III. 
p.  640),  it  was  she,  and  not  her  son,  who  had  undertaken  the 
hopeless  business  ;  and,  so  far  as  we  had  occasion  to  trace  her 
suit  with  the  Commonwealth  authorities,  i.  e.  to   1651,  wre 
heard  only  of  her  in  connexion  with  it  (Vol.  IV.  pp.  145-146, 
236-246,  and  336-341).    After  that  date,  however,  her  eldest 
son,  Richard  Powell,  is  found  conjoined  with  her  in  the  suit  ; 
and  at  that  point  in  the  Protectorate  where,  as  we  have  said, 
the  documents  leave  the  suit  with  some  signs  of  a  beginning 
of  success,  mother  and  son  were   still  acting:  together,   with 
Christopher  Milton  as  one  of  their  legal  advisers  and  counsel, 
and  with  Milton  himself  apparently  concurring  so  far  as  he 
was  concerned  2.     But  now,  on  the  10th  of  May  1662,  there 

1  Phillips's  Memoir  of  Milton ;  Fac-  order  for  repayment  to  Mrs.  Powell  or 
simile  by  Mr.  Marsh  of  Receipts  given  her  son,  by  the  Treasurers  at  Gold- 
by  Milton's  three  daughters  for  their  smiths'  Hall,  of  £192  4*.  Id.  of  the 
shares  of  his  estate  after  his  decease  ;  composition  money  that  had  been  paid 
Evidence  in  the  case  of  Milton's  Will  by  Mr.  Pye  mi  the  Forest  Hill  property; 
(Todd's  Milton,  I.  179).  and  Mrs.  Powell  was  still  applying  for 

2  See  the  latest  documents  in  the  suit  that  sum  in  January  1655-6,  not  having 
in  HamUton's  Milton  /'apers,  Appendix  then  received  it. 

109—128.     In  May  1654  there  was  an 

VOL.  VI.  G  g 


450         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

is  a  second  probate  of  the  late  Mr.  Powell's  will,  still  to  be 
seen  in  Latin  on  the  margin  of  the  first  in  the  record  of  the 
will.  Oath  is  then  taken  before  Sir  William  Mericke,  knight, 
Doctor  of  Laws,  by  "  Richard  Powell,  Esq.,"  as  the  son  of  the 
deceased  and  the  first  appointed  executor,  and  the  former 
arrangement  making  his  mother  executrix  is  annulled.  This 
seems  to  imply  that,  matters  now  being  in  a  hopeful  way,  the 
widow  was  glad  to  hand  over  the  farther  management  to  her 
son,  the  head  of  the  family,  and  now  forty- one  years  of  age. 
He,  indeed,  was  the  party  principally  interested ;  for,  by  the 
will,  the  estate  of  Forest  Hill  and  all  the  other  recoverable 
property  of  the  deceased  had  been  bequeathed  to  him,  subject 
to  the  payment  of  his  mother's  jointure,  and  to  a  provision 
for  his  numerous  brothers  and  sisters.  Whether  he  did 
realise  all  that  had  thus  been  bequeathed  to  him  and  the  rest 
of  the  family  is  uncertain  ;  but,  as  we  do  find  him  in  posses- 
sion of  Forest  Hill  shortly  after  our  present  date,  and  figuring 
as  the  squire  of  the  place,  just  as  his  father  had  done,  the 
inference  is  that  the  Restoration  brought  back  some  degree  of 
prosperity  to  all  the  Powells. 

Nor  was  Milton's  interest  in  this  improvement  of  the 
fortunes  of  the  Powells  only  of  that  indirect  kind  which  one 
might  have  in  the  bettered  circumstances  of  a  family  one  had 
known  long,  and  with  which  one  had  been  connected,  though 
not  very  agreeably,  by  marriage.  Milton  was  directly  in- 
terested in  two  respects.  In  the  first  place,  was  the  small 
Wheatley  property  in  Oxfordshire  now  reclaimed  and  recovered 
by  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Richard  Powell,  as  well  as  the 
main  estate  of  Forest  Hill  ?  If  so,  was  the  process  of  recovery 
the  legal  one  of  ending  Milton's  extent  on  that  property  by 
pajdng  Milton  the  full  sum  of  ^300,  with  long  arrears,  for 
which  the  extent  had  been  given  ?  In  that  case,  though 
Milton  now  parted  with  the  Wheatley  property  and  lost  the 
«^J80  a  year  which  was  his  estimated  income  from  it,  he  had 
the  compensation,  of  course,  of  the  considerable  capital  sum 
which  his  brother-in-law  must  have  paid  him  for  the  release. 
It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that  in  such  a  transaction  in 
those  days  the  Royalist  would  have  the  advantage,  and  so 


THE   POWELL   FA.MILY   IN    1662.  451 

that  Milton  had  to  part  with  the  Wheatley  property  on  very 
losing"  terms.  But,  on  whatever  terms  he  parted  with  it,  he 
had  yet  another  reason  for  keeping  the  Powells  in  view  after 
their  reacquisition  of  that  property  and  of  Forest  Hill.  There 
remained  due  to  him  the  marriage-portion  of  ^1000  which 
had  been  promised  him  with  his  first  wife,  but  had  never 
been  paid.  There  had  been  express  recognition  of  this 
obligation  in  the  late  Mr.  Powell's  will.  Precisely  in  that 
portion  of  the  will  which  related  to  the  Wheatley  property 
there  were  these  words  :  "  And  my  desire  is  that  my  daughter 
"  Milton  be  had  a  regard  to,  in  the  satisfying  of  her  portion, 
"  and  adding  thereto  in  case  my  estate  will  bear  it."  The 
"  daughter  Milton,"  who  had  stood  by  his  bed-side  when  he 
expressed  this  wash,  had  died  not  many  years  after  himself; 
but  were  not  the  three  girls  she  had  left  the  proper  heirs  of 
whatever  had  been  hers?  Should  the  Powells  ever  be  again 
the  flourishing  Oxfordshire  family  they  had  once  been,  was 
not  Milton  entitled  to  expect  that  his  wife's  marriage-portion 
of  ^1000  should  be  forthcoming  for  the  benefit  of  her  three 
children  ?  That  this  matter  was  in  Milton's  thoughts  more 
and  more  from  1662  onwards  we  shall  find  evidence  in  time. 
But  was  it  convenient  for  the  restored  squire  of  Forest  Hill 
to  remember,  among  the  other  claims  upon  him  by  his  mother 
and  his  living  brothers  and  sisters,  this  more  distant  claim  of 
his  three  nieces,  daughters  of  a  dead  sister  ?  One  has  an  im- 
pression that  the  girls  were  more  in  their  grandmother's 
thoughts  than  in  their  uncle's ;  but  altogether  the  link 
between  the  Powells  and  Milton's  household,  after  the  Re- 
storation, cannot  have  been  kindly  or  cordial.  And  so,  for 
better  or  for  worse,  the  three  girls  remained  with  Milton,  the 
little  Deborah  growing  up  with  her  sisters  1. 


1  Mr.  Powell's  Will,  with   probates,  "  charged  for  seven  hearths."     Hunter's 

as  cited ;   previous  account  of  Milton's  surmise  was  correct. — A  fact  that  had 

interest  in  the  Wheatley  property  (Vol.  escaped  me  when  1   gave  my  first  ac- 

IV.  pp.  236—246, 336—341)  :  and  Hun-  count  of  the  Powell  family  (Vol.  II.  pp. 

tor's  Milton  Notes  (1850),  p.  33,—  where  491—501),  is  that  the  eldest  son  Richard 

it  is  stated  that  "  in  the  roll  of  persons  Powell  was  then  a  student  of  law.     He 

"  contributing  to   the   Hearth   Tax  in  had  been  admitted  of  the  Inner  Temple 

"1665  the  principal  person   at   Forest  in  May  1638.     1   owe  this  information 

"  Hill  is  a  Mr.  Richard  Powell,  probably  to  Miss  Thomasin  E.  Sharpe,  of  whose 

"a  brother-in-law  of  Milton,   who   is  genealogical  researches,  and  her  kind- 

oga 


452         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Among--  Milton's  visitors  in  Jewin  Street  must  have  been 
some  of  his  friends  of  former  days.  Durie,  as  we  know,  was 
no  longer  in  England;  and,  though  he  was  to  be  alive  till 
after  1674,  still  a  stirring  man  here  and  there  on  the  conti- 
nent, the  relations  between  him  and  Milton  can  now  have  been 
but  matter  of  recollection.  Hardly  either  among  Milton's 
possible  visitors  in  Jewin  Street  can  we  reckon  Hartlib.  Our 
last  glimpse  of  this  memorable  man  is  early  in  1662,  and  it  is 
a  sad  one.  He  was  then  old,  broken  down  with  bodily  pains,  if 
not  wholly  bedridden,  reduced  also  to  extreme  poverty  by  the 
loss  of  the  pension  granted  him  under  the  Protectorate,  and  for  a 
continuation  of  which,  or  at  least  some  bounty  for  his  relief,  on 
the  ground  of  his  long  and  arduous  public  services  of  various 
kinds,  he  had  in  vain  petitioned  the  Convention  Parliament. 
Nothing  more  is  heard  of  him  ;  and  he  seems  to  have  died 
without  much  notice  in  the  course  of  that  year.  Needham, 
who  deserved  worse,  had  fared  better.  Once  more  a  practi- 
tioner of  physic,  and  going  about  in  safety,  or  producing  his 
pardon  under  the  great  seal  when  he  was  in  danger  of  arrest 
by  too  zealous  authorities,  he  had  again,  it  seems,  apostatized 
so  far  as  to  publish  a  so-called  Short  History  of  the  English 
Rebellion,  consisting  of  a  collection  of  the  newspaper  verses  he 
had  written  when  he  was  the  Royalist  Mercurius  Pragmatic  us 
and  not  yet  Bradshaw's  and  Milton's  converted  Mercurius 
Politicus.  His  calls  on  Milton,  one  fancies,  must  now  have 
been  very  rare.  Whether  the  musician  Henry  Lawes  kept 
up  his  acquaintance  with  Milton  after  the  Restoration  is  also 
a  matter  of  conjecture  only.  His  circumstances  may  have 
made  the  continued  intimacy  difficult.  For,  "  outliving  the 
tribulations  which  he  endured  for  the  royal  cause,"  he  had  been 
restored,  with  all  honour  and  respect,  to  his  old  place  and  title 
as  chief  court  musician  and  gentleman  of  the  Chapel  Royal, 
and  had  composed  the  anthem  for  the  Coronation  of  Charles. 
In  any  case  Milton's  pleasure  in  the  continued  or  renewed 
friendship  would  have  been  but  brief.      "  For  a  short  time/' 

ness  in  communicating  their  results,  I  the  Inner  Temple  from  the  preserved 

shall  have  to  make  farther  acknowledg-  documents  relative  to  Milton's  muicu- 

nient.    But  I  ought  to  have  known  the  pative  will. 
general  fact  that  he  was  a  member  of 


MR.  SAMUEL   PARKER.  453 

we  are  told,  "  Lawes  lived  happy "  in  his  restored  office, 
"  venerated  by  all  lovers  of  music  "  ;  but  he  died  in  October 
1662,  and  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. — About  that 
time  the  probability  is  that  among  the  friends  of  Milton  who 
were  steadiest  in  their  attendance  on  him  were  Andrew 
Marvel],  Cyriack  Skinner,  and  young1  Lawrence.  As  to 
Marvell  there  is  no  doubt  whatever.  To  the  very  end  Mar  veil 
was  to  be  faithful,  and  we  learn  from  himself  that  he  found 
time,  amid  his  Parliamentary  duties,  to  be  pretty  often  with 
Milton  in  Jewin  Street1. 

One  day,  when  Marvell  was  in  Milton's  house,  he  found  a 
young  man  there  whom  lie  had  never  met  before.  This  was 
a  Mr.  Samuel  Parker,  son  of  John  Parker,  an  energetic  lawyer 
who  had  distinguished  himself  by  his  business  activity,  and  also 
by  publications,  in  behalf  of  the  Parliament  and  the  Common- 
wealth, and  who,  after  having  been  sergeant-at-law  under  Oliver, 
had  risen  to  be  one  of  the  barons  of  exchequer  during  the  rule  of 
the  restored  Rump.  Of  this  office  he  had  been  deprived  at  or 
shortly  before  the  Restoration ;  but  he  had  so  far  made  his 
peace  with  the  new  powers  that,  in  July  1660,  at  the  first  call 
of  sergeants-at-law  for  Charles  II.,  he  had,  by  Hyde's  influence, 
been  made  one  of  them.  His  son  Samuel,  then  only  twenty 
years  of  age,  was  in  great  perplexity  as  to  the  line  of  conduct 
that  would  be  proper  for  himself  after  this  submission  of  his 
Puritanical  and  Republican  father.  Educated  at  Wadham 
College,  Oxford,  on  the  strictest  Presbyterian  principles,  he 

1   Kennett's   Register,  pp.  868—873  mentioned  in  his  Diary  under  the  date 

(Hartlib  and  Lawes);  Bavle,  Art.  Du-  Aug.  7,1660,  as  referred  to  in  a  former 

reus-,    Wood's    Ath.    III.    1182—1187  note   (ante,  p.  200)  ?    If  so,  I  may  be 

(Needham) ;  Marvell's  Rehearsal  Trans-  right    in    my  former    statement    that 

2>rosed  in  Grosart's  edition  of  Marvel],  Hartlib  left  a  daughter,  married  to  a 

III.    498—500 ;    Dircks's    Memoir    of  German  named  Roder,  besides  the  one 

Hartlib,  pp.  22—39. 1  observe  that  married  to  the  German  Clodius ;  if  not, 

Hartlib,  in  his  petition  to  the  Conven-  that  was  a  mistake.     The  last  known 

tion  Parliament,  styles  himself  "  Samuel  letter  of  our  Hartlib  is  one  to  Dr.  Wor- 

Hartlib,  Sen."     I  infer  that  he  had  a  thington,   of  date   Feb.    14,  1661-2,  in 

son,  or  nephew,  of  the  same  name  ;  and  which  he  says,  "  This  may  be  the  last  of 

in  the  London  Gazette  for  April  16—19,  mine   for  aught  I  know."     His  death 

1666,  I   find   an   advertisement  signed  shortly  after  that  is  mainly  an  inference 

"Sam.    Hartlib,    Secretary."      Hartlib  from  the  sudden  cessation  of  his  cor- 

himself,  in  a  letter  of  Nov.  22,  1660,  respondence.     But  Evelyn,  answering 

speaks  of  "  a  daughter  and  a  nephew  "  inquiries    about  him   in   1703,   speaks, 

as   two  relatives  depending  upon   him  though    rather    ambiguously,    of    his 

in   his  poverty.     Was   not  this  junior  having  gone  abroad,  and  having  died  at 

Samuel  Hartlib  the    friend  of  Pepys  Oxford  "  after  his  return  from  travel." 


454  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

had  come  to  be  esteemed  "  one  of  the  preciousest  young 
men  in  the  University."  He  was  one  of  a  club  of  students  of 
different  colleges  who,  on  account  of  the  frequency  of  their 
prayer-meetings  and  their  usual  restriction  of  themselves  to  a 
diet  of  "  thin  broth,  made  of  oatmeal  and  water  only/'  were 
nicknamed  The  Gruelers.  He  had  just  taken  his  B.A.  degree 
when  the  Restoration  came.  Was  he  then  to  throw  in  his  lot 
with  the  suffering  Nonconformists,  and  so  sacrifice  all  his  future 
prospects  in  life  ?  For  a  time  he  had  no  doubt  on  the  subject. 
"He  did  pray,  cabal,  and  discourse,"  says  Wood,  "  to  obstruct 
"  episcopal  government,  revenues,  and  authority."  It  was  in 
this  state  of  mind,  that,  having  incurred  the  displeasure  of  the 
warden  of  his  college,  he  had  come  up  to  London.  What 
attracted  him  to  Milton  is  uncertain ;  but  the  attraction  must 
have  been  unusually  strong,  for  Marvell  found  that  he  was 
perpetually  with  Milton  or  in  his  neighbourhood.  He  "  wan- 
"  dered  up  and  down  Moorfields,  astrologizing  upon  the  dura- 
"  tion  of  his  Majesty's  government  "  ;  and,  Jewin  Street  being 
but  a  step  from  Moorfields,  he  "  frequented  J.  M.  incessantly, 
and  haunted  his  house  day  by  day,"  asking  his  opinions  of 
various  matters,  and  consulting  him  as  to  the  proper  interpre- 
tation of  the  signs  of  the  times.  Milton,  we  may  suppose, 
gave  him  the  best  advice  he  could,  but  may  not  have  been 
sorry  when  the  young  man  left  London,  to  return  to  Oxford 
and  reason  out  his  difficulties  for  himself1. 

A  more  pleasant  person  to  meet  at  Milton's  than  young 
Mr.  Samuel  Parker  must  have  been  Dr.  Nathan  Paget.  He 
was  the  son  of  a  Cheshire  clergyman,  had  been  educated  at  the 
University  of  Edinburgh,  where  he  took  his  degree  of  M.A., 
and  had  afterwards  studied  medicine  at  Leyden,  where  he 
graduated  as  M.D.,  Aug.  3,  1639.  He  had  been  admitted  an 
extra-licentiate  of  the  London  College  of  Physicians,  April  4, 
1640,  and  incorporated  as  M.D.  at  Cambridge  June  3,  1642; 
since  which  time  he  had  been  in  the  practice  of  his  profession 
with  much  repute  in  London.  He  had  been  appoiuted  physician 
to  the  Tower  by  the  Council  of  State  of  the  Commonwealth  in 

1  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  225—226,  and  Fasti,  II.  218 ;  Marvell's  Rehearsal  Transprosed, 

as  before. 


DR.  NATHAN    PAGET.  455 

the  first  year  of  Milton's  secretaryship,  and  had  held  the  office 
of  Censor  to  the  College  of  Physicians  in  1655,  1657,  and  1659. 
He  had  known  Milton  well  for  a  long  time,  probably  from  the 
Aldersgate  Street  and  Barbican  days.  He  had  his  house  in 
Coleman  Street,  very  near  Jewin  Street,  and  seems  to  have 
been  continually  coming  in  to  see  Milton,  partly  as  a  friend, 
and  partly  as  his  medical  attendant.  The  blindness,  now  total 
for  ten  years,  was  a  settled  matter;  but  Milton's  ailments 
besides  were  serious  enough,  and  had  taken  the  form  at  length 
of  confirmed  and  severe  gout.  A  call  from  Dr.  Paget  every 
other  day  was  as  needful  as  it  was  agreeable  ;  and  not  un- 
frequently,  when  Milton  went  out,  it  would  be  arm-in-arm 
with  the  kindly  physician  1. 

Lady  Ranelagh  is  not  to  be  forgotten.  She  had  gone  to 
Ireland,  it  may  be  remembered,  in  October  1656  (ante,  Vol.  V. 
pp.  277-279),  just  before  Milton's  second  marriage,  and 
Milton  had  then  regretted  much  the  loss  he  was  to  sustain  by 
the  absence  from  London  of  one  whose  visits  to  him  in  Petty 
France  had  helped  to  brighten  all  the  previous  years  of  his 
blindness,  and  whose  assiduity  in  his  behalf  he  could  only 
describe  by  saying  that  she  had  stood  to  him  in  "  the  place  of 
all  kith  and  kin."  For  two  years  or  more  the  only  compen- 
sation he  can  have  had  must  have  been  in  occasional  letters 
from  her.  None  such  have  survived  ;  but  there  are  some  pre- 
served letters  of  hers  from  Ireland  to  members  of  her  family  in 
England.  They  are  so  characteristic  that  an  extract  or  two 
from  them  may  be  welcome.  A  letter  was  written  to  her 
brother,  Lord  Broghill,  on  the  17th  of  September  1658,  just 
after  she  had  received  in  Ireland  the  news  of  the  great  Pro- 
tector's death.  "Dear  Brother/'  it  begins,  "I  must  own 
"  not  to  have  received  the  news  of  his  Highness's  death  un- 
"  movedly  .  .  .  Certainly  he  may  justly  be  esteemed  improvi- 
"  dent  that,  after  such  a  warning,  shall  make  no  better  pro- 
vision for  himself  than  the  greatest  stock  of  such  vanishing 
"  greatness  comes  to  ;  of  which  we  have  had  express  manifest- 
"  ations,    both    of  his    coming   into    and   going   out   of    his 

i  Munk's  Eoll  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  I.  224—225  ;    Phillips's  Memoir  ; 
and  ante,  Vol.  IV.  p.  151. 


456        LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 


«  government.  And,  if  the  common  charity  allowed  to  dead 
"  men  be  exercised  towards  him,  in  burying'  his  faults  in  the 
"  grave  with  himself  and  keeping  alive  the  memory  of  his 
"  virtues  and  great  aims  and  actions,  he  will  be  allowed  to 
"  have  his  place  amongst  the  worthiest  of  men  ...  I  doubt 
"  his  loss  will  be  a  growing  affliction  upon  these  nations,  and 
"  that  we  shall  learn  to  value  him  more  by  missing  him, — 
"  a  perverseness  of  our  nature,  that  teaches  us,  in  every  con- 
"  dition  wherein  we  are,  therewith  to  be  discontent,  by  under- 
"  valuing  what  we  have  and  overvaluing  what  we  have  lost.  I 
"  confess  his  performances  reached  not  the  making  good  of  his 
"  professions  ;  but  I  doubt  his  performances  may  go  beyond 
"  the  professions  of  those  who  may  come  after  him."  She 
then  goes  on  to  append  to  "this  great  account  of  loss  upon 
public  score  "  by  Cromwell's  death  what  she  calls  the  "  penny 
half-penny  "  matter  of  her  own  particular  loss  by  that  event. 
Cromwell,  it  seems,  had  been  very  friendly  to  her  in  the 
matter  of  her  Irish  estates,  and  also  in  her  difficult  relations 
with  her  husband,  Viscount  Ranelagh.  "  His  now  Highness/' 
she  says,  meaning  the  Protector  Richard,  "  seems  not  to  me  so 
"  proper  a  person  to  summon  my  lord  [her  husband],  or  to 
':  deal  with  him  in  such  an  affair  as  his  father  did  ;  from 
"  whose  authority,  and  severity  against  such  practices  as  my 
"  lord's  are,  I  thought  the  utmost  would  be  done  that  either 
"persuasions  or  advice  would  have  effected  upon  my  lord." 
Equally  interesting,  in  another  way,  is  a  letter  of  Lady  Rane- 
lagh's  to  her  younger  and  favourite  brother,  Robert  Boyle, 
then  still  at  Oxford,  and  in  constant  correspondence  with  her. 
It  is  dated  vaguely  "  January  7  "  ;  which  may  or  may  not 
mean  "  January  7,  1658-9."  Boyle  seems  to  have  told  her 
that  he  had  been  recently  on  a  visit  to  the  poet  Waller,  at  his 
house  of  Hall  Barn,  near  Beaconsfield,  and  to  have  sent  her 
some  courtly'  compliment  from  that  gentleman.  This  is  how 
she  receives  it : — "  For  Mr.  Waller,  I  never  heard  one  word 
"  from  him  since  I  left  him,  but  what  you  said  in  your  last ; 
"  and  I  know  his  calling  as  a  poet  gives  him  licence  to  say  as 
"  great  things  as  he  can,  without  intending  they  should  sig- 
"  nify  any  more  than  that  he  said  them,  or  to  have  any  higher 


LADY  RANELAGH  AGAIN.  457 

'end  than  to  make  him    admired  by   those  whose  admira- 
'  tions  are  so  volatile  as  to  be  raised  by  a  sound  of  words  ; 
'  and,    the    less  the    subject  he  speaks  of,  or  the  party   he 
'  speaks    to,    deserves  the  great  thing's  he  says,   the  greater 
'  those    thing's    are,    and    the  greater  advance    they    are    to 
'  make  towards    his  being    admired,    by   his   poetical    laws. 
'  Therefore,  if  he  would  be  but  as  little  proud  of  saying  great 
'  things  to  me  as  I  hope  I  shall  be  in  hearing  them  from  him, 
'  he  would,  I  am  apt  to  think,  escape  some  guilt  that  now  his 
'fine  sayings  lay  him  under;  and  I  could  never  give  myself  a 
'  reason  why  he,  who  can  say  such  things  upon  things  that  so 
'  little  deserved  them,  should  be  so  unwilling  to  apply  that 
'  faculty  to  those  subjects  that  were  truly  excellent,  but  this, 
'  — that   there  his  subject  would   have  been  debased  by  his 
'  highest  expressions,  and  he  humbled  in  the  exercise  of  his 
'  wit,  but,  where  he  has  employed  it,  his  subjects  have  been 
'  raised  by  his  fancy,  and  himself  by  reflecting  upon  it.     I 
'  shall   therefore    return   his    great  professions  with    a  plain 
'  hearty  wish  that  he  may  partake  in  gifts   more  excellent 
'  than  his  wit,  and  employ  that  for  the  time  to  come  upon 
'  subjects  more  excellent  than  hitherto  he  has  done ;    and, 
'  without    compliment,    I    should    gladly    be    serviceable   to 
'  him,  or  his  wife, — to  whom  I  am  a  servant  on  much  better 
'  accounts  than    he    hitherto    makes   it   possible   for    me    to 
be  to  him."      Evidently  Lady  Ranelagh  was  a  severe  judge 
of  character. — She  was  certainly  back  in  London  in  the  end 
of  1659,   and  so   must  have  witnessed  from   the  centre  the 
later  events  of  that  year  of  confusion,   ending   in  the  drift 
towards  the  Restoration  and   the    Restoration   itself.      Had 
she,    in   the    months    before    the    Restoration,    resumed   her 
visits  to  Milton  in  Petty   France,  and  was    she   thus    cog- 
nisant then  of  his  more  private  thoughts,  as  well  as,  with 
all  the  rest   of  the  world,   of  his  vain   thunderings   for  the 
dying  Republic  ?     Milton's  character  was  indubitably  more  to 
her  standard  of  greatness  and  manliness  than  Waller's.      One 
has  to  remember,  however,  that  her  brother,  Lord  Broghill, 
had  been  one  of  those  who,  since  the  abdication  of  Richard,  had 
seen  no  other  possible  close  of  the  anarchy  than  the  recall  of 


458  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

the  Stuarts,  and  also  that  the  whole  family  of  the  Boyles 
welcomed  the  Restoration  when  it  did  come,  and  were  taken 
conspicuously  into  court  favour.  For  a  time  she  may  have 
had  to  keep  somewhat  aloof  from  Milton ;  but  there  is  little 
doubt  that  Milton  in  Jewin  Street  could  still  think  of  her 
as  really  unchanged  to  him,  and  that  occasionally  from  1662 
onwards  she  went  to  see  him,  as  before,  from  her  house  in  Pall 
Mall.  That  house  was,  of  course,  her  brother  Robert's  resi- 
dence when  he  was  in  London  ;  and  ere  long,  leaving  Oxford 
altogether,  he  was  to  be  permanently  domiciled  in  it,  all  the 
world  admiring  the  mutual  devotion  of  the  incomparable 
Boyle  and  his  incomparable  sister1. 

Not  long  after  Lady  Ranelagh's  return  to  London,  her  son, 
Mr.  Richard  Jones,  Milton's  former  pupil,  was  safely  back 
from  his  travels,  in  the  company  of  his  tutor,  the  German 
Henry  Oldenburg.  They  were  back  before  the  end  of  1660; 
and,  when  we  remember  their  former  intimacy  with  Milton, 
and  the  confidential  correspondence  he  had  kept  up  with  them 
during  their  stay  abroad,  even  to  as  late  as  December  1659, 
we  can  hardly,  in  their  case,  any  more  than  in  that  of  Lady 
Ranelagh,  imagine  estrangement.  Both  the  German  and  his 
pupil,  however,  had  entered  on  paths  of  their  own,  which  were 
probably  to  lead  them  farther  and  farther  from  Milton's 
society. 

Oldenburg,  though  his  tutorship  of  young  Ranelagh  was 
at  an  end,  remained,  as  we  know,  in  the  Ranelagh  and  Boyle 
connexion.  On  account  of  his  many  merits,  the  philosophical 
Boyle  had  taken  him  permanently  under  his  patronage,  and 
they  were  now  inseparable.  When,  on  the  28th  of  November 
1660,  Lord  Brouncker,  Sir  Robert  Moray,  Mr.  Christopher 
Wren,  Dr.  Petty,  and  the  rest  of  the  chiefs  of  the  London 
virtuosi  resolved,  at  one  of  their  meetings  in  Gresham  College, 
to  organize  themselves  more  regularly  for  the  future  into  a 
society  "  for  the  promoting  of  pbysico-mathematical  experi- 

i  Thurloe,  VII.  395—397    (the  first  Lord  Brogliill  and  the  Boyle  family  may 

letter  quoted)  ;  Boyle's  Works,  V.  556 —  have  been  one  of  those  concurring  in- 

567    (the   second  letter),  with   Life  of  fluences  that  saved  Milton  at  the  Resto- 

Boyle  by  Birch  prefixed  to  Vol.  I.— It  ration, 
is  just  possible  that  the  influence  of 


HENRY   OLDENBURG    IN    1662.  459 

mental   learning,"    Mr.  Oldenburg's   name,    as    well   as  Mr. 
Boyle's,  had  been  put  down,  as  we  saw,  in  the  list  of  per- 
sons, not  already  of  the  brotherhood,   whom    those  present 
judged  "  fit  to  join  with  them  in  their  design,"  and  who,  if 
"  they  should  desire  it,  might  be  admitted  before  any  other." 
Accordingly,  on  the  26th  of  December,  Mr.  Oldenburg  had 
been  actually  elected  a  fellow,  together  with  Mr.  Boyle  him- 
self, the  poet  Denham,  Mr.  Evelyn,  and  Mr.  Ashmole.     From 
that  moment  Oldenburg's  heart  and  soul  had  been  in  the  affairs 
of  the  Society  and  especially  in  Mr.  Boyle's  contributions  to  it ; 
and,  when  the  Society  received  its  charter  of  incorporation  in 
July  1662  and  became  The   Royal  Society,   Oldenburg  was 
appointed  by  the  charter  itself,  as  we  saw,  to  be  one  of  the 
first  council,  along  with  Lord  Brouncker,  Sir  Robert  Moray, 
Boyle,  Petty,  and  the  other  chiefs,   and    he   and  Dr.  John 
Wilkins    were    appointed    the    joint    secretaries.      In    fact, 
Oldenburg  became  the  one  working  secretary,   discharging 
most  indefatigably  the  duties  he  has  himself  so  particularly 
described  (ante,  p.  397).    Launched  in  this  career  of  secretary- 
ship, his  faithfulness  in  which  has  kept  his  name  memorable 
in  the  annals  of  the  Society,  Oldenburg  can  have  had  little 
time  for  continued   intercourse  with  Milton.     In  any  case  it 
mio-ht  be  inconvenient  for  him  to  remember  that  he  had  been 
Milton's  agent  in  distributing  abroad  copies  of  his  Defences 
of  the  English  Commonwealth,  and  he  could  hardly  repeat 
his  recommendation  to  Milton  to  employ  himself  in  writing 
a  history  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorates.     Any 
history  of  the  English  Troubles  that  could  have  come  from 
Milton  could  hardly  have  been  dedicated  now  to  Mr.  Olden- 
burg.    As  secretary  of  the  Royal   Society,   he  was  in  daily 
association    with    Restoration    officials    and    courtiers ;    and, 
naturally   enough,   when   Mr.  Oldenburg   married   the    only 
daughter    of  Mr.  John  Durie,   and  a  son   was  born  to  him, 
the  boy  was  to  be  called  Rupert  Oldenburg,  having  Prince 
Rupert  for  his  godfather 1. 

Mr.  Boyle    had   taken    his    nephew,    young   Mr.  Richard 

1  Wood's  Fasti,  II.  197  ;  Weld's  History  of  the  Royal  Society,  I.  66—67,  96, 135, 
and  259—200. 


460         LIFE   OF  MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Jones,  as  well  as  Mr.  Oldenburg,  under  his  wing-.  The  tastes 
chiefly  fostered  in  the  boy,  since  he  had  passed  from  Milton's 
hands  to  Oldenburg's,  had  been,  as  we  know,  those  for 
physical  science ;  and,  when  he  came  back  from  his  travels,  it 
was  with  the  reputation  of  an  ingenious  young  gentleman 
who  might  one  day  distinguish  himself  in  his  uncle's  walks  of 
research.  One  is  not  surprised,  therefore,  at  finding  the 
name  of  "  Mr.  Jones  "  immediately  under  that  of  Boyle  him- 
self in  the  list  of  persons  thought  fit  and  proper  for  election 
into  the  infant  Royal  Society  in  November  1660,  nor  at 
finding  that,  when  Mr.  Boyle  published  in  April  1661,  from 
Herringman's  shop,  a  collection  of  his  speculative  and  chemical 
papers,  under  the  title  of  Certain  Physiological  Essays,  and  other 
Tracts,  written  at  distant  times  and  on  several  subjects,  his 
nephew's  name  was  prominently  connected  with  the  publica- 
tion. Most  of  the  papers  having  been  written  in  the  form  of 
letters  to  a  young  friend  of  the  author,  styled  "  Pyrophilus," 
care  was  taken  to  inform  the  public  who  this  young  friend 
was.  "  To  save  the  reader  the  trouble  of  guessing  who  is 
"meant  by  that  Pyrophilus  to  whom  most  of  the  following 
"  treatises  are  addressed,  I  think  it  requisite  to  inform  him," 
says  Boyle,  or  Herringman  for  him,  in  a  prefixed  note  of 
advertisement,  "  that  the  person  veiled  under  that  name  is 
"  that  hopeful  young  gentleman,  Mr.  Richard  Jones,  only  son 
"  to  the  Lord  Viscount  Ranelagh  and  an  excellent  lady,  sister 
"  to  the  author."  Thus  introduced  to  the  world  of  letters  and 
science  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  young  Jones  might  easily, 
one  thinks,  have  done  credit  to  his  Boyle  lineage  and  to  the 
part  which  Milton  had  taken  in  his  education.  The  uni- 
formly Mentor-like  tone  of  all  Milton's  letters  to  him,  how- 
ever, has  taught  us  what  to  expect.  Evidently  Milton  had 
all  along  been  aware  of  some  weakness  in  the  young  man's 
character  that  would  show  itself  as  he  grew  older.  Nor  had 
he  judged  wrongly.  We  have  but  to  pass  to  the  year  1662 
to  meet  young  Jones,  where  no  pupil  of  Milton  was  to  be 
looked  for,  in  Count  Anthony  Hamilton's  Memoirs  of  Count 
Grammont.  In  that  celebrated,  but  very  much  overrated  book, 
we  have,  as  all  the  world  knows,  a  picture  of  the  Court  of 


MR.  RICHARD   JONES    IN    1662.  461 

Charles  II.,  with  sketches  of  its  men  and  women,  in  the  guise 
of  the  adventures  and  observations  of  the  French  chevalier 
during  his  residence  in  London.  Banished  from  the  Court  of 
Louis  XIV.,  and  blase  already  with  all  the  experiences  of  life 
in  France,  Grammont  had  come  to  London,  we  are  told,  just 
after  the  arrival  of  the  Portuguese  Queen,  when  the  English 
Court  was  to  be  seen  in  its  full  splendour.  Much  as  he  had 
expected,  he  was  surprised  by  what  he  found ;  and,  very  soon, 
admitted  to  the  most  intimate  familiarity  with  Charles  II., 
and  knowing  everybody  else,  and  invited  to  all  the  parties  of 
the  Queen,  Lady  Castlemaine,  and  the  Duchess  of  York,  he 
was  doing  his  best  to  contribute  to  the  "  magnificence  and 
diversions  "  of  the  debauched  Court.  This  he  did  for  a  while 
merely  by  his  wit,  his  fine  manners,  his  exquisite  little 
suppers,  and  his  willingness  to  play  high  and  prove  his  skill 
by  winning  great  sums  of  money.  At  length,  "  weary  of  the 
favours  of  fortune,  he  had  just  resolved  to  pursue  those  of 
love,"  when  an  opportunity  presented  itself,  as  follows : — 
"  Mrs.  Middleton  was  the  first  whom  he  attacked.  She  was 
"  one  of  the  handsomest  women  in  town,  though  then  little 
"  known  at  Court :  so  much  of  a  coquette  as  to  discourage  no 
"  one ;  and  so  great  was  her  desire  of  appearing  magnificently 
"  that  she  was  ambitious  to  vie  with  those  of  the  greatest 
"  fortunes,  though  unable  to  support  the  expense.  All  this 
"  suited  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont ;  therefore,  without  trifling 
"  away  his  time  in  useless  ceremonies,  he  applied  to  her  porter 
"  for  admittance,  and  chose  one  of  her  lovers  for  his  confidant. 
"  This  lover,  who  was  not  deficient  in  wit,  was  at  that  time 
"  a  Mr.  Jones,  afterwards  Earl  of  Ranelagh.  What  engaged 
"  him  to  serve  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont  was  to  traverse  the 
"  designs  of  a  most  dangerous  rival,  and  to  relieve  himself 
"from  an  expense  which  began  to  lie  too  heavy  upon  him. 
"  In  both  respects  the  Chevalier  answered  his  purpose."  How 
the  intrigue  was  worked  out  we  need  not  inquire  ;  enough  to 
know  how  far  young  Jones  had  advanced  in  1662.  The 
Mrs.  Middleton  affair  was  but  the  first  of  a  series  of  such  in 
the  young  man's  progress  at  Court.  His  life  and  services  in 
political  office  as  Viscount  Ranelagh   and  Earl  of  Ranelagh 


462  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

were  to  extend  far  beyond  our  present  date,  but  we  need  not 
anticipate  more  at  present 1. 

Milton's  nephews,  both  now  past  thirty  years  of  age,  and 
busy  in  continued  hack-writing-  for  the  booksellers,  can  have 
had  but  little  leisure  for  assisting  their  uncle  among  his  books 
and  papers. 

It  may  be  questioned,  indeed,  whether  the  younger  nephew, 
John  Phillips,  ever  now  went  near  his  uncle.  The  hack- 
writing  in  which  this  more  Bohemian  of  the  two  brothers  was 
engaged  was  still  of  the  sort  most  distasteful  to  Milton.  In 
the  end  of  1659  he  had  published,  in  emulation  and  ridicule 
of  Lilly's  Astrological  Annuals,  a  pamphlet  with  this  title : 
"  Montelion,  1660  :  or,  The  Prophetical  Almanack  ;  being  a  True 
and  Exact  Account  of  all  the  Revolutions  that  are  to  happen  in 
the  world  this  present  year,  1660,  till  this  time  twelvemonth:  by 
Montelion,  knight  of  the  Oracle,  a  well-wisher  to  the  Mathe- 
maticks."  Godwin  imagines  that  Milton  may  have  had  this, 
with  other  Royalist  pamphlets,  in  his  thoughts  in  that 
passage  of  his  Ready  and  Easy  Way  in  which  he  had  spoken 
so  bitterly  of  "  the  insolencies,  the  menaces,  the  insultings  of 
our  newly-animated  common  enemies,"  their  diabolical  "  fore- 
running libels,"  their  "  infernal  pamphlets,  the  spew  of  every 
drunkard,  every  ribald."  This  is  on  the  supposition  that 
Phillips  was  the  author  of  the  Montelion  for  1661  and  the 
Montelion  for  166.2,  almanacks  in  continuation  of  the  first,  but 
more  exultingly  Royalist,  and  containing  scurrilities  against 
the  Rump,  Hugh  Peters,  "Old  Noll's  wife,"  and  Cyriack 
Skinner,  and  also  that  he  was  the  author  of  Don  Juan 
Lamherto,  or  A  Comical  History  of  the  Late  Times:  by  Montelion, 
and  of  Montelion's  Introduction  to  Astrology,  both  published  in 
1661,  and  both  clever  specimens  of  Restoration  buffoonery. 
These  four  publications  of  the  Montelion  set,  however,  are 
more  generally  ascribed  to  the  poet  Flatman  ;  in  which  case 
the  only  known  publication  of  John  Phillips  intermediate 
between  the  first  Montelion,  which  is  certainly  his,  and  our 

a  Weld's  History  of  the  Royal  Society,  p.  635  ;  Grammont's  Memoirs  (edit,  of 

•„  6°~67  5  Stationers'  Registers,  April  1809),  I.  171—197,  and  note,  pp.  270— 

28,  1661 ;  Boyle's  WTorks,  I.  191;  ante,  271. 
Vol.  V.  pp.  267-268,  p.  278,  p.  366,  and 


THE   TWO   PHILLIPSES   IN    1662.  463 

present  date,  was  a  new  edition  in  1661  of  his  Satyr  against 
Hypocrites  of  1655,  with  the  title  altered  to  The  Religion  of  the 
Hypocritical  Presbyterians  in  Meeter.  Such  as  he  was,  a  clever 
writer  of  Restoration  burlesques,  he  had  necessarily  increased 
his  distance  from  his  uncle1. 

Not  so  his  elder  brother,  Edward  Phillips,  whose  Royalism, 

though  equally  declared,  had  taken  a  graver  character.     Just 

before  the  Restoration  he  had  been  employed  to  prepare  for 

the  press  a  new  edition  of  Sir  Richard  Raker's  Chronicle  of  the 

Kings  of  England,  the  first  or  1641   edition  of  that  popular 

book,  and  the  second  or  1653  edition,  having  been  exhausted. 

In  those  two  editions  the  narrative  had  been  brought  down 

no  farther  than  the    death  of   James  I.;    but    in   the    third 

edition,   prepared  by  Phillips,  and  published   in  1660,  there 

was  a  supplement,  written  by  Phillips,  entitled  A  Continuation 

of  the  Chronicle  of  England  to  the  end  of  the  year  1658:  being 

a  full  narrative  of  the  Affairs  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland, 

more  especially  reletting  unto  the  transactions  of  Charles,  crowned 

King  of  the  Scots  at  Scone  on  the  first  day  of  January  1650. 

The  wording  here  would  suggest  that,  for  a  book  sent  to  press 

before  the  Restoration,  nothing  could  well  have   been  more 

Royalist  in  design  and  spirit ;  and,  accordingly,  though  there 

is  a  study  of  candour  and  moderation  in  the  text,  and  very 

liberal  praise  of  Cromwell  and  his  administration,  the  leaning  to 

the  Stuarts  is  apparent.     Charles  I.  is  treated  with  sympathy; 

the  story  of  Montrose's  tragic  fate  is  told   with  eloquence ; 

and  at   the  close  of  the  book  there  are  kindly  words  about 

Charles  II.,  then  in  exile,  with  an  obvious  anticipation  of  his 

speedy  return.     He  is  styled  "  this  illustrious  unfortunate," 

and  the  history  of  the  three  kingdoms  since  his  father's  death 

is  reputed  to  belong  to  his  reign,  on  the  ground  of  his  being 

"  the  eldest  son  of  the  last  King  of  Great  Britain,"  and  having 

been  himself  crowned  King  of  Scotland.     Thus,  at  the  very 

moment  when  Milton,  in  his  last  pre-Restoration  pamphlets, 

was   defying    approaching    Majesty    to    the    face,    his    elder 

nephew,  as  well  as  his  younger,  had  publicly  joined  the  ranks 

'  Godwin's  Lives  of  the  Pliillipses,  96—113 ;  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  764,  with  notes  by 
Bliss. 


464  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  the  waiting  Cavaliers.  In  Edward  Phillips,  however,  there 
was,  after  all,  a  spirit  of  grateful  loyalty  to  his  Republican 
uncle  that  seems  to  have  been  wanting  in  his  coarser  brother. 
He  had  felt  all  clue  anxiety  about  his  uncle's  fate  immediately 
after  the  Restoration ;  and,  when  Milton  had  settled  in  Jewin 
Street,  this  one  of  the  two  nephews  had  continued,  amid  his 
own  occupations  for  the  booksellers,  including  a  new  edition 
of  his  English  Dictionary  or  World  of  Words  in  1662,  to  drop 
in  upon  his  uncle  attentively  whenever  he  could  1. 

Edward  Phillips,  as  he  tells  us  himself,  took  interest  in  the 
progress  of  Paradise  Lost.  "  There  is  another  very  remarkable 
';  passage  in  the  composure  of  this  poem,"  he  says,  "  which  I 
"  have  a  particular  occasion  to  remember ;  for,  whereas  I  had 
"  the  perusal  of  it  from  the  very  beginning,  for  some  years,  as 
"  I  went  from  time  to  time  to  visit  him,  in  a  parcel  of  ten, 
"  twenty,  or  thirty  verses  at  a  time, — which,  being  written  by 
"  whatever  hand  came  next,  might  possibly  want  correction 
"  as  to  the  orthography  and  pointing, — having,  as  the  summer 
"  came  on,  not  been  showed  any  for  a  considerable  while,  and 
"  desiring  the  reason  thereof,  was  answered,  That  his  vein 
"  never  happily  flowed  but  from  the  autumnal  equinoctial  to 
"  the  vernal,  and  that  whatever  he  attempted  [in  the  other 
"  part  of  the  year]  was  never  to  his  satisfaction,  though  he 
"  courted  his  fancy  never  so  much  ;  so  that,  in  all  the  years 
"  he  was  about  this  poem,  he  may  be  said  to  have  spent  but 
"half  his  time  therein."  In  all  probability  it  was  in  Jewin 
Street,  and  in  the  year  1662,  that  Milton  confided  to  his 
nephew  the  curious  fact  that  his  muse  was  never  so  happy  as 
in  the  winter  half  of  the  year,  from  the  end  of  September  to 
the  end  of  March.  He  had  then  been  engaged  on  the  poem 
for  four  years  or  for  four  years  and  a  half,  and  was  in  a  con- 
dition to  report  his  experience  in  such  a  matter,  whatever  it 
was.  Phillips's  statement  is  certainly  curious,  and  has  provoked 
remark.  Toland  actually  ventured  to  fancy  that  Phillips  must 
have,  by  inadvertence,  reversed  Milton's  information,  and  that 
he  ought  to  have  written,  and  meant  to  write,  "  from  the  vernal 

1  Godwin's  Lives  of  the  Phillipses,  113—120 ;  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  761—761,  with 
notes  by  Bliss. 


MILTON  S    LITERARY   HABITS.  465 

equinoctial  to  the  autumnal."  Toland's  chief  reason  is  that 
Milton's  veteran  experience,  if  correctly  reported  by  Phillips, 
was  in  direct  contradiction  of  his  juvenile  experience,  as  re- 
ported poetically  by  himself  in  his  elegy  of  1629,  In  Adventum 
Veris.  Had  he  not  there  celebrated,  as  one  of  the  joyful 
phenomena  of  the  returning  spring  and  summer,  the  renewed 
glow  and  vigour  at  that  season  of  his  own  poetical  genius 
(ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  185)?  But,  even  if  those  lines  should  be 
taken  as  a  literal  record  of  Milton's  experience  at  the  time, 
thirty-three  years  may  have  made  the  precise  difference  which 
Phillips  is  so  careful  to  report.  As  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
suppose,  with  Toland,  that  Phillips  could  have  made  the 
blunder  of  reversing  the  statement  made  to  him,  we  must 
conclude  that,  in  a  general  way,  the  winter  half  of  the  year 
was  the  time  when  Milton  advanced  most  rapidly  with  the 
meditation  and  dictation  of  his  great  poem  \ 

"  How  had  that  man,  Milton,"  asks  Richardson,  "  the 
"  courage  to  undertake,  and  the  resolution  to  persist  in,  such 
"  a  work,  with  the  load  of  such  difficulties  upon  his  shoulders, 
"  — ill  health,  blindness,  &c.  ?  "  The  question  is  worth  enter- 
taining a  little  more  particularly  at  this  point. — In  the  first 
place,  there  can  have  been  no  great  difficulty  in  the  mere 
matter  of  the  dictation.  Phillips's  information  on  this  sub- 
ject, supplemented  by  such  more  minute  reminiscences  as 
Richardson  could  afterwards  gather,  is  tolerably  sufficient. 
Milton,  when  he  was  in  the  vein,  says  Phillips,  would  dictate 
ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  lines  at  a  time  to  any  one  that  was 
near  and  could  write,  so  that,  when  Phillips  revisited  him 
after  any  interval,  he  would  find  so  much  additional  manu- 
script, in  various  hands,  waiting  for  such  correction  of  the 
spelling  and  pointing  as  only  a  scholar  could  give.  Richardson, 
from  what  he  had  been  told,  was  able  to  amplify  the  account 
somewhat.  He  had  heard  that  usually,  when  Milton  dictated, 

1  Phillips's    Life    of  Milton,    1694;  Vernal."      Aubrey   had   obtained   this 

Toland's   (edit.   1761),   pp.   118—119;  information  originally  from  Phillips  in 

Richardson's    (1731),  pp.  cxliii— cxliv  ;  or  about  1680  ;  but  the  double  booking 

Johnson's   Lives   (edit.   1851),  I.  118.  of  it,  by  Aubrej  then  and  by  Phillips  in 

Aubrey  tells  the  same  story  as  Phillips,  1694,   quite  disposes   of  Toland's  idea 

—i.e.   "All  the   time   of  writing  his  that  Phillips  meant  the  reverse  of  what 

Paradise    Lost,  his  vein   began  at  the  he  actually  wrote. 
Autumnal  Equinoctial  and  ceased  at  the 

VOL.  VI.  H  h 


466  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

11  he  sat  leaning*  backward  obliquely  in  an  easy  chair,  with 
"  his  leg  flung  over  the  elbow  of  it";  also  that  "  he  frequently 
"  composed  lying  in  bed  in  a  morning,"  but  with  great  varia- 
tions in  the  amount  composed.     Sometimes,  "  when  he  could 
"  not  sleep,  but  lay  awake  whole  nights,"  not  one  verse  could 
he  make,  however  much  he  tried;   at  other  times  the  song 
came  upon  him  "  with  a  certain  impetus  and  astro,  as  himself 
"  seemed  to  believe."      On  such    occasions,   "  at  what  hour 
"  soever,  he  rung  for  his  daughter  " — at  our  date  it  must  have 
been  his  daughter  Mary — "to  secure  what  came."     Richard- 
son, who  professes  not  to  omit  the  least  circumstance  he  had 
been  told,  adds  that  then  "  he  would  dictate  many,  perhaps 
"  forty  lines,  as  it  were  in  a  breath,  and  then  reduce  them  to 
"  half  the  number," — which  last  I  cannot  conceive  to  have 
ever  been  his  habit.     On  the  whole,  amid  such  conditions  as 
Phillips  and  Richardson  describe,  we  can  imagine  the  precious 
manuscript,  in  perhaps  more  than  one  copy,  gradually  increas- 
ing in  bulk,  and  generally  taken  out  from  day  to  day,  to  be 
again  laid  aside  for  careful  keeping.    Milton  probably  retained 
all  that  he  had    composed  in  his  memory,  and   could  have 
dictated  the  whole  of  it  afresh  if  necessary. — The  difficulties 
were  rather  in  those  miscellaneous  readings  in  all  languages 
which  were  required  for  the  purposes  of  so  learned  a  poem, 
and  for  the  other  works  Milton  had  in  hand.     To  find  an 
amanuensis  for  thirty  or  forty  lines  of  English  verse  at  a  time 
was  far  easier  than  to  find  readers  of  Latin,  Greek,  English, 
and  foreign  books  for  five  or  six  hours  every  day.     But  here 
too  Phillips's  information  is  all  that  can  be  desired.     While 
Milton  employed  his  daughters,  or  two   of  them  at  least,  as 
readers,  he  by  no  means  depended  on  them.     There  was  even 
a  competition  among  his  older  friends,  and  among  young  men 
who  could    obtain    his    acquaintance,  for   the   privilege   and 
advantage  of  being  allowed   to   read  to  him.      There   were 
perhaps  half-a-dozen   different  young  men   taking   turns   in 
the  house  in  Jewin  Street,  through  1662,  as  Milton's  readers 
and   amanuenses    at    stated    hours ;    and  of  one   of  these  in 
particular  we  have  a  very  interesting  glimpse.      He  was  a 
young  Quaker,  named  Thomas  Ellwood. 


MILTON    AND   THE   QUAKER   ELLWOOD.  467 

Born  in  1639,  the  son  of  a  small  squire  and  justice  of  the 
peace  at  Crowell  in  Oxfordshire,  Ellwood  had  grown  up  to 
his  twentieth  year,  a  rough  countiy-lad,  fond  of  nothing-  but 
horses,  dogs,  and  field  sports,  when  a  great  change  came  over 
him.  It  happened  through  an  acquaintance  between  his 
family  and  that  of  the  Penningtons  : — Isaac  (Pennington,  the 
eldest  son  of  the  famous  Republican  and  Regicide  Judge, 
Alderman  Isaac  Pennington  of  London,  had  married  Lady 
Springett,  a  wealthy  widow,  and  had  come,  in  or  about 
1658,  with  her,  and  her  young  daughter  by  her  former 
marriage,  to  reside  at  a  place  called  the  Grange,  in  Chalfont 
St.  Peter's,  Buckinghamshire,  about  fifteen  miles  from  Crowell. 
There,  one  day  in  1659,  Ellwood's  father  paid  them  a  visit, 
taking  Ellwood  with  him.  "  Very  much  surprised  we  were," 
says  Ellwood,  "  when,  being  come  thither,  we  first  heard, 
"  then  found,  they  were  become  Quakers  :  a  people  we  had 
"  no  knowledge  of,  and  a  name  we  had  till  then  scarce  heard 
"  of."  In  fact,  Pennington,  greatly  to  the  disgust  of  his 
father  the  Alderman,  had  been  converted  to  Quakerism  by 
George  Fox  in  the  preceding  year,  and  had  become  one  of 
the  leading  men  of  the  sect.  The  elder  Ellwood,  finding  all 
grave  and  demure,  however  handsome  and  hospitable,  in  a 
family  which  he  had  hitherto  known  as  free  and  jovial,  seems 
to  have  resolved  to  have  little  more  to  do  with  them  ;  but 
with  the  younger  Ellwood  it  was  different.  The  little  step- 
daughter, Guli.  or  Gulielma  Springett,  whom  he  had  known 
from  her  infancy,  and  whom  he  found  a  very  pearl  of  pretti- 
ness  in  her  Quaker  dress,  was  probably  an  attraction  ;  but,  in 
any  case,  he  tended  more  and  more  to  Chalfont  St.  Peter's, 
and  at  length,  from  being  so  much  among  Quakers,  turned 
Quaker  himself.  For  a  while  there  was  a  battle  between  his 
father  and  him  on  the  subject,  his  father  unable  to  bear  the 
sight  of  him  at  table  with  his  hat  on,  and  tearing  one  hat 
after  another  off  his  head  till  he  had  not  a  hat  left,  and  lock- 
ing him  up,  and  refusing  to  allow  him  to  go  to  the  Penning- 
tons or  to  Quaker  meetings.  But  at  length,  the  old  man 
having  removed  himself  sulkily  to  London,  young  Quaker 
Tom,  though  with  little  or  no  money,  was  more  at  liberty. 

h  h  % 


468         LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Through  1660  and  1661  he  had  been  up  and  down  Oxford- 
shire and  Buckinghamshire,  attending*  meetings,  and  getting 
himself  arrested  and  released  again,  and  he  had  visited  Lon- 
don, where  in  1660  he  published  a  Quaker  tract.  In  all  his 
difficulties  Isaac  Pennington,  when  not  in  prison  himself,  was 
his  chief  refuge.  .That  eminent  Quaker  (not  to  be  confounded 
with  his  father  the  Alderman,  who  had  been  tried  with  the 
other  Regicides,  and  who  died  in  his  prison  in  the  Tower, 
Dec.  17,  1661),  had  been  a  prolific  writer  of  religious  tracts 
long  before  he  had  turned  Quaker,  and  when  he  was  only  a 
mystical  kind  of  Independent  or  Seeker.  He  seems  to  have 
been  a  man  of  some  culture,  and  to  have  encouraged  Ellwood 
to  mend  the  defects  of  his  early  education.  Though  Ellwood 
had  made  some  progress  in  Latin,  and  begun  Greek  at  school 
in  his  boyhood,  yet  "by  continued  disuse  of  books"  he  had 
forgotten  all  he  had  ever  learnt,  and  "  could  not  have  read, 
"far  less  have  understood,  a  sentence  in  Latin"  if  it  had  been 
put  before  him.  "  Nor  was  I  rightly  sensible  of  my  loss 
"  therein,"  he  says,  "  until  I  came  among  the  Quakers.  But 
"  then  I  both  saw  my  loss  and  lamented  it,  and  applied 
"  myself  with  utmost  diligence,  at  all  leisure  times,  to  recover 
"  it :  so  false  I  found  that  charge  to  be  which  in  those  times 
"  was  cast  as  a  reproach  upon  the  Quakers,  that  they  despised 
"  and  decried  all  human  learning  because  they  denied  it  to  be 
"  essentially  necessary  to  a  Gospel  ministry  ;  which  was  one 
"  of  the  controversies  of  those  times."  In  short,  in  the  year 
1662,  Ellwood,  then  twenty-three  years  of  age,  felt  some 
stirrings  of  ambition  and  wanted  to  be  a  scholar1. 

At  this  point  he  and  Milton  came  together  in  the  following 
manner  ; — "  Though  I  toiled  hard,  and  spared  no  pains  to 
"  regain  what  once  I  had  been  master  of,  yet  I  found  it  a 
"  matter  of  so  great  difficulty  that  I  was  ready  to  say,  as  the 
"  noble  eunuch  to  Philip  in  another  case,  '  How  can  I,  unless 
"  I  have  some  man  to  guide  me  ?  '  This  I  had  formerly 
"  complained  of  to  my  especial  friend  Isaac  Pennington,  but 
"  now  more  earnestly  ;  which  put  him  upon  considering  and 

1  Ellwood's  Life  by  himself  (edit,  of  1714),  pp.  33—153. 


MILTON    AND   THE    QUAKER   ELI/WOOD.  469 

"  contriving  a  means  for  my  assistance.     He  had  an  intimate 
"  acquaintance  with  Dr.  Paget,  a  physician  of  note  in  London  ; 
"  and  he   with  John  Milton,  a  gentleman  of  great  note  for 
"  learning  throughout    the   learned   world,  for   the    accurate 
"  pieces  he  had  written    on  various    subjects  and  occasions. 
"  This  person,  having  rilled  a  public  station  in  the  former 
"  times,  lived  now  a  private  and  retired  life  in  London,  and, 
"  having  wholly  lost  his  sight,  kept  always  a  man  to  read  to 
"  him ;    which    usually  was    the    son    of  some  gentleman  of 
i(  his  acquaintance,  whom,  in  kindness,  he  took  to  improve  in 
"  his  learning.     Thus,  by  the  mediation  of  my  friend  Isaac 
"  Pennington  with  Dr.  Paget,  and  of  Dr.  Paget  with  John 
"  Milton,  was  I  admitted  to  come  to  him  :  not  as  a  servant  to 
"  him  (which  at  that  time  he  needed  not),  nor  to  be  in  the 
"  house  with  him,  but  only  to  have  the  liberty  of  coming  to 
"  his  house  at  certain  hours  when  I  would,  and  to  read  to  him 
"  what  books  he  should  appoint  me  ;  which  was  all  the  favour 
"  I  desired."      It  bad  taken  some  time  to  bring  about  this 
arrangement ;    and,   after  it  was  settled,   Ellwood,  who   was 
then   living   like  a  hermit-crab  in  his  father's  empty  house 
at  Crowell,  had  to  sell  off  some  of  the  stock  there  before  he 
could  come  to  London.     At  length  he  hastened  thither,  call- 
ing upon  the  Penningtons  at  Chalfont  St.  Peter's  by  the  way, 
and  immediately  went  to  wait  on  Milton.     "  He  received  me 
"  courteously,  as  well  for  the  sake  of  Dr.  Paget,  who  intro- 
"  duced  me,  as  of  Isaac  Pennington,  who  recommended  me  ;  to 
"  both  of  whom  he  bore  a  good  respect.    And,  having  inquired 
"  divers  things  of  me  with  respect  to  my  former  progression  in 
"  learning,  he  dismissed  me,  to  provide  myself  of  such  accom- 
"  modations  as  might  be  most  suitable  to  my  future  studies. 
"  I  wTent,  therefore,  and  took  myself  a  lodging  as  near  to  his 
"  house  (which  was  then  in  Jewin  Street)  as  conveniently  I 
"  could,  and  from  thenceforward  went  every  day  in  the  after- 
"  noon  (except  on  the  first  day  of  the  week),  and,  sitting  by 
"  him  in  his  dining-room,  read  to  him  in  such  books  in  the 
"  Latin  tongue  as  he  pleased  to  hear  me  read.     At  my  first 
"  sitting  to  read  to  him,  observing  that  I  used  the  English 
"  prouounciation,  he  told  me,  if  I  would  have  the  benefit  of 


470         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  the  Latin  tongue,  not  only  to  read  and  understand  Latin 
"  authors,  but  also  to  converse  with  foreigners,  I  must  learn 
"  the  foreign  pronunciation.  To  this  I  consenting,  he  in- 
"  structed  me  how  to  sound  the  vowels  so  different  from  the 
"  common  pronounciation  used  by  the  English  (who  speak 
"  Anglice  their  Latin)  that,  with  some  few  other  variations  in 
"  sounding  some  consonants  in  particular  cases, — as  c  before  e 
"  or  i  like  c/i,  so  before  i  like  sli,  —  the  Latin  thus  spoken 
"  seemed  as  different  from  that  which  was  delivered  as  the 
"  English  speak  it  as  if  it  were  another  language.  I  had 
"  before,  during  my  retired  life  at  my  father's,  by  unwearied 
"  diligence  and  industry  so  far  recovered  the  rules  of  grammar, 
"  in  which  I  had  once  been  very  ready,  that  I  could  both  read 
"a  Latin  author  and,  after  a  sort,  hammer  out  his  meaning. 
"  But  this  change  of  pronounciation  proved  a  new  difficulty  to 
"  me.  It  was  now  harder  for  me  to  read  than  it  was  before  to 
"  understand  when  read.  But  Labor  omnia  vincit  intprobus : 
"  '  Incessant  pains  the  end  obtains.'  And  so  did  I.  Which 
"  made  my  reading  the  more  acceptable  to  my  master.  He,  on 
"  the  other  hand,  perceiving  with  what  earnest  desire  I 
"  pursued  learning,  gave  me  not  only  all  the  encouragement, 
"  but  all  the  help,  he  could.  For,  having  a  curious  ear,  he 
"  understood,  by  my  tone,  when  I  understood  what  I  read 
"  and  when  I  did  not,  and  accordingly  would  stop  me,  examine 
"  me,  and  open  the  most  difficult  passages  to  me  V 

Ellwood  had  gone  on  with  Milton  in  this  way  for  six 
weeks,  sensible  of  great  improvement,  when  his  health  broke 
down.  After  about  two  months  in  London  he  had  to  return 
to  the  country  to  recruit.  When  he  had  recovered  sufficiently, 
he  came  back  to  resume  his  studies.  "  I  was  very  kindly 
"  received,"  he  says,  "  by  my  master ;  who  had  conceived  so 
"  good  an  opinion  of  me  that  my  conversation,  I  found,  was 
"acceptable  to  him,  and  he  seemed  heartily  glad  of  my 
"recovery  and  return;  and  into  our  old  method  of  study  we 
"  fell  again,  I  reading  to  him,  and  he  explaining  to  me  as 
"  occasion  required."     Very  soon,  however,  there  was  another 

i  Ellwood's  Life,  pp.  153—157. 


MILTON   AND   THE    QUAKER   ELL  WOOD.  471 

interruption,  and  this  time  not  from  ill  health.  On  the  26th 
of  October  1662,  Ellwood,  having  gone  to  the  usual  Quaker 
meeting-house  at  the  Bull  and  Mouth  in  Aldersgate  Street, 
not  far  from  Milton's  house,  was  arrested,  with  thirty-one 
others.  They  were  marched  off  by  the  soldiers  to  Bridewell 
in  Fleet  Street ;  and  partly  in  that  prison,  partly  in  Newgate, 
to  which  they  were  transferred  for  a  while,  they  were  kept  for 
about  three  months. — Ellwood's  account  of  his  musings  and 
occupations  in  the  two  prisons,  and  of  the  horrors  and  abomina- 
tions of  both,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  parts  of  his  book. 
The  common  side  of  Newgate  he  describes  as  "  a  type  of  hell 
upon  earth  ;"  and  he  dwells  particularly  on  one  of  the  many 
ghastly  and  disgusting  sights  he  saw  there.  "  When  we  came 
"  first  into  Newgate,"  he  says,  "  there  lay,  in  a  little  by-place, 
"  like  a  closet,  near  the  room  where  we  were  lodged,  the 
"  quartered  bodies  of  three  men,  who  had  been  executed  some 
"  days  before  for  a  real  or  pretended  plot ;  which  was  the 
"  ground,  or  at  least  pretext,  for  that  storm  in  the  city  which 
"had  caused  this  imprisonment."  The  bodies,  in  fact,  were 
those  of  George  Phillips,  yeoman,  Thomas  Tongue,  distiller, 
and  Nathaniel  Gibbs,  felt-maker,  three  of  six  citizens  of 
London  who  had  been  condemned  at  the  Old  Bailey  for 
treasonable  conspiracy,  and  four  of  whom  were  hanged  and 
quartered  at  Tyburn  on  the  22nd  of  December  1662.  At 
length,  as  Ellwood  tells  us,  the  bloody  quarters  were  removed 
from  the  closet,  the  friends  of  the  dead  men  having  obtained 
leave  to  bury  them  ;  but  the  heads  were  kept,  to  be  set  up  in 
some  parts  of  the  city.  "  I  saw  the  heads,"  says  Ellwood, 
"  when  they  were  brought  up  to  be  boiled.  The  hangman 
"  fetched  them  in  a  dirty  dust-basket  out  of  some  by-place ; 
"  and,  setting  them  down  among  the  felons,  he  and  they  made 
"  sport  with  them.  They  took  them  by  the  hair,  flouting, 
"jeering,  and  laughing  at  them;  and  then,  giving  them  some 
"  ill  names,  boxed  them  on  the  ears  and  cheeks.  Which  done, 
"  the  hangman  put  them  into  his  kettle,  and  parboiled  them 
"  with  bay-salt  and  cummin-seed :  that  to  keep  them  from 
"  putrefaction,  and  this  to  keep  off  the  fowls  from  seizing  on 
"  them.     The  whole  sight,  as  well  that  of  the  bloody  quarters 


472  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS    TIME. 

"  first  as  this  of  the  heads  afterwards,  was  both  frightful  and 
"  loathsome,  and  begat  an  abhorrence  in  my  nature." — With 
such  horrors  fresh  in  his  memory,  and  also  with  a  considerable 
quantity  of  rough  religious  verse  which  he  had  managed  to 
compose  in  his  two  prisons,  the  young  Quaker  was  again  at 
large  in  January  1662-3.  He  called  on  Milton  at  once; 
Milton  was  glad  to  have  him  back ;  and  it  was  agreed  that, 
after  Ellwood  had  paid  a  short  visit  to  Buckinghamshire,  to 
see  the  Penningtons  and  other  friends  there,  the  Latin  read- 
ings and  lessons  should  be  resumed.  And  so,  away  from 
Milton's  door  went  Ellwood,  to  enjoy,  as  he  tells  us,  the  long 
walk  in  the  clear,  frosty  weather,  and  along  clean  and  good 
roads,  that  brought  him  to  Chalfont  St.  Peter's. 

His  reception  there  by  the  Penningtons  was  most  hearty  ; 
but  he  had  only  been  with  them  for  a  day  or  two  when  a 
proposal  was  made  to  him  which  completely  changed  his 
plans.  The  Quaker  household  at  the  Grange  then  included 
not  only  Isaac  Pennington  himself,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Pen- 
nington, and  her  daughter  Guli.  Springett,  but  also  three 
much  younger  Pennington  children,  two  of  them  boys.  Both 
father  and  mother  were  anxious  to  have  their  children  well 
taught  at  home ;  and,  as  no  substitute  had  yet  been  found  for 
an  excellent  young  Quaker  tutor,  called  Bradley,  who  had 
grounded  the  children  admirably  in  English,  but  had  just  left 
the  Grange  to  teach  in  a  school  for  Quakers'  children  in 
London,  Ellwood's  appearance  had  been  most  opportune. 
Isaac  Pennington  and  his  wife  had  thought  they  might  do 
worse  than  engage  one  who  was  thoroughly  known  to  them 
and  had  suffered  for  his  Quakerism,  and  who,  though  not  by 
any  means  a  finished  scholar,  had  recently  been  trying  to 
make  up  for  lost  time.  "  Wherefore,"  says  Ellwood,  "  one 
"  evening,  as  we  sat  together  by  the  fire  in  his  bed-chamber 
"  (which,  for  want  of  health,  he  kept),  he  asked  me,  his  wife 
"  being  by,  if  I  would  be  so  kind  to  him  as  to  stay  a  while 
"  with  him,  till  he  could  hear  of  such  a  man  as  he  aimed  at, 
"  and  in  the  mean  time  enter  his  children  in  the  rudiments 
"  of  the  Latin  tongue."  As  Ellwood  was  full  of  the  idea  of 
returning  to  his  lodging  in  London,  and  following  his  inter- 


milton's  third  marriage.  473 

rupted  studies  with  Milton,  he  hesitated  over  this  proposal  of 
the  Penningtons.  His  sense  of  gratitude  to  them,  however, 
and  perhaps  the  thought  of  Guli.  Springett,  prevailed  over 
other  considerations ;  and  he  did  remain.  His  tutorship, 
instead  of  being  merely  temporary,  as  at  first  intended,  was 
to  last  for  seven  years.  Chiefly  at  the  Grange  in  Chalfont 
St.  Peter's,  but  sometimes  elsewhere,  as  persecution  of  the 
Quakers  compelled  change,  Ellwood,  though  gradually  per- 
ceiving that  Guli.  Springett  could  never  be  his,  and  therefore 
making  up  his  mind  to  marry  some  one  else,  was  to  continue 
with  the  Penningtons.  He  did  not  forget  Milton,  however, 
and  was  never  in  London  without  calling  upon  him l. 

Whether  Ellwood  had  been  informed  of  the  fact  or  not  when 
he  went  into  Buckinghamshire,  a  change  of  economy  was  then 
in  contemplation  in  Milton's  house  in  Jewin  Street.  Milton 
was  on  the  point  of  being  married  again.  Things  had  been 
going  from  bad  to  worse  under  the  mismanagement  of  his 
three  daughters  and  the  maid-servant  or  maid-servants ;  there 
had  been  confidential  conversations  between  Milton  and  some 
of  his  friends,  and  especially  between  him  and  Dr.  Paget ; 
and  Milton  had  consented  to  a  third  marriage,  as  the  best 
thing  possible  for  a  person  in  his  circumstances,  if  a  suitable 
wife  could  tie  found.  Here  Dr.  Paget  was  able  to  be  helpful. 
He  had  a  relative  of  his  own  then  in  London,  suitable  in 
every  way,  and  who  would  not  object,  or  might  be  persuaded 
not  to  object,  to  being  the  wife  of  a  blind  man  of  fifty-four 
years  of  age,  that  man  being  Milton.  She  was  a  certain 
Elizabeth  Minshull,  a  very  young  woman,  and  never  before 
married. 

The  following  are  the  ascertained  particulars  respecting 
her  family : — In  January  1616-17,  less  than  a  year  after 
Shakespeare's  death  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  there  had  died  in 
Nantwich  in  Cheshire  a  mercer  named  Nicholas  Gouldsmith, 
leaving,  by  his  wife  Dorothy,  who  had  predeceased  him,  one 
son  and  three  daughters.     Two  of  the  daughters  were  then 

i  Elhvood's  Life,  pp.  157—229  ;  Howell's  State  Trials,  VI.  226—274. 


474  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

already  married.  One,  named  Margery  Gouldsmith,  born  in 
1579,  had  married,  in  April  1613,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Paget, 
a  minister  in  Cheshire ;  the  other,  named  Ellen  Gouldsmith, 
had  been  the  wife  since  August  1599  of  Richard  Minshull, 
yeoman,  of  Wells  Green,  Wistaston,  in  the  same  county,  close 
to  Nantwich.  To  this  Ellen  Gouldsmith  and.  her  husband 
Richard  Minshull,  connected  only  very  distantly  with  the  chief 
Cheshire  Minshulls,  called  the  Minshulls  of  Stoke,  there  had 
been  born  four  children,  three  of  whom  were  alive  at  their 
grandfather  Gouldsmith's  death, — viz.  Mabel  Minshull,  bap- 
tised at  Wistaston  Jan.  13,  1601,  Randal  Minshull,  baptised 
there  May  31,  1605,  and  Thomas  Minshull,  baptised  there 
May  18,  1613.  The  two  elder  of  these  are  mentioned,  in  their 
grandfather's  will,  one  to  receive  a  ring  with  a  posy,  the  other  a 
piece  of  gold.  It  is  possible  that  children  of  the  other  or  Paget 
marriage,  though  not  mentioned  in  the  will,  were  then  also  in 
existence.  At  all  events,  at  our  present  date  of  1662-3, — the 
said  Richard  Minshull  of  Wistaston  having  died  in  1657,  and 
the  said  Rev.  Thomas  Paget  having  died  in  June  1660,  rector 
of  Stockport  in  Cheshire, — there  were  alive  various  Minshulls 
and  Pagets,  their  children,  more  or  less  advanced  in  years, 
distributed  through  various  parts  of  England,  but  remember- 
ing their  Cheshire  origin  and  their  Gouldsmith  cousinship 
through  their  mothers.  There  was  a  second  Rev.  Thomas 
Paget ;  there  were  several  Paget  sisters,  all  or  most  of  whom 
had  changed  their  names  by  marriage;  and  there  was  our 
Dr.  Nathan  Paget,  the  London  physician  and  friend  of  Milton. 
Probably  because  he  was  a  bachelor,  Dr.  Paget  had  kept  up 
a  close  correspondence  not  only  with  his  brothers  and  sisters, 
but  also  with  his  cousins,  the  Minshulls  and  Gouldsmiths. 
Of  the  two  Minshull  brothers,  his  cousins,  the  younger, 
Thomas  Minshull,  had  settled  as  an  apothecary  in  Manchester, 
while  the  elder,  Randal  Minshull,  had  remained  in  his  native 
Wistaston.  It  is  with  this  Randal  Minshull  that  we  are 
more  particularly  concerned.  He  had  married,  about  thirty 
years  ago,  a  wife  of  the  name  of  Boote,  by  whom  he  had  had 
a  numerous  family,  one  of  them  a  daughter,  named  Elizabeth, 
whose  baptism  at  Wistaston  is  entered  in  the  registers  of  that 


milton's  third  marriage.  475 

parish  under  date  Dec.  30,  1638.  This  was  the  Elizabeth 
Minshull  who  was  to  be  Milton's  third  wife.  Her  father,  who 
had  inherited  the  little  property  at  Wistaston  at  his  father's 
death  in  1657,  and  had  been  known  since  then  as  Randal 
Minshull  of  Wistaston,  had  probably  some  difficulty  in  pro- 
viding- for  all  his  children ;  and  it  may  have  been  by  some 
arrangement  for  his  convenience  made  by  Dr.  Paget  that  his 
daughter  Elizabeth,  born  and  bred  in  Cheshire,  w7as  on  a  visit 
to  London  in  1662-3.  She  was  then,  if  we  may  decide  by 
her  baptism-register,  exactly  twenty-four  years  of  age  l. 

The  following'  is  a  verbatim  copy  of  Milton's  marriage 
allegation,  or  declaration  of  his  intended  third  marriage, 
dated  Feb.  11,  1662-3  :— 

"Wch.  day  psonally  appeared  John  Milton,  of  ye  parish  of 
St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  London,  gent.,  aged  about  50  yeares,  and 
a  widower,  and  alledged  that  he  intendeth  to  marry  with  Elizabeth 
Minshull,  of  ye  parish  of  St.  Andrew,  Holborne,  in  ye  county  of 
Midd,  mayden,  aged  about  25  years,  and  att  her  own  dis- 
posing, and  that  he  knoweth  of  noe  lawfull  lett  or  impeding,  by 
reason  of  any  prcontract,  consanguinity,  affinity,  or  otherwise,  to 
hinder  the  sd  intended  marriage  ;  and  of  the  truth  hereof  he  offered 
to  make  oath ;  and  prayed  Licence  to  be  marryed  in  ye  church  of 
St.  George,  in  ye  Burrough  of  Southwark,  or  St.  Mary  Aldermary, 
in  London. 

(Signed) 


^C 


1   The    facts    in  this   paragraph   are       (1850) ;  more  largely  from  Mr.  John  Fit- 
partly    from    Hunter's    Milton    Notes       chett's  Marsh's  Milton  Papers,  printed 


476  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

When  this  intention  of  marriage  became  known  in  Jewin 
Street,  it  naturally  caused  some  consternation  among  the 
daughters.  The  maid-servant,  or  one  of  the  maid-servants 
then  in  the  house,  told  the  second  daughter,  Mary,  that  she 
heard  her  father  was  to  be  married  ;  "  to  which  the  said  Mary 
"  replied  to  the  said  maid-servant  that  that  was  no  news,  to 
"  hear  of  his  wedding,  but,  if  she  could  hear  of  his  death,  that 
"  was  something."  The  marriage,  nevertheless,  took  place. 
Although,  by  the  licence,  it  was  to  be  either  in  St.  George's, 
Southwark,  or  in  St.  Mary  Aldermary,  the  latter  church  was 
chosen.  Very  possibly  this  may  have  been  because  the 
rector  of  that  church  was  then  Dr.  Robert  Gell,  who  had  been 
one  of  the  fellows  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  during 
Milton's  residence  there,  and  who,  after  having  held  this 
living  through  the  Protectorate,  with  the  reputation  of  being 
a  preacher  of  peculiar  mystical  lights,  had  continued  in  it 
since  the  Restoration.  At  all  events,  the  marriage-entry 
stands  thus,  under  date  Feb.  24,  1662-3,  in  the  registers  of 
St.  Mary  Aldermary  : — "John  Milton,  of  the  parish  of  St.  Gyles, 
"  Crippettgate,  and  Elizabeth  Minshull,  of  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew, 
"  Holborne,  married  by  licence  the  24//$  of  February,  1662."  It 
was  no  marriage  of  romance  ;  but  it  gave  Milton  an  excellent 
wife,  who  was  to  do  her  duty  by  him  most  conscientiously 
during  all  the  rest  of  his  life.  Aubrey,  who  knew  her  after- 
wards, describes  her  as  "a  gent,  person,  a  peaceful  and 
agreeable  humour."  There  is  a  tradition  that  her  hair  was 
of  a  fair  gold  colour,  a  fact  in  which  Milton's  daughters 
may  have  been  more  interested  than  Milton  himself.     One 

for  the  Chetham  Society  (1851) ;   but  wife  was  of  the  knightly  family  of  the 

with  still  more  recent  and  exact  infor-  Minshalls  of  Stoke,  Co.  Chester.   Todd, 

mation  from  an  elaborate  pedigree  by  on  the  authority  of  Ormerod,  the  his- 

Miss  Thomasin  E.  Sharpe,  printed  in  the  torian  of  Cheshire,  expressly  calls  her  a 

Genealogist  for  April  1,  1878,  under  the  daughter  of  Sir  Edward  Minshull.    The 

title  Milton,  Minshull, and  Gouldsmyth,"  story,  intrinsically  improbable  from  the 

and  most  obligingly  communicated  by  first, was  exploded  by  Mr.  Marsh's  careful 

her  to  me,  with  MS.  additions  derived  researches,  and  the  Wistaston  yeoman, 

from  farther  researches  among  Cheshire  Randal  Minshull,  only  a  far-off  scion  of 

wills  and  registers. — There   had  been  the   Stoke  family,  substituted   for  the 

a  great  deal  of  investigation  of  the  Min-  knight.     The    Gouldsmith    and   Paget 

shull  pedigree  on  wrong  tracks  before  connexion   of  the  Minshulls   has  been 

Mr.  Hunter  suggested,  and  Mr.  Marsh  farther  ascertained  and  cleared  up  by 

determined,  the  right  one.     The  story  Mr.    Hughes,   F.S.A.,   of   The    Groves, 

had  come  down,  and  had  been  repeated  Chester,  and  by  Miss  Sharpe. 
by  Todd  and  others,  that  Milton's  third 


TRIALS    OF   JOHN   TWYN    AND    OTHERS. 


47; 


of  her  difficulties  with  them  was  her  youth.  Herself  only 
twenty-four  years  of  age,  she  had  become  step-mother  to 
three  girls,  the  eldest  of  whom  was  little  more  than  seven 
years  her  junior.  She  was  better  educated  in  some  respects 
than  any  of  her  step-daughters,  and  could  write  well.  She 
could  also  sing,  though  Milton,  when  they  became  better 
acquainted,  would  tell  her  playfully  she  had  a  good  voice 
but  - 


no  ear 


V 


For  a  whole  year  after  Milton's  third  marriage  I  can  find 
not  a  single  particular  of  his  life  in  addition  to  those  already 
collected  in  this  chapter.  The  big  world  rolled  on,  the  world 
of  Pepys's  Diary,  Charles  and  his  courtiers  revelling  ever  more 
wildly,  and  laughing  now  over  the  first  part  of  Butler's 
Hudibras,  and  Clarendon  still  in  the  premiership,  and  the 
second  session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament  persevering  in  the 
persecuting  policy  of  the  first  against  Nonconformists,  quash- 
ing rigorously  the  King's  own  efforts  for  some  measure  of 
toleration,  and  beginning  even  to  retaliate  by  denouncing  the 
growth  of  Catholicism  round  him,  and  the  theatres  in  full 
activity,  with  new  pieces  every  week,  and  honest  Pepys  him- 
self zig-zagging  through  the  uproar  daily,  and  making  his 
notes.  Milton's  marriage  with  Elizabeth  Minshull  had  hap- 
pened when  the  second  session  of  the  Parliament  had  just- 
begun  ;  and  at  the  end  of  that  session  in  July  1663  he  had 
been  married  five  months.  Seven  months  more  passed  before 
the  first  incident  that  I  can  note  in  the  public  world  around 
him  of  a  kind  likely  to  have  roused  him  strongly  from  its 
bearing  on  himself.     This  was  the  trial,  in  February  1663-4, 


1  The  marriage  allegation  was  dis- 
covered in  the  Faculty  Office  by  Colonel 
Chester  some  years  ago  ;  ami  I  owe  the 
copy  of  it,  ami  also  the  tracingof  Milton's 
signature,  to  his  unfailing  kindness.  Of 
the  signature  Colonel  Chester  says, "  He 
"  evidently  had  a  bad  and  scratchy  pen, 
"and  no  perception  whatever  of  the 
"  horizontal ;  but  it  is  an  extremely 
"interesting  autograph  for  all  that." 
Most  readers  will  agree  with  this 
opinion.  It  is  not  only  in  itself  a  most 
pathetic  record  of  Milton's  blindness ; 


but  it  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  only 
authentic  specimen  of  his  signature  or 
handwriting  of  later  date  than  1652.— 
The  exact  copy  of  the  marriage  entry  I 
owe  also  to  Colonel  Chester.  Authorities 
for  other  particulars  in  the  paragraph 
are  Aubrey's  Memoir  of  Milton,  fac- 
similes of  Milton's  third  wile's  signature 
given  in  Mr.Marsh's  Milton  Papers  and 
elsewhere,  and  a  note  to  Paradise  Lost, 
IV.  305,  in  Newton's  edition  of  Mil- 
ton. For  Cell  see  ante,  Vol.  I.  pp. 
100—101. 


478  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  John  Twyn,  printer,  for  high  treason,  and  of  Thomas  Brew- 
ster, bookseller,  Simon  Dover,  printer,  and  Nathan  Brooks, 
book-binder,  for  seditious  misdemeanour. 

Twyn,  a  printer  in  a  small  way  of  business  in  Cloth  Fair, 
near  Smithfield,  had  been  employed,  by  some  person  or  persons 
unknown,  in  the  preceding"  October,  to  print  privately  a  book 
or  pamphlet  entitled  A  Treatise  of  the  Execution  of  Justice ; 
wherein  is  clearly  proved  that  the  Execution  of  Judgment  and 
Justice  is  as  well  the  People's  as  the  Magistrate's  duty,  and,  if 
the  Magistrates  prevent  Judgment,  the  People  are  hound  by  the 
Latv  of  God  to  execute  Judgment  without  them  and  upon  them. 
Some  sheets  of  the  book  had  been  set  up  by  Twyn  himself 
and  one  or  two  of  his  men,  working  with  much  secrecy  in  the 
night  time,  when  the  premises  were  broken  into,  about  four 
o'clock  one  morning,  by  a  posse  of  constables,  led  by  Mr. 
Roger  L'Estrange,  then  fresh  in  his  congenial  office  of  censor 
of  the  press  and  inquisitor-general  of  the  London  printing- 
offices.  A  sheet  or  two  were  seized,  Twyn  excusing  himself 
by  saying  that  he  had  thought  the  manuscript  "  mettlesome 
stuff,"  and  the  author  "a  good,  smart,  angry  fellow/'  but  that 
he  had  intended  no  harm  himself,  and  had  thought  all  in  the 
fair  way  of  trade.  He  had  been  in  prison  since  then  ;  and 
now  the  government,  regarding  or  professing  to  regard  the 
book  as  part  and  parcel  of  a  great  Republican  conspiracy,  for 
complicity  with  which  many  had  already  suffered,  had  resolved 
that  this  wretched  printer  would  be  a  very  fit  additional 
victim.  Tried  at  the  Old  Bailey,  Feb.  20,  1663-4,  before 
Lord  Chief  Justice  Hyde,  and  Judges  Ketyng  and  Wylde,  he 
was  found  guilty  of  "  compassing  and  imagining  the  King's 
death  "  in  his  printing-office  by  the  act  of  putting  the  said 
book  into  type,  and  was  sentenced  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and 
quartered.  After  the  sentence  the  poor  man  begged  Chief 
Justice  Hyde  to  intercede  for  him.  "  I  would  not  intercede 
for  my  own  father  in  this  case,  if  he  were  alive,"  was  the 
reply  ;  and  the  sentence  was  executed  to  the  letter. — The 
offence  of  Brewster,  Dover,  and  Brooks,  who  were  tried  at  the 
same  time,  was  the  minor  one  of  having  printed,  bound, 
and  published  copies   of  the   dying  speeches  and  prayers  of 


TRIALS    OP    JOHN  TWYN    AND    OTHERS.  479 

Harrison,  Cook,  Hugh  Peters,  and  the  other  regicides  executed 
in  1660,  and  also  copies  of  a  Look  called  The  Phoenix,  or 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant.  It  was  pleaded  for  them  and 
by  them  that  the  books,  or  at  least  the  first  of  them,  had  been 
in  print  long,  and  had  been  as  openly  sold  in  shops  as  any 
diurnal,  and  that  they  had  only  gone  on  supplying  a  current 
demand.  As  such  books  were  now  to  be  put  down  if  possible, 
the  sentence  was  that  Brewster  should  pay  a  fine  of  100 
marks  to  the  King,  and  Dover  and  Brooks  fines  of  40  marks 
each,  and  that  all  three  should  stand  twice  in  the  pillory,  and 
should  afterwards  be  imprisoned  during  his  Majesty's  pleasure, 
finding  heavy  securities  against  future  dealing  in  such  books 
when  they  should  be  released  \ 

In  a  notice  of  these  trials  in  the  British  Chronologist,  printed 
in  1775,  I  find  this  strange  statement:  "  One  of  the  libels 
"  was  written  by  Milton  to  justify  the  murder  of  King 
"  Charles,  and  to  maintain  the  lawfulness  of  subjects  taking 
"  up  arms  against  their  sovereign."  I  know  not  on  what 
authority  this  statement  can  have  been  made.  Milton,  content 
to  be  politically  silent  now,  was  not  likely  to  concern  himself 
in  any  wild  Republican  conspiracy  such  as  was  then  talked 
of,  to  be  headed  by  Ludlow,  brought  back  from  Switzerland 
for  the  purpose,  or  by  Lambert,  delivered  from  his  prison, 
or  to  employ  his  time  in  conveying  to  the  press  a  recast  of 
his  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  adapted  to  the  state  of 
affairs  under  Charles  II.  Nor  in  the  report  of  Twyn's  trial, 
including  a  general  description  of  the  book  for  which  he 
suffered,  is  there  anything  pointing  to  Milton.  The  tradition, 
however,  though  erroneous  in  its  special  form,  cannot  be 
without  foundation.  For  one  thing,  it  is  evident  from  the 
very  title  of  Twyn's  book,  A  Treatise  of  the  Execution  of 
Justice,  wherein  is  clearly  proved,  fyc,  that  it  was  nothing  else 
than  a  reproduction  by  somebody  or  other  of  the  doctrine  of 
Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,  proving,  fyc,  and 
possibly  with  phrases  borrowed  from  that  terrible  book  of 
1 649.    But,  besides,  we  actually  know  that  Roger  L'Estrange, 

i  Howell's  State  Trials,  VI.  513—564. 


480         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

the  originator  of  the  trials  of  Twyn,  Brewster,  Dover,  and 
Brooks,  and  the  chief  witness  against  them,  had  Milton's 
Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates  and  others  of  Milton's 
pamphlets  strongly  and  revengefully  in  his  recollection  just 
before  the  trials  and  in  connexion  with  them.  The  trials 
of  those  four  particular  unfortunates  were  the  result  of 
L'Estrange's  first  raid  upon  the  London  printing-offices  and 
bookshops  in  that  government  inquisitorship  of  the  press  to 
which  he  had  been  appointed  in  August  1663,  in  consequence 
of  his  demonstration  of  fitness  for  the  post  by  his  Considera- 
tions and  Proposals  in  order  to  the  Regulation  of  the  Tress,  pub- 
lished on  the  3rd  of  the  preceding  June  (ante,  pp.  326-328). 
Now,  in  that  pamphlet  of  qualification  for  his  office,  dedicated 
to  his  Majesty  himself,  L'Estrange  had  expressly  named 
certain  printers  and  booksellers  as  still  dealing  in  reprints  or 
remaining  copies  of  publications  of  the  old  Republican  and 
regicide  kind,  exhibiting  "  a  combination  and  design  against 
your  sacred  life  and  dignity,"  and  had  also  given  the  titles  of 
some  of  the  dangerous  publications  so  reprinted  or  still  on 
sale.  He  mentions  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates  con- 
spicuously, though  without  the.  author's  name  ;  and  he  names 
Brewster  and  Simon  Dover  as  among  the  worst  of  the  offend- 
ing book-tradesmen,  coupling  with  them  some  others,  one  of 
whom  is  Livewell  Chapman,  the  publisher  of  Milton's  most 
famous  pre-Restoration  pamphlets,  his  Means  to  remove  Hire- 
lings and  his  Ready  and  Easy  Way  to  establish  a  free  Common- 
wealth. Very  probably,  therefore,  Milton's  name  may  have 
been  bandied  to  and  fro  in  court  during  the  trials  of 
Twyn,  Brewster,  Dover,  and  Brooks,  or  in  the  examinations 
of  L'Estrange  and  others  preliminary  to  the  trials,  and 
L'Estrange  may  have  been  disappointed  in  not  being  able  to 
bring  his  old  enemy  to  the  bar  for  a  worse  punishment  than 
he  had  been  able  to  inflict  upon  him  in  his  No  Blinde  Guides 
of  April  1660  (ante,  Vol.  V.  pp.  689-691).— Milton,  at  all 
events,  cannot  have  heard  without  strange  feelings  of  the 
public  hanging,  drawing,  and  quartering  of  a  poor  printer 
for  not  a  tithe  of  the  high  treason  of  "compassing  and 
imagining  the  King's  death  "  which  he  had  himself  perpe- 


REMOVAL   TO   BUNHILL.  481 

trated  in  bygone  days,  and  which  might  still  be  found,  with 
his  name,  on  book-shelves,  if  not  in  book-shops  K 

It  is  not  improbable  that  at  the  time  of  this  trial  Milton 
was  no  longer  an  inhabitant  of  Jewin  Street.  Some  time 
late  in  1663,  or  perhaps  early  in  1664,  there  was  another  of 
those  changes  of  domicile  which  were  so  frequent  in  his  life, 
and  of  which  his  nephew  Phillips  has  so  carefully  informed 
us,  though  not  always  with  precise  dating.  "  There  he  lived," 
says  Phillips,  speaking  of  Jewin  Street,  "  when  he  married 
"his  third  wife,  recommended  to  him  by  his  old  friend 
"  Dr.  Paget  in  Coleman  Street ;  but  he  staid  not  long  after 
"  his  new  marriage  ere  he  removed  to  a  house  in  Artillery 
"  Walk,  leading  to  Bunhill  Fields." 

Phillips  had  about  the  same  time  made  a  change  himself. 
He  had  gone  to  reside  with  the  much-respected  Royalist, 
Church  of  England  man,  naturalist,  and  virtuoso,  Mr. 
John  Evelyn  of  Say's  Court  in  Essex,  to  be  tutor  to  that 
gentleman's  son.  Evelyn  himself  mentions  the  fact  in  his 
diary  under  date  October  24,  1663,  thus :  "  Mr.  Edward 
"  Phillips  came  to  be  my  son's  preceptor.  This  gentleman 
"  was  nephew  to  Milton,  who  wrote  against  Salmasius's  De- 
"fensio,  but  was  not  at  all  infected  with  his  principles, 
"  though  he  was  brought  up  by  him."  In  his  leisure  in 
Evelyn's  fine  house,  with  its  fine  library,  Phillips  was  already 
engaged  on  that  fourth  edition  of  Baker's  Chronicle  which 
he  was  to  give  to  the  world  not  many  months  hence,  and 
which  is  remembered  now  as  perhaps  his  chief  literary  per- 
formance. For  that  edition  he  was  to  recast  and  rewrite  the 
Continuation  he  had  inserted  in  the  previous  edition  of  1660, 
not  only  telling  the  story  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  afresh,  in 
the  style  now  required,  but  also  narrating  fully  the  events 
of  the  Restoration,  with  the  help  of  private  papers  expressly 
confided  to  him  by  Monk  himself  through  his  brother-in-law 
Sir  Thomas  Clarges,  and  brinffing'  down  the  history  to  the 
glorious  coronation  of  Charles  II.  in  May  1661.  The  work 
was,  in  fact,  partly  a  bookseller's  commission,  partly  a  com- 

1   British  Ghronologist  (1775),  1.260;  L'Estrange's  Considerations  and  Proposals 

of  June  1663. 

VOL.  VI.  I  i 


482         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

mission  from  Monk  and  Clarges  ;  and,  if  Phillips  did  find 
time  to  pay  a  parting-  visit  to  his  uncle  in  Jewin  Street 
before  the  removal  to  Bunhill,  it  is  quite  possible  that  he 
may  have  taken  some  of  Monk's  papers  in  his  pocket  and 
talked  with  Milton  about  them.  His  visits,  however,  hence- 
forward, were  to  be  necessarily  rarer.  Those  of  Andrew 
Marvell  had  ceased  altogether  for  a  time.  Marvell  had 
obtained  leave  of  absence  from  parliament  and  had  gone 
away  in  July  1663  as  secretary  to  the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  then 
sent  as  ambassador  extraordinary  for  Charles  II.  to  Russia, 
Sweden,  and  Denmark;  and  he  was  to  be  absent  for  about 
a  year  and  a  half1. 

IN  ARTILLERY  WALK,    BUNHILL  :    1664-1665. 

There  is  little  difficulty  in  identifying"  the  site  of  the  house 
to  which  Milton  removed  late  in  1663  or  early  in  1664. 
"  In  Artillery  Walk,  leading  to  Bunhill  Fields,"  is  Phillips's 
description  of  it,  varied  by  Aubrey,  who  knew  the  house 
well,  into  "  In  Bunhill,  opposite  the  Artillery  Garden  Wall/' 
Aubrey's  "  Bunhill "  and.  Phillips's  "Artillery  Walk"  are 
the  same  thing.  They  were  in  fact  alternative  names  for  the 
piece  of  roadway  which  is  now  the  southern  part  of  Bunhill 
Bow.  Let  any  one,  therefore,  find  his  way  from  Jewin  Street 
to  the  neighbouring  Chiswell  Street,  and  let  him  turn  out  of 
Chiswell  Street  on  the  left,  into  the  street  called  Bunhill 
Row,  and  he  will  have  taken  the  exact  walk  that  led  from 
Milton's  old  house  to  his  new  one.  Farther,  when  he  is  in 
Bunhill  Row,  walking  from  Chiswell  Street  towards  Old 
Street  Road,  let  him  keep  to  the  left  side  of  the  street,  and 
somewhere  on  that  left  side,  considerably  nearer  the  Chiswell 
Street  end  of  Bunhill  Row  than  the  Old  Street  Road  end, 
he  will  have  passed  the  site  of  the  new  house.  The  house 
itself  can  hardly  have  been  any  one  of  those  now  to  be  seen 
there  ;  for,  though  some  of  them  are  oldish,  none  seems  old 
enough  to  have  been  Milton's.     Indeed,  the  present  appear- 

1  Phillips's  Memoir  of  Milton ;  Eve-  Grosart's  Marvell,  Memorial  Introduc- 

lyn's   Diary,   of  date  ;   Phillips's   later  tion,  p.  xlviii,  and  Marvell's  Correspond- 

editions  of  Baker's  Chronicle,  with  the  ence  in  Vol.  II.  at  pp.  96—99. 
prefatory    "Epistle    to    the   Reader"; 


ARTILLERY   WALK,   BUNHILL.  483 

ance  of  Bunhill  Row  will  not  do  much  towards  suggesting 
the  Bunhill  or  Artillery  Walk  of  Milton. 

At  present  Bunhill  Row  is  a  street  densely  built  on  both 
sides,  the  houses  on  the  eastern  side,  or  right  side  as  you 
go  from  Chiswell  Street,  concealing  from  you  the  famous 
Artillery  Ground,  or  exercising  ground  since  1622  of  the 
London  Artillery  Company.  That  interesting  piece  of  ground 
lies  behind  the  houses,  and  between  them  and  Finsbury 
Scmare.  But  in  Milton's  time,  and  long  afterwards,  there 
were  no  houses  at  all  on  that  side,  but  only  the  wall  of  the 
Artillery  Ground.  There  was  a  single  row  of  houses  on  the 
other  or  left  side,  and  it  was  this  single  row  of  houses, 
"  opposite  the  Artillery  Garden  wall,"  just  as  Aubrey  says, 
and  looking  over  the  wall  into  the  Artillery  Garden  itself, 
that  was  called  Bunhill.  It  had  received  that  name  because 
it  led.  from  Chiswell  Street  to  the  open  space  or  common 
called  Bunhill  Fields,  immediately  north  of  the  Artillery 
Ground.  Inasmuch,  however,  as  the  name  Bunhill  was  often 
used  generally  for  those  fields  themselves,  or  for  the  whole 
neighbourhood,  it  was  convenient  to  have  another  name  for 
the  bit  of  roadway  leading  to  the  fields.  Hence  it  was 
known  popularly  as  Artillery  Walk,  its  very  characteristic 
being  that  it  was  hardly  a  street,  but  rather  the  walk  into 
Bunhill  Fields  along  the  wall  of  the  Artillery  Ground. 
Through  the  Civil  Wars  that  ground  had  been  the  scene 
of  the  frequent  musters  and  evolutions  of  the  city  trained 
bands,  and  even  after  the  general  disbandment  of  the  Re- 
storation it  was  still  used  for  occasional  parades  of  the 
remnant  of  the  original  Artillery  Company,  the  oldest  of  the 
trained  bands.  These  parades  could  be  seen  from  the  windows 
of  the  houses  that  lined  the  Walk  on  the  side  opposite  the 
wall.  Although  this  cannot  have  been  Milton's  inducement 
to  become  the  tenant  of  one  of  them,  and  the  occasional 
drumming  and  fifing  in  the  Artillery  Ground  must  have  been 
a  disturbance,  there  were  advantages  in  the  situation.  While 
not  going  very  far  from  his  former  house,  and  while  still 
remaining  in  the  great  parish  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate, 
though   now  transferred  to  that  part  of  it  which  was  called 

i  i  2 


484  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  Cripplegate  Parish    without   the    Freedom,"  he  had  gone 
decidedly  nearer  the  green  suburbs.     In  the  old  maps  the 
Artillery  Ground  and  Bunhill    Fields    beyond    it   form    one 
stretch  of  space  towards  the  country  on  the  north  of  London  ; 
there  are  trees  in  the  Artillery  Ground  itself  and  all  about, 
with  a  picturesque   row   of  windmills   on  one  height ;    and, 
after  tracing-  Artillery  Walk  pleasantly  enough  into  Bunhill 
Fields,  one  sees  it  re-emerging  from  those  fields  on  the  other 
side,  as  a  country  road  leading  to  Newington.     Faithorne's 
map  of  1658  tells  us  even  more.     "  He  always  had  a  garden 
where  he  lived,"  is  one  of  Aubrey's  pieces  of  information  about 
Milton,  amply  confirmed  by  what  we  know  independently  of  all 
his  previous  houses  in  succession.     Now,  in  going  to  Artillery 
"Walk    from    Jewin    Street,    he    had   certainly   improved   his 
accommodation  in  that  particular.     In  Faithorne's  map  the 
houses   in  Artillery  Walk,   one    of  which    became  Milton's, 
are  very  distinctly  figured,   to  the  number  of  about  twelve 
in  all,  some  with  their  fronts  to  the  walk,  some  with  their 
gable-ends,  and  there  are  garden   spaces    behind    every  one 
of  them,  larger  than  any  garden  space  similarly  marked  in 
Jewin   Street.     Milton,  therefore,  was  to   be  less  dependent 
than    he    had    been    on    long    miscellaneous   walks    with   an 
attendant  for  the  two  or  three  hours  daily  in  the  open  air 
which  he  thought  necessary  for  his  health.    When  there  was  no 
one  to  bear  him  company  far  through  the  streets  or  out  in  the 
fields,  he  could  be  a  good  deal  by  himself  in  his  own  garden. 
From  this  matter  of  the  garden,  however,  one  must  not  infer 
too  finely  about  the  house  itself.     It  was  a  small  house,  rated 
afterwards,   during  Milton's  tenancy,  at  "  four  hearths  "  for 
the  hearth-tax,  while  some  of  the  neighbouring  houses  were 
rated  at  "  five  hearths  "  or  "  six  hearths."/  In -^the-r -words,  it 
contained  four  effective  rooms  with ,  fire-places,  in  addition  to 
smaller  rooms   not   so  provided./  Nor  was    the    suburb,    all 
in  all,  though  Milton  had  chosen  a  tolerably  airy  spot  in  it, 
one  where  he  could  expect  to  have  neighbours  of  fashion.     Re- 
turning from  Artillery  Walk  into   Chiswell  Street,  for  ex- 
ample, one  came  at  once  upon  Grub  Street,  going  off  from 
Chiswell  Street  on  the  opposite  or  denser  side,  of  that  street 


ARTILLERY   WALK,    BUNHILL.  485 

towards  the  City.  Grub  Street  had  not  then  sunk  quite  into 
the  Grub  Street  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  its  garrets 
and  taverns  were  supposed  to  contain  all  the  starving  hack- 
writers and  small  poets  of  London,  and  whatever  was  lowest 
in  literature  was  called  a  Grub  Street  production ;  but  some- 
thing of  this  reputation  had  already  attached  to  it.  There 
were  jests  about  Grub  Street  divinity  and  the  Puritan 
pamphleteers  of  Grub  Street.  There  is  no  Grub  Street  now. 
The  City  authorities  changed  its  name  into  ".Milton  Street" 
some  time  ago,  partly  to  get  rid  of  the  associations  with  the 
old  name,  partly  to  commemorate  the  fact  that  Milton  had 
lived  close  by.  If  it  was  thought  good  to  rechristen  any 
street  in  the  neighbourhood  by  the  name  of  "  Milton  Street," 
ought  not  the  name  to  have  been  given  to  Bunhill  Row 
itself1  ? 

Bunhill  or  Artillery  Walk  was  to  be  Milton's  London 
residence  for  all  the  ten  or  eleven  years  of  the  rest  of  his  life. 
There  are  reasons,  however,  why  we  should  take  separate  note, 
in  the  first  place,  of  that  first  portion  of  his  residence  in 
Bunhill  which  brings  us  through  the  year  1664  and  to  about 
the  middle  of  1665. 

During  that  year  and  a  half,  marked  politically  by  the 
Third  and  Fourth  Sessions  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  by  the 
passing  of  the  exasperating  Conventicles  Act  by  the  first  of 
these  (May  1664),  and  by  the  beginnings  of  that  naval  war 
with  the  Dutch  in  which  the  Duke  of  York  won  his  first 
laurels,  Milton  sat,  in  his  blindness,  in  one  of  the  rooms  of 
his  small  house  opposite  the  Artillery  Ground  wall,  or  in  the 
garden  outside,  or  was  led  about  daily  in  the  fields  and 
purlieus  of  his  obscure  suburb.  The  appurtenances  round 
him  are  the  same  as  in  Jewin  Street, — his  books,  his  papers, 
and  the  organ  and  bass-viol,  for  the  recreation  in  which  he 
deliffhts  most.     The  voices  most  about  him  are  those  of  his 

i  Besides  my  own  explorations  of  the  Watts  of  the  British  Museum,  printed 

Bunhill  neighbourhood,  and  my  consul-  in  the  Addenda   to  Mitford's  Life  of 

tations  of  Faithome's  map  of  London  Milton  in  Pickering's  edition  of  Milton's 

in  lOfjS  (reprinted  in  1878)  and  of  other  Works  (I.  el.xxiv),  and  also  information 
old  maps  and  ward-maps  in  Stow's  given  in  various  articles  of  Cunning- 
London  by  Strype  (1720),  I  have  used  a  ham's  Handbook  of  London  and  in 
very  careful  note  by  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Hunter's  Milton  Notes. 


486  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

wife  and  his  three  daughters,  little  Deborah  bow  old  enough 
to  take  her  turn  with  Mary  oftener  in  reading-  to  him.  In 
and  out  come,  one  or  other  at  a  time,  his  volunteer  readers 
and  amanuenses  from  the  neighbourhood,  the  young  men  who 
were  glad  to  serve  him  in  this  way  for  the  benefit  of  his 
conversation  and  lessons.  Marvell  is  away  in  Russia,  at 
Moscow,  or  elsewhere;  but,  with  that  exception,  there  are 
also  continued  visits  from  'old  acquaintances,  who  know  at 
what  hours  he  is  to  be  seen.  Steadily,  by  perseverance  in 
a  regular  distribution  of  his  time,  the  works  he  has  in  hand 
advance,  and  in  the  midst  of  these  Paradise  Lost.  Begun  in 
Petty  France,  continued  in  Jevvin  Street,  the  great  poem, 
as  we  shall  presently  have  evidence,  was  brought  to  a  con- 
clusion in  the  first  year  and  a  half  spent  in  what  is  now 
Bunhill  Row. 

In  Jewin  Street,  before  the  end  of  1662,  as  we  have  seen 
reason  to  believe,  Milton  had  advanced  with  his  dictation  as  far 
at  least  as  to  Book  VII,  where  there  begin  the  great  discourses 
between  the  Archangel  Raphael  and  Adam  on  the  creation  of 
the  visible  universe  of  mankind.  Let  us  suppose  that  these 
discourses,  occupying  now  Books  VII  and  VIII  of  the  poem, 
but  originally  forming  one  long  Book,  were  also  completed  in 
Jewin  Street.  Then  the  autobiographical  passage  at  the 
opening  of  what  is  now  Book  IX  may  mark  where  Milton 
resumed  the  poem  in  Artillery  Walk.  He  is  now  to  bring 
Satan  back  from  his  wild  wingings  round  and  round  the 
earth,  and  to  tell  the  story  of  his  actual  temptation  of  the 
human  pair  in  Paradise,  and  of  its  sad  success  and  conse- 
quences. An  interruption  in  his  own  name  is  therefore  again 
appropriate  : — 

No  more  of  talk  where  God  or  Angel  Guest 
"With  Man,  as  with  his  friend  familiar,  used 
To  sit  indulgent,  and  with  him  partake 
Rural  repast,  permitting  him  the  while 
Venial  discourse  unblamed.     I  now  must  change 
These  notes  to  tragic, — foul  distrust,  and  breach 
Disloyal,  on  the  part  of  man,  revolt 
And  disobedience;  on  the  part  of  Heaven, 


PROGRESS   OF   PABADISE  LOST.  487 

Now  alienated,  distance  and  distaste, 

Anger  and  just  rebuke,  and  judgment  given, 

That  brought  into  this  World  a  world  of  woe, 

Sin  and  her  shadow  Death,  and  Misery, 

Death's  harbinger.     Sad  task  !   yet  argument 

Not  less  but  more  heroic  than  the  wrath 

Of  stern  Achilles  on  his  foe  pursued 

Thrice  fugitive  about  Troy  wall;   or  rage 

Of  Turnus  for  Lavinia  disespoused ; 

Or  Neptune's  ire,  or  Juno's,  that  so  long 

Perplexed  the  Greek,  and  Cytherea's  son  : 

If  answerable  style  I  can  obtain 

Of  my  celestial  Patroness,  who  deigns 

Her  nightly  visitation  unimplored, 

And  dictates  to  me  slumbering,  or  inspires 

Easy  my  unpremeditated  verse, 

Since  first  this  subject  for  heroic  song 

Pleased  me,  long  choosing  and  beginning  late, 

Not  sedulous  by  nature  to  indite 

Wars,  hitherto  the  only  argument 

Heroic  deemed,  chief  mastery  to  dissect 

With  long  and  tedious  havoc  fabled  knights 

In  battles  feigned  (the  better  fortitude 

Of  patience  and  heroic  martyrdom 

Unsung),  or  to  describe  races  and  games, 

Or  tilting  furniture,  emblazoned  shields, 

Impreses  quaint,  caparisons  and  steeds, 

Bases  and  tinsel  trappings,  gorgeous  knights 

At  joust  and  tournament ;   then  marshalled  feast 

Served  up  in  hall  with  sewers  and  seneshals : 

The  skill  of  artifice  or  office  mean ; 

Not  that  which  justly  gives  heroic  name 

To  person  or  to  poem  !    Me,  of  these 

Nor  skilled  nor  studious,  higher  argument 

Remains,  sufficient  of  itself  to  raise 

That  name,  unless  an  age  too  late,  or  cold 

Climate,  or  years,  clamp  my  intended  wing 

Depressed ;   and  much  they  may  if  all  be  mine, 

Not  hers  who  brings  it  nightly  to  my  ear. 


488  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

In  this  passage  we  can  see  the  author's  feeling1  that  his 
great  task  is  approaching-  its  close.  We  can  see  thorough 
satisfaction  with  what  has  already  been  accomplished,  and  an 
anticipation  of  the  rank  to  which  the  poem  will  be  entitled 
among  the  great  poems  of  the  world.  We  can  see  that  the 
author  is  comparing  it  especially  with  the  three  great  ancient 
epics,  the  Iliad,  the  Odyssey,  and  the  Aeneid,  and  with  the 
mediaeval  romances,  and  the  modern  epics  or  romances  of 
Ariosto,  Tasso,  and  Spenser.  We  can  see  him  preferring,  or 
persuading  himself  to  prefer,  his  own  theme  to  the  subjects  of 
any  of  those  older  heroic  poems.  We  can  see  him  remember- 
ing his  "long  choosing/'  as  far  back  as  1639-1642,  when  he 
had  jotted  down  no  fewer  than  about  one  hundred  different 
subjects,  from  Scripture  History  or  from  the  History  of  the 
British  Islands,  as  fit  for  the  tragedy  or  epic  he  had  then 
in  view.  We  can  see  him  remembering  how  even  then 
Paradise  Lost  had  eclipsed  all  the  others  in  his  meditations, 
and  how  it  had  been  schemed  several  times  and  finally 
adopted.  We  can  see  him  thinking  of  all  that  had  come  in 
his  life  to  postpone  the  work,  and  at  length,  after  so  many 
strange  years  of  turmoil,  of  his  "  late  beginning  "  of  it  so 
recently  as  1658.  But  now,  after  five  or  six  years  bestowed 
upon  it,  with  some  haggard  breaks,  when  he  and  it  seemed 
alike  in  danger,  he  is  drawing  happily  to  an  end.  Why 
should  he  doubt  ?  He  lives  in  a  late  age  and  a  cold  climate, 
and  is  now  an  invalid,  past  his  prime  ;  but  the  inspiration 
he  had  prayed  for,  the  old  Hebrew  inspiration  of  Oreb  and 
Sinai,  of  Sion  and  the  brook  of  Siloa,  has  not  yet  failed. 
How  is  it  that  he  finds  his  dictation  so  easy,  that  his  verse 
flows  from  him  almost  unpremeditated,  that  in  the  dead  of 
night,  as  he  lies  sleepless  or  slumbering,  a  poor  blind  man, 
it  should  seem  as  if  there  were  gleams  of  heavenly  glory 
in  the  darkness,  and  with  the  glory  came  the  song  ? 

Absolutely  there  is  nothing  more  to  tell  of  Milton  in 
Bunhill  through  1664  and  the  first  months  of  1665  than 
what  is  here  suggested.  He  is  finishing  his  Paradise  Lost. 
Let  us  pass  on  to  June  1665.  It  was  then  certainly  finished, 
and  we  may  note  a  few  of  the  synchronisms  : — Marvell  has 


THE    PLAGUE    YEAR  :    PARADISE  LOST   FINISHED.        489 

been  back  some  months  from  his  embassy  to  Moscow  and  the 
Baltic  with  the  Earl  of  Carlisle.  Edward  Phillips  has  re- 
cently left  his  tutorship  of  Evelyn's  son  at  Say's  Court,  just 
after  having  seen  through  the  press  his  new  edition  of  Baker's 
Chronicle,  with  the  revised  and  enlarged  continuation  of  the 
same  in  his  own  name,  and  has  gone  to  reside  with  the  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  as  tutor  to  his  son,  Philip  Herbert,  after- 
wards seventh  Earl.  It  is  the  interval  between  the  Fourth 
and  Fifth  Sessions  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  and  the  Houses 
are  not  sitting.  Men's  minds  are  absorbed  in  the  war  with 
the  Dutch  ;  and  London  is  full  of  the  thunderings  of  ac- 
clamation for  the  great  victory  of  Lowestoft  of  June  3,  and 
for  the  safe  return  of  the  Duke  of  York,  Prince  Rupert,  and 
others,  from  that  battle.  Just  then,  we  say,  it  was  that 
Milton  had  finished  his  Paradise  Lost,  bringing  down  the 
story  to  its  last  point,  where  Adam  and  Eve,  expelled  from 
Paradise,  are  seen  taking  their  solitary  way,  with  slow  and 
wandering  footsteps,  hand  in  hand,  through  Eden.  The 
manuscript  had  been  brought  to  that  termination  in  the 
midst  of  the  Dutch  war,  and  perhaps  just  about  the  time 
of  the  news  of  the  battle  of  Lowestoft.  But,  besides  the 
battle  and  the  completed  book,  there  was  yet  another  novelty 
then  in  London.  The  plague,  the  red-spot  plague,  was  run- 
ning through  the  city. 

It  had  been  in  the  city  since  April,  and  in  June  the  number 
of  monthly  deaths  by  it  had  reached  590.  Then  had  begun 
that  migration  of  all  citizens  of  means  into  the  country  which 
in  the  following  month,  when  the  mortality  in  London  rose  to 
4129,becanie  general.  In  the  months  of  August  and  September, 
as  we  know,  when  the  mortality  had  reached  the  fearful  rates  of 
20,046  and  26,230,  London  was  a  ghastly  desert,  traffic  at  an 
end,  the  grass  growing  in  the  streets,  ranges  of  houses  every- 
where shut  up  as  plague-stricken,  the  dead  carts  carrying 
their  loads  of  corpses  by  day  and  by  night  to  the  plague-pits, 
and  the  remnant  of  the  inhabitants  moving  about  like  spectres, 
or  like  brutes,  in  a  world  of  coffins  and  burials.  Of  the  plague- 
pits  opened  for  the  general  reception  of  corpses  that  could  not 
be  buried  individually  the  chief  were  that  in  Tothill  Fields, 


490  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Westminster,  and  another  in  the  suburb  of  Finsbury.  As  early 
as  July  18  Pepys  had  been  alarmed  by  hearing  of  the  opening 
of  the  first ;  but  the  other  acquired  a  yet  more  horrible  cele- 
brity. "  I  have  heard,"  says  Defoe  in  his  History  of  the 
Plague,  "  that  in  a  great  pit  in  Finsbury,  in  the  parish  of  Crip- 
"  plegate,  it  lying  open  then  to  the  fields,  for  it  was  not  then 
"  walled  about,  many  who  were  infected,  and  near  their  end, 
"  and  delirious  also,  ran  wrapped  in  blankets  or  rags  and  threw 
"  themselves  in,  and  expired  there  before  any  earth  could  be 
"  thrown  upon  them."  This  "  great  pit  in  Finsbury  "  was,  in 
fact,  a  pit  in  Bunhill  Fields,  just  beyond  the  Artillery  Garden, 
so  that  in  no  neighbourhood  in  all  London  can  the  death-cart, 
the  death-bell,  and  all  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  plague,  have 
been  more  familiar  and  incessant  than  close  to  Milton's  house. 
The  half-dead  maniacs,  of  whom  Defoe  speaks,  may  have  run 
past  Milton's  door,  along  the  Artillery  Garden  wall,  to  fling 
their  already  putrid  bodies  into  the  Bunhill  Fields  pit x. 

Fortunately  Milton  and  his  family  had  left  the  spot  in  time. 
About  the  end  of  June,  as  far  as  we  can  determine  the  date, 
he  had  made  arrangements  for  residing  out  of  town  while  the 
plague  lasted.  His  agent  was  his  Quaker  friend,  young 
Ellwood.  "  I  was  desired  by  my  quondam  master,  Milton," 
says  Ellwood,  "  to  take  an  house  for  him  in  the  neighbourhood 
"  where  I  dwelt,  that  he  might  go  out  of  the  city,  for  the 
"  safety  of  himself  and  his  family,  the  pestilence  then  growing 
"hot  in  London.  I  took  a  pretty  box  for  him  in  Giles- 
u  Chalfont,  a  mile  from  me;  of  which  I  gave  him  notice." 
Sometime  in  July  1665,  therefore,  before  the  Plague  was  at  its 
worst,  we  are  to  imagine  Milton's  house  in  Artillery  Walk 
shuttered  up,  and  a  coach  and  large  waggon  brought  to  the 
door,  and  the  blind  man  helped  in,  and  the  wife  and  the  three 
daughters  following,  with  a  servant  to  look  after  the  books  and 
other  things  they  have  taken  with  them,  and  the  whole  party 
driven  away  towards  Giles-Chalfont2. 

1  Pepys's  Memoir  from  April  1665  that  Milton's  commission  to  Ellwood  to 
onwards  ;  Cunningham's  London,  Bun-  find  a  country  house  for  him  was  "  some 
hill  Fields.  little  time  before  "  an  incident  which  he 

2  Ellwood's  Life  (edit,  of  1714),  p.  mentions  as  happening  on  "  the  first  day 
246.    From  the  context  there  we  learn  of  the  Fifth  Month,  1665."  Now,  though 


MILTON   AT   CHALFONT    ST.  GILES. 


491 


AT    CHALFONT  ST.  GILES,    BUCKINGHAMSHIRE:     1665-66. 

Giles-Chalfont,  or  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  is  a  village  in  Buck- 
inghamshire,  about   three  and  twenty   miles   from    London. 
There  is  now,  and  there  was  in  Milton's  time,  an  option  of  two 
ways  to  it  from  the  great  city.     One,  which  may  be  called  the 
Middlesex  route,  and  is  perhaps  the  more  direct  one,  leads  first 
to  Uxbridge,  on  the  west  border  of  that  county,  and  then  has 
a  northern  bend  of  about  eight  miles  more  through  the  eastern 
skirt    of  Bucks.     The  other  is  by  Watford  and   Rickmans- 
worth,  crossing  the  corner  of  Herts  between  these  two  towns 
before  entering  Bucks.   At  present  it  matters  little  whether  the 
Uxbridge  station  of  one  railway  or  the  Rickmansworth  station 
of  another  is  chosen  as  the  access  to  Chalfont  St.  Giles.     From 
either  station  there  is  a  walk  or  drive  of  between  six  and  eight 
miles  before  the  village  can  be  reached  ;    and  in  this  walk  or 
drive  from  either  station  one  can  so  arrange  as  to  take  Hare- 
field,  the  scene  of  the  Arcades,  in  the  way.     Few  villages  in 
the  south  of  England,  indeed,  can  lie  more  lazily  and  sleepily 
oft"  the  track  of  railways  and  out  of  the  bustling  world  than 
Chalfont  St.  Giles,  with  its  population  of  little  over  a  thousand. 
Moreover,  it  lies,  most  remarkably,  down  in  a  cup  or  hollow. 
Whether  you  reach  it  by  Uxbridge  or  by  Rickmansworth,  you 
descend  into  it  at  one  end  by  a  rather  sudden  steep ;  down  at 
the  foot  of  this  steep  you  find  the  main  village,  consisting  first 
of  a  small  inn  or  two,  with  a  duck-pond  in  front  of  them,  and 
then  rows  of  houses,  some  of  them  old  and  timber-joisted,  with 
an  old  church  and  churchyard  reached  by  a  lane  through  the 
antique  houses  on  the  left  side  ;  and,  when  you  pursue  the  main 
road  or  street  quite  through  the  village  to  the  other  end,  you 
have  to  re-ascend  considerably  at  that  end  before  the  general 
level  of  the  country  is  again  attained.      "  Down  in  a  cup  "  I 


the  fifth  month  in  the  year  in  our 
present  Calendar  is  May,  it  was  then 
July,  both  in  the  common  reckoning  and 
in  the  reckoning  of  the  Quakers,  who 
did  not  use  the  heathen  name  July.  Not 
till  the  year  1752,  when  there  was  the 
general  change  of  Calendar  by  Act  of 
Parliament,  did  the  Society  of  Friends 
alter  their  former  practice  by  making 
January  the  "  First  Month  "  iu  the  year, 


instead  of  March.  I  should  have  in- 
ferred their  former  practice  from  other 
parts  of  E 11  wood's  own  book,  where  it 
is  only  by  recollecting  thai  March  was 
his  "First  Month"  that  <>ne  can  recon- 
cile his  datings  with  the  otherwise 
known  dates  "i'  the  tacts  he  mentions; 
but  see,  for  absolute  proof,  Hairs  of 
Discipline  of  the  Society  <>f  Frienda 
(third  or  1831  edition),  pp.  72—77. 


492  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

have  said  ;  but,  if  you  fancy  the  cup  somewhat  in  the  shape  of 
a  shallow  cream-jug,  the  resemblance  will  be  more  exact. 
Coming-  from  "Oxbridge  or  Rickmansworth,  you  descend  into 
the  village  at  the  handle  end  of  the  jug  ;  and,  after  threading 
the  village  by  the  inns,  the  pond,  and  the  houses,  you  reascend 
at  the  mouth.  The  road  thence  takes  you  to  the  market-town 
of  Beaconsfield,  which  is  about  four  miles  distant. 

The  "  pretty  box  "  which  Ellwood  took  for  Milton  in  Chal- 
font  still  exists,  and  is  known  to  all  the  villagers  as  "  Milton's 
Cottage."     It  is  the  last  house  in  the  village  on  the  left  side 
of  the  end  pointing  towards  Beaconsfield,  and  is  about  half-way 
up  the  slope  at  that  end.     It  is  a  small  irregular  cottage,  of 
brick  and  wooden  beams,  divided  now  into  two  inhabitable  tene- 
ments, each  with  its  own  door.      The  door  of  the  poorer  tene- 
ment is  to  the  slope  of  the  village-road,  and  admits  to  two  or 
three  small  and  very  uninviting  rooms ;  the  other  tenement, 
regarded  as   Milton's  cottage  proper,  has  its  front  to  a  bit  of 
garden  off  the  road  at  right  angles,  with  its  door  and  latticed 
casements  looking  up  the  slope  towards  Beaconsfield  over  this 
bit  of  garden.    Probably  the  two  tenements  were  one  in  Milton's 
time,  and  not  too  much  even  then  for  the  accommodation  of 
a  family  such  as  his.    The  present  humble  inmates  can  count, 
in  the  two  tenements  together,  four  sitting-rooms  and  five 
bed-rooms  ;    but  no  visitor,  judging  by  the  modern  standard 
of  what  a  room  is,  would  allow  that  name  to  some  of  the  very 
tiny  and  dark  closets  that  are  shown.     The  best  part  of  the 
whole  is  certainly  that  which  has  its  front  to  the  garden  off 
the  road,  looking  up  the  slope.     Here,  on  the  ground-floor, 
level  with  the  garden,  are  two  tolerably  pleasant  small  sitting- 
rooms,  with  very  low  ceilings,  while  above,  up  a  short  wooden 
stair,  are  small  and  low  bed-rooms  to  correspond.     These  are 
the  rooms  that  Milton  and  his  family  must  have  chiefly  in- 
habited.    One  notes  the  lattices  in  these  rooms,  both  on  the 
gi-ound-floor  and   above,   opening    into  the   garden.     To   all 
appearance  the  small  lozenges  of  glass  set  in  lead  which  one  now 
sees  are  those  which  were  there  when  Milton  sat  in  the  rooms  ; 
and  some  of  the  bolts  about  the  lattices  and  doors  also  remain 
unchanged.     Milton's  favourite  seat  within  doors  at  first  must 


MILTON    AT    CHALFONT    ST.  GILES.  493 

have  been  at  one  of  these  latticed  casements  ;  where,  knowing- 
only  at  second-band  of  the  somewhat  limited  view  thence  of 
which  others  might  complain,  he  could  feel  the  summer  air 
blowing-  in  upon  him  from  the  garden,  with  the  hum  of  bees 
and  the  odour  of  honeysuckles.  Where  there  is  merely  a  door 
now  to  the  garden,  with  an  old  grape-vine  trailed  over  that 
part  of  the  front  wall,  there  was  once  a  porch,  forming  a  kind 
of  independent  projecting  room,  in  which  Milton  may  have  also 
liked  to  sit.  Nightingales  are  plentiful  about  Chalfont,  and 
he  may  have  heard  them  from  this  porch  in  the  evenings. 

The  walks  possible  to  Milton  from  his  cottage  may  be  easily 
indicated.     There  was  the  walk  up  the  slope  out  of  the  village, 
and  along  the  higher  road,  with  its  variations,  in  the  direction 
of  Beaconsfield.     Then  there  were  various  walks,  by  acclivities 
and  declivities,  on  both  skirts  of  the  village  itself,  through 
green  lanes  and  footpaths,    well    wooded,    especially   in   the 
neighbourhood  of  the  church.     Or,  if  the  walk  were  straight 
down  into  and  through  the  village,  then  one  might  protract  it 
in  the  same  dii-ection  by  reascending  to  the  country  towards 
Herts  and  Riekmansworth.      In  that  direction,  on  an  emi- 
nence about  a  mile  from  the  village,  was  the  old  manor-house 
of  the  Vache,  the  chief  estate  of  the  parish  of  Chalfont  St. 
Giles.     The  manor,  with  its  name  of  legendary  origin,  dating 
from  near  the  Conquest,  had  been  in  possession  of  the  Fleet- 
wood family,  so  well  known  to  Milton.      It  had  been  acquired 
in  1564  by  Thomas  Fleetwood,  Esq.,  whose  son,  Sir  George 
Fleetwood,  knight,  was  the  grandfather  of  the  regicide  Colonel 
George  Fleetwood,  and  of  his  younger  brother,  General  Charles 
Fleetwood,  Cromwell's  son-in-law.      For  a  century,  therefore, 
the  Fleetwoods  had  been  the  chief  family  of  Chalfont  parish, 
with  their   arms    over   houses   in  the  village,  and  memorial 
tablets  to  some  of  them  in  the  parish  church.      Not  till  1661, 
when  the  regicide  George  Fleetwood,  then  proprietor  of  the 
Vache,  was  attainted  of  high  treason,  had  the  connexion  of 
the  Fleetwoods  with  Chalfont  come  to  an  end.      The  forfeited 
manor  had  then  been  gifted  by  the  King  to  the  Duke  of  York, 
who  sold  it  in  1665  to  a  Sir  Thomas  Clayton.     This  Clayton, 
therefore,  was  the  great  man  of  the  place  when  Milton  came 


494  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

to  Chalfont  for  a  temporary  refuge.  The  late  proprietorship 
of  the  Fleetwoods  must,  however,  have  been  in  his  recollection. 
Horton,  where  Milton  had  lived  from  1632  to  1639,  is  in  the 
same  county  of  Bucks,  though  about  thirteen  miles  to  the 
south  of  Chalfont ;  and  Milton's  friendship  with  Charles  Fleet- 
wood, recorded  so  carefully  by  himself  as  dating-  from  Fleet- 
wood's "  very  boyhood,"  may  have  begun  in  those  days.  If 
so,  Milton  was  no  stranger  to  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  but  had  for- 
merly seen  with  his  eyes  the  hollows  and  roadways  about 
which  he  had  now  to  be  led  K 

Milton  and  his  family  were  probably  very  recluse  in  their 
cottage  at  the  village-end.  It  was  the  great  Plague  year, 
and  going  and  coming  between  village  and  village,  anywhere 
in  the  south-east  of  England,  or  even  between  house  and 
house  in  the  same  village,  was  a  matter  of  some  caution.  The 
Plague  had  reached  several  of  the  Buckinghamshire  towns, 
and  the  registers  of  Chalfont  St.  Giles  prove  that  there  were 
actually  cases  in  that  parish  itself.  The  distance  from  London, 
therefore,  did  not  give  the  Chalfont  people  and  their  neigh- 
bours perfect  sense  of  security  or  freedom  of  movement. 
There  may  have  been  difficulties  even  in  those  occasional 
little  journeys  of  Milton's  wife  and  one  of  his  daughters  to 
Beaconsfield,  or  to  Amersham,  the  other  nearest  market-town 
in  a  reverse  direction,  which  must  have  been  necessary  for 
such  purchases  for  the  household  as  could  not  be  made  in 
Chalfont  itself.  Still,  what  a  difference  in  this  sleepy  country 
hollow  in  Buckinghamshire,  with  its  fields  and  trees,  from 
the  plague-desolated  metropolis !  If  only  for  talk  on  that 
subject,  there  would  be  neighbours  of  Milton  who  would  drop 
in  at  his  cottage.  The  rector  of  the  parish  was  a  certain 
William  Rolles,  of  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  who  had  been 
appointed  to  the  parish  in  September  1662  by  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  on  the  ejection  of  the  former  Presbyterian 
rector,  Thomas  Valentine,  M.A.,  one  of  the  original  members 
of  the  Westminster  Assembly  2.     Naturally,  however,  if  there 

1  Account  of  the  parish  of  Chalfont  2   Lipscomb's    Buckinghamshire    as 

St.  Giles  in  Lipscomb's  History  of  Buck-       above,  and   Calamy's   Nonconformists' 
inghamshire,  III.  225—236.    '  Memorial,  I.  297. 


MILTON   AT   CHALFONT    ST.  GILES.  495 

were  any  Buckinghamshire  Nonconformists  about,  these  would 
be  the  readiest  to  call  on  the  new  occupant  of  the  cottage. 
What  of  the  Quaker  Penningtons,  living  in  the  very  next 
parish  of  Chalfont  St.  Peter's,  and  whose  mansion  in  that 
parish, '"  The  Grange,"  was  within  an  easy  walk  from  Chal- 
font St.  Giles?  What,  especially,  of  young  Ellwood,  the 
tutor  in  the  Pennington  family,  who  had  brought  Milton 
into  their  vicinity  by  taking  the  present  cottage  for  him  ? 

Honest  Ellwood,  no  doubt,  had  intended  to  be  at  the  door 
of  the  cottage  to  receive  Milton  on  his  first  arrival.  But  he 
had  been  prevented  by  one  of  those  accidents  to  which  the 
poor  Quakers  were  everywhere  liable  in  those  days.  Just  after 
sending-  notice  to  Milton  in  London  that  he  had  taken  the 
cottage  for  him,  he  and  the  Penningtons  had  gone  to  Amer- 
sham,  to  assist  in  the  burial  of  Edward  Parret,  a  Quaker  of 
that  town,  in  a  private  piece  of  ground  designated  by  the 
deceased  himself.  A  Buckinghamshire  lawyer  and  justice-of- 
the-peace,  named  Bennett,  had  seen  fit  to  interrupt  the  funeral 
procession,  thrust  the  coffin  from  the  shoulders  of  its  bearers 
till  it  fell  in  the  street,  and  order  the  apprehension  of  all  con- 
cerned. The  body,  after  it  had  lain  in  the  open  street  for 
some  time,  was  buried  at  night  in  a  grave  dug  in  the  uncon- 
secrated  part  of  Amersham  churchyard ;  but  the  offending 
Quakers  were  kept  in  custody  in  an  inn  till  another  justice- 
of-the-peace,  who  had  been  summoned,  should  arrive  to  aid 
Bennett  in  dealing  with  them.  He  was  the  Sir  Thomas 
Clayton  who  has  just  been  mentioned  as  having  entered  on 
the  Vache  property  by  purchase  from  the  Duke  of  York.  By 
him  and  Bennett  together  ten  of  the  offenders,  among  whom 
were  Pennington  and  Ellwood,  had  been  committed  to  jail 
in  Aylesbury,  the  assize  town  of  the  county  ;  and  here  they 
had  been  kept  for  a  month,  Ellwood  amusing  himself,  as  he 
had  done  in  his  former  imprisonment  in  Bridewell  and  New- 
gate, by  writing  verses.     He  gives  us  this  specimen  : — 

Riddle. 

Some  men  are  free  while  they  in  prison  lie; 
Others,  who  ne'er  saw  prison,  captive  die. 


496  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS  TIME. 

Solution. 

He 's  only  free  indeed  that 's  free  from  sin  ; 
And  he  is  fastest  bound  that 's  bound  therein  *. 

This  imprisonment  of  Ellwood's  it  was  that  had  prevented 
him  from  waiting"  on  Milton  on  his  first  arrival  at  Chalfont. 
"  But  now,  being1  released  and  returned  home,"  says  Ellwood, 
"  I  soon  made  a  visit  to  him,  to  welcome  him  into  the  country. 
"  After  some  discourses  had  passed  between  us,  he  called  for 
"  a  manuscript  of  his  ;  which,  being  brought,  he  delivered  to 
"  me,  bidding  me  take  it  home  with  me  and  read  it  at  my 
"  leisure,  and,  when  I  had  so  done,  return  it  to  him,  with  my 
"judgment  thereon.  When  I  came  home  and  had  set  myself 
"to  read  it,  I  found  it  was  that  excellent  poem  which  he 
"  entitled  Paradise  Lost.  After  I  had,  with  the  best  atten- 
"  tion,  read  it  through,  I  made  him  another  visit,  and  returned 
"  him  his  book,  with  due  acknowledgment  of  the  favour  he 
"  had  done  me  in  communicating"  it  to  me.  He  asked  me 
"  how  I  liked  it  and  what  I  thought  of  it ;  which  I  modestly, 
"  but  freely,  told  him  :  and,  after  some  further  discourse  about 
"  it,  I  pleasantly  said  to  him,  '  Thou  hast  said  much  here  of 
"  Paradise  Lost,  but  what  hast  thou  to  say  of  Paradise  Found  ?' 
"  He  made  no  answer,  but  sat  some  time  in  a  muse  ;  then 

"  brake  off  that  discourse,  and  fell  on  another  subject 2." 

The  date  of  the  first  of  the  two  visits  connected  in  this 
memorable  passage  of  Ellwood's  Life  must  have  been  late 
in  August,  or  early  in  September,  1665,  when  the  Plague  was 
at  its  worst  in  London.  Ellwood,  one  sees,  had  been  telling 
Milton  of  his  verses  in  Aylesbury  jail  and  elsewhere,  and  had 
perhaps  repeated  to  him  the  specimen  just  quoted;  and  hence, 
the  discourse  having  turned  on  poetry,  and  the  scarcity  of 
other  auditors  having  made  Milton  unusually  communicative, 
we  may  account  for  his  extraordinary  favour  to  the  trusty, 
kindly,  but  somewhat  thick-headed  Quaker  lad.  The  manu- 
script given  to  Ellwood,  we  may  also  be  quite  sure,  was  not 
the  only  copy  then  in  Milton's  possession. — The  second  of  the 
two  visits,  when  Ellwood  returned  the  manuscript  and  gave 

1  Ellwood's  Life,  pp.  238— 245.  2  Ellwood's  Life,  pp.  246—247. 


MILTON   AT    CHALFONT    ST.    GILES.  497 

Milton  his  impressions  of  it,  must  have  been  only  a  week  or 
two  after  the  first.  For,  before  the  end  of  September,  Isaac 
Pennington  having-  been  again  arrested  and  committed  to 
Aylesbury  jail,  the  household  at  the  Grange  had  been  broken 
up.  Mrs.  Pennington  had  then  gone  to  Aylesbury  to  be  near 
her  husband,  Ellwood  and  the  younger  children  accompanying 
her,  while  Guli.  Springett  went  to  stay  for  a  while  with  an  old 
servant  of  the  family  settled  in  Bristol 1. 

September  1665  passes  in  Chalfont,  and  October  succeeds, 
and  then  the  winter  months  of  November,  December,  and 
January,  bringing  down  the  mortality  by  plague  in  London 
with  reassuring  rapidity.  The  fall  in  October  was  only  to 
14,373  deaths,  still  a  frightful  figure;  but  in  November  the 
bills  gave  but  3449,  which  sank  in  December  to  1000,  and 
in  January  still  lower.  Through  those  months  of  cooling 
weather,  deepening  into  snow  on  the  roads  and  fields,  Milton 
continued  in  his  Buckinghamshire  retreat,  more  within  doors 
than  he  had  been  at  first,  but  doubtless  with  daily  visits  from 
some  of  his  neighbours.  Besides  the  great  topic  of  the  Plague 
and  its  gradual  abatement,  the  chief  news  through  these 
months  was  of  the  straggling  continuance  of  the  Dutch  war 
and  of  the  holding  at  Oxford  of  that  short  Fifth  Session  of  the 
Cavalier  Parliament  (Oct.  9 — Oct.  31)  in  which,  unmollified 
by  the  Plague  or  by  the  clamours  of  the  Nonconformists  for 
indulgence  after  such  a  judgment,  they  added  the  dreadful 
Five  Miles  Act  to  their  previous  persecuting  acts  of  the 
Clarendonian  series  and  almost  passed  also  an  Act  imposing 
the  passive  obedience  oath  universally  on  the  nation. 

Among  several  pieces  of  verse  that  have  been  attributed 
by  vague  tradition  or  conjecture  to  Milton,  though  never 
printed  in  his  works,  not  one  has  any  such  appearance  of  being 
possibly  his,  or  a  mutilation  of  something  he  did  dictate,  as  a 
fragment  of  a  sonnet  supposed  to  be  of  the  date  of  his  residence 
at  Chalfont.  It  was  first  printed  by  Birch,  in  his  Life  of 
Milton  in  1738,  in  this  form  : — 

Fair  mirror  of  foul  times  !  whose  fragile  sheen 
Shall,  as  it  blazeth,  break ;   while  Providence, 

1  Ellwood's  Life,  237—248. 
VOL.  VI.  K  k 


498 


LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 


Aye  watching  o'er  his  Saints  with  eye  unseen, 
Spreads  the  red  rod  of  angry  pestilence, 
To  sweep  the  wicked  and  their  counsels  hence : 
Yea,  all  to  break  the  pride  of  lustful  kings, 
Who  Heaven's  lore  reject  for  brutish  sense, 
As  erst  he  scourged  Jessides'  sin  of  yore 
For  the  fair  Hittite,  when,  on  seraph's  wings, 
He  sent  him  war,  or  plague,  or  famine  sore  1. 

BACK   IN   ARTILLERY    WALK,    BUNHILL  I    1666-67. 

"  After  the  sickness  was  over,  and  the  city  well  cleansed 
"and  become  safely  habitable  again,  he  returned  thither," 
is  Ell  wood's  account  of  the  termination  of  Milton's  stay  at 
Chalfont  St.  Giles.  The  wording  may  suggest  the  date. 
Pepys,  who  had  returned  to  town  on  the  evening  of  the  27th 


1  Birch  introduces  the  fragment  thus : 
— "  I  have  in  rny  bands  a  sonnet  said  to 
"  be  written  by  Milton  upon  occasion  of 
"the  Plague,  and  to  have  been  lately 
"  found  on  a  glass-window  at  Chalfont." 
Then,  after  quoting  the  fragment,  he 
adds,  "But  the  obvious  mistake  in  this 
"  sonnet,  in  representing  the  pestilence 
"  as  a  judgment  upon  David  for  his  adul- 
"  tery  with  Bathsneba,  whereas  it  was  on 
"account  of  his  numbering  the  people, 
"renders  it  justly  suspected  not  to  be 
"  our  author's,  who  was  too  conversant 
"  in  Scripture  to  commit  such  an  error. 
"  For  this  and  some  other  reasons,  which 
"  I  might  mention,  I  consider  it  only  as 
"a  very  happy  imitation  of  Milton's 
"style  and  manner.  However,  I  am 
"  informed  by  Mr.  George  Vertue  that 
"he  has  seen  a  satirical  medal  upon 
"  King  Charles,  struck  abroad,  without 
"any  inscription,  the  device  of  which 
"  corresponds  extremely  with  the  senti- 
"ment  in  this  sonnet.  On  one  side  is 
"  represented  the  King,  drest  in  the  most 
"  magnificent  manner,  and  on  the  reverse 
"  his  subjects  perishing  by  a  raging 
"pestilence  sent  from  heaven." — Birch 
seems  to  have  settled  in  the  belief  that 
the  tiling  was  not  Milton's  ;  for  in  the 
second  edition  of  his  Life  in  1753  he 
does  not  reprint  it.  Todd,  however, 
who  prints  it  in  a  note  (I.  118),  says, 
"  I  have  seen  a  copy  of  it  written,  ap- 
"  parently  in  a  coeval  hand,  at  the  end 
"  of  Tonson's  edition  of  Milton's  Smaller 
"  Poems  in  1713,  where  it  is  also  said  to 
"be  Milton's." — I  should  not  lay  much 


stress  on  Birch's  objection ;  but  there 
seems  a  more  fatal  objection  in  the 
supposed  subject  or  occasion  of  the 
sonnet.  It  seems  to  have  been  sug- 
gested by  the  sight  of  some  glittering 
object,  whether  a  medal  or  some  curious 
piece  of  glass  manufacture  that  would 
break  in  blazing ;  and  this  would  nega- 
tive the  idea  of  its  being  by  a  blind 
man.  But  possibly  the  first  two  lines, 
which  are  the  least  Milton-like,  may 
have  been  fitted  on  to  the  rest  by  some 
one  who  had  the  rest  in  his  memory, 
but  had  forgotten  the  proper  beginning. 
In  any  case,  four  lines  are  wanting  to 
make  the  thing  a  complete  sonnet  of 
any  kind  ;  and  there  ought  to  be  a  re- 
arrangement of  the  order  of  the  rhymes 
in  the  first  part,  with  two  additional 
rhymes  in  een,  one  in  ings,  and  one  in 
ore,  to  make  it  a  Sonnet  on  the  Miltonic 
model. — Birch's  story  of  the  discovery  of 
the  thing  inscribed  on  a  glass-window 
at  Chalfont  I  give  up  as  nonsense. 
Where  was  the  pane  of  glass  at  Chal- 
font that  could  hold  it ;  and,  if  the 
notion  is  that  it  was  exhibited  in  1665, 
what  Chalfont  householder  was  mad 
enough  to  advertise  his  disaffection  by 
cutting  the  Hues  on  his  window  with  a 
diamond  after  having  heard  them  in 
Milton's  cottage  ?  I  wish  people,  when 
handing  on  a  tradition,  would  always 
imagine  distinctly  the  physical  and 
historical  possibility  of  what  they  are 
putting  on  paper.— Very  likely  Birch's 
decision  was  right ;  but  "  Jessides'  sin  " 
and  "  the  fair  Hittite  "  make  one  hesitate. 


MILTON   BACK    IN   LONDON.  499 

of  November,  had  then  found  "  few  people  yet  in  the  streets, 
nor  shops  open."  On  the  13th  of  December  he  reports,  "  The 
town  do  thicken  so  much  with  people  that  it  is  much  if  the 
plague  do  not  grow  again  upon  us ;"  and  there  had  been 
subsequent  alarms  of  the  kind  when  the  mortality  again  rose. 
But  for  the  week  ending  the  22nd  of  January  1665-6  Pepys 
could  write,  "  Good  news,  beyond  all  expectation,  of  the  de- 
crease of  the  Plague,  being  now  but  79  and  the  whole  but  272." 
Under  Jan.  31  he  writes,  "  I  find  many  about  the  city  that 
"  live  near  the  churchyards  solicitous  to  have  the  churchyards 
"  covered  with  lime,  and  I  think  it  is  needful ;  and  ours, 
"  I  hope,  will  be  done."  The  next  day,  Feb.  1,  the  King 
and  the  Duke  of  York  were  back  in  town.  From  that  time 
London,  we  may  assume,  was  itself  again, — safer,  indeed,  than 
much  of  the  country  round,  inasmuch  as  the  Plague,  though 
nearly  extinct  in  Middlesex,  was  still  running  its  course  in 
Kent  and  Essex.  Milton,  therefore,  we  may  calculate,  re- 
turned to  his  London  house  in  February,  or  at  latest  in  March, 
just  when  people  were  beginning  to  write  1666  instead  of 
1665.  If  Pepys  was  solicitous  about  having  the  churclvyard 
round  his  place  of  worship  (St.  Olave's,  Hart  Street)  covered 
with  lime,  much  more  may  Milton  have  hesitated  about  again 
inhabiting  his  house  in  Artillery  Walk  before  every  possible 
process  of  cleansing  had  been  applied  to  the  field  near  by, 
which  had  been  used  as  the  most  promiscuous  plague  cemetery 
for  all  London.  The  city  authorities,  however,  were  already 
alert  on  that  subject.  Bunhill  Fields  were  no  longer  to  be 
left  a  mere  open  piece  of  ground,  but  were  to  be  enclosed  with 
a  brick  wall  "  at  the  sole  charges  of  the  city  of  London,"  and 
converted  permanently  into  what  Southey  calls  "  the  Campo 
Santo  of  the  Dissenters,"  i.e.  the  favourite  burying  ground 
thenceforward  of  all  the  Nonconformist  sects  of  London. 
Visitors  who  go  to  Bunhill  Fields  burial  ground  now,  to  look 
at  the  monuments  and  tombstones  of  which  it  is  full,  and  to 
linger  before  those  of  Thomas  Goodwin,  John  Owen,  John 
Bunyan,  and  Daniel  Defoe,  may  remember  that  the  brick- 
wall  which  was  to  enclose  the  Bunhill  plague-pit  ground  for 
the  regular  purposes  of  such  a  cemetery  was  begun  just  about 

k  k  2 


500 


LIFE  OF  MILTON  AND  HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 


the  time  when  Milton  and  his  family  came  back  to  their 
house  in  Artillery  Walk  from  Chalfont  St.  Giles  *. 

Paradise  Lost  having  been  complete  in  the  autumn  of  1665 2, 
one  might  have  expected  that  Milton,  on  his  return  to  town, 
would  take  steps  for  its  publication  in  the  course  of  1666. 
Whether  he  did  take  such  steps  and  found  difficulties,  or 
whether  he  voluntarily  kept  the  manuscript  for  yet  further 
revision,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  Nor,  in  fact,  have 
we  a  single  certain  glimpse  of  Milton's  occupations  between 
his  return  to  London  early  in  1666  and  the  month  of  August 
in  that  year.  To  that  month  of  August  1666  belongs  the 
last  of  his  printed  Latin  Familiar  Epistles. 

The  reader  will  remember  Milton's  young  German  friend 
Peter  Heimbach,  who  had  been  one  of  his  admiring  visitors 
in  the  house  in  Petty  France,  whom  he  had  employed  in  Nov. 
1656  to  inquire  about  the  sizes  and  the  prices  of  the  best 
atlases  in  Amsterdam  (Vol.  V.  pp.  279-281),  and  to  whom  he 
had  written  a  rather  discouraging  note  in  December  1657,  in 
reply  to  a  request  that  he  would  use  his  influence  to  obtain 
Heimbach's  appointment  to  be  secretary  to  Downing,  then 
going  as  ambassador  for  the  Protector  to  the  Hague  (Vol.  V. 
pp.  380-381).  Heimbaoh  had  since  then  returned  to  his 
native  part  of  Germany,  the  Duchy  of  Cleves,  and  had  im- 
proved his  fortunes  there.  Since  April  1664,  he  had  held  the 
rank  of  state-councillor  to  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg  for  the 
affairs  of  the  Duchy,  then  in  possession  of  the  house  of  Bran- 
denburg ;  and  he  was  still  in  that  post  in  the  year  1666. 
He  had  never,  it  appears,  ceased  to  think  of  Milton,  and  now, 
after  a  long  interval,  he  was  moved  to  reopen  correspondence 
with  him,  in  a  Latin  letter,  which  may  be  translated  as 
follows : — 


1  Ellwood's  Life,  247 ;  Pepys  of  dates ; 
Cunningham's  London,  Bunhill  Fields 
Burial  Ground. 

2  Ellwood's  words,  like  those  of  every 
other  Quaker  of  that  time,  are  to  be  ab- 
solutely trusted.  But  there  is  corrobo- 
ration, though  of  a  vague  kind,  in 
Aubrey's    information,  gathered   from 


Phillips,  that  Milton  finished  Paradise 
Lost  "  about  3  yeares  after  the  K's 
restauration."  This  might  mean  1663 
or  1664  ;  but,  even  without  Ellwood's 
correction,  at  least  another  year  would 
have  to  be  added  to  bring  the  date  into 
accord  with  independent  probability. 


LETTEK  TO  PETER  HEIMBACH.  501 

To  his  John  Milton,  a  mas  above  praise,  Peter  Heimbach. 

Had  there  been  earlier  assurance  among  us,  John  Milton,  man 
of  the  highest  note  every  way,  that  you  were  still  in  the  congrega- 
tion of  the  living,  I  should  also  have  sooner  reverted  in  thought 
to  London  to  testify  our  most  friendly  regards  for  you.  For  the 
rumour  ran  that,  removed  from  our  trifling  affairs,  you  had  been 
restored  to  your  native  heaven,  and  were  looking  down  upon  all 
our  concerns  from  an  eminence  above  the  earth.  As  there  is  no 
access  permitted  to  that  kingdom,  I  had  to  check  and  restrain  my 
pen,  heretofore  ready  enough  to  write  to  men  like  you.  And  truly 
I,  who  admired  in  you  not  so  much  your  individual  virtues  as  the 
marriage-union  of  diverse  virtues,  do  now,  while  I  discern  many 
things  besides  in  you,  admire  especially  how  it  has  happened  that, 
by  the  union  of  a  grave  dignity  (exhibited  in  a  face  worthy  of  the 
wearer)  with  the  calmest  politeness,  of  kindness  with  prudence,  of 
piety  with  policy,  of  policy  with  immense  erudition,  and,  I  will  add,  of 
a  generous  and  far  from  timid  spirit  (even  when  younger  minds  were 
slipping)  with  a  genuine  love  of  peace,  you  have  been  an  example 
of  a  mixture  of  qualities  altogether  rare  and  beyond  the  allowance  of 
the  age.  Hence  I  pray  God  that  all  things  may  again  turn  out  ac- 
cording to  your  own  wish  and  purpose,  one  alone  excepted.  For, 
ample  in  years,  and  full  of  honours  (even  those  you  have  refused), 
you  desire  nothing  more  now  than  the  reward  of  quiet  and  the 
crown  of  justice ;  and  your  wish  seems  to  be  that  of  Simeon  of 
old,  'Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace.'  But 
our  desire  is  far  contrary :  to  wit,  that  God  Almighty  may  suffer 
you  to  live  on  as  long  as  possible  in  activity  in  the  world  of 
literature  and  to  preside  among  us  there.  And  so  farewell,  most 
learned  Milton,  and  long  life  and  happiness  to  you  and  all  yours, 
with  best  salutations  from  us.  Dated  at  Cleves,  where  we  live  as 
councillor  on  the  Electoral  territory,  this  8th  of  June  1666  of  the 
common  Christian  era.  Again  farewell ;  and  continue  to  love  us 
as  much  as  you  can,  and  gratify  us  as  soon  as  possible  with  one  of 
your  most  delightful  replies  l. 

To  this  odd,  but  not  uninteresting-,  letter  Milton  did  send 
a  reply.  It  was  partly  ironical,  as  follows,  and  is  worth 
study : — 

To  the  very  distinguished  Peter  Heimbach,  Councillor 

to  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg. 
Small  wonder  if,  in  the  midst  of  so  many  deaths  of  my  country- 

i  Translated   from  a  copy  coramuni-  The  Latin  in  that  copy  is  dreadful,  with 

cated  by  the  late  Mr.  Thomas  Watts  of  false  case-constructions    and   a  syntax 

the  British  Museum  to  the  Appendix  to  defying  analysis;   but  the    meaning  is 

Mitford's  Life  of  Milton  in  the  Picker-  unmistakeable,    and    I    have    tried    to 

ing  edition  of  his  Works  (I.  cxcvi-vii).  render  it  exactly. 


r>us 


LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 


men,  in  a  year  of  such  heavy  pestilence,  you  believed,  as  you  write 
you  did,  on  the  faith  of  some  special  rumour,  that  I  also  had  been 
cut  off.  Such  a  rumour  among  your  people  is  not  displeasing,  if  it 
was  the  occasion  of  making  known  the  fact  that  they  were  anxious 
for  my  safety,  for  then  I  can  regard  it  as  a  sign  of  their  goodwill 
to  me.  But,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  who  had  provided  for  my 
safety  in  a  country  retreat,  I  am  still  both  alive  and  well,  nor 
useless  yet,  I  hope,  for  any  duty  that  remains  to  be  performed  by 
me  in  this  life. — That  after  so  long  an  interval  I  should  have  come 
into  your  mind  is  very  agreeable ;  although,  from  your  exuberant 
expression  of  the  matter,  you  seem  to  afford  some  ground  for 
suspecting  that  you  have  rather  forgotten  me,  professing  as  you  do 
such  an  admiration  of  the  marriage-union  in  me  of  so  many 
different  virtues.  Truly,  I  should  dread  a  too  numerous  progeny 
from  so  many  forms  of  the  marriage-union  as  you  enumerate,  were 
it  not  an  established  truth  that  virtues  are  nourished  most  and 
flourish  most  in  straitened  and  hard  circumstances ;  albeit  I  may 
say  that  one  of  the  virtues  on  your  list  has  not  very  handsomely 
requited  to  me  the  hospitable  reception  she  had.  For  what  you 
call  policy,  but  I  would  rather  have  you  call  loyalty  to  one's  country, 
— this  particular  lass,  after  inveigling  me  with  her  fair  name,  has 
almost  expatriated  me,  so  to  speak.  The  chorus  of  the  rest,  how- 
ever, makes  a  very  fine  harmony.  One's  country  is  wherever  it  is 
well  with  one. — And  now  I  will  conclude,  after  first  begging  you, 
if  you  find  anything  incorrectly  written  or  without  punctuation 
here,  to  impute  that  to  the  boy  who  has  taken  it  down  from  my 
dictation,  and  who  is  utterly  ignorant  of  Latin,  so  that  I  was 
forced,  while  dictating,  not  without  misery,  to  spell  out  the  letters 
of  the  words  one  by  one.  Meanwhile  I  am  glad  that  the  merits  of 
one  whom  I  knew  as  a  young  man  of  excellent  hope  have  raised 
him  to  so  honourable  a  place  in  his  Prince's  favour ;  and  I  desire 
and  hope  all  prosperity  for  you  otherwise.  Farewell ! 
London,  Aug.  15,  1666  \ 


1  Milton's  Epislolce  Familiares,  No. 
31. — I  hardly  like  to  express  in  the  text 
a  fancy  that  has  occurred  to  me  in 
translating  the  letter  and  studying  it  iu 
connexion  with  Heimbach's, — to  wit, 
that  Milton  may  not  merely  have  been 
ironically  rebuking  Heimbach  for  his 
adulation  and  silly  phraseology,  but 
may  also  have  been  suspicious  of  the 


possibility  of  some  trap  laid  for  him 
politically.  Certainly,  if  this  letter  of 
Milton's  to  a  Councillor  of  the  Elector 
of  Brandenburg  had  been  intercepted 
by  the  English  Government,  it  is  so 
cleverly  worded  that  nothing  could  have 
been  made  of  it. — But  Heimbach  may 
have  been  as  honest  as  he  looks.  Even 
then,  however,  Milton,  knowing  little  or 


MILTON    AND   THE   GREAT   FIRE   OF   LONDON.  503 

When  this  letter  was  written  all  London  was  alive  with 
the  last  successes  against  the  Dutch.  Not  only  had  there 
been  the  great  four  days'  battle  of  June  1-4  off  the  North 
Foreland,  in  which  Albemarle,  Rupert,  and  the  other  English 
admirals  had  managed  to  win  what  they  could  call  a  victory 
over  Ruyter  and  De  Witt ;  not  only  had  there  been  another 
and  less  dubious  battle  on  the  26th  of  July  ;  but  news  had 
reached  London  of  the  proceedings  of  Rear-Admiral  Holmes's 
detachment  on  the  Dutch  coasts,  on  August  8  and  9,  when 
a  vast  number  of  Dutch  merchantmen  were  burnt  and  de- 
stroyed, the  quiet  Dutch  island  of  Schelling  was  ruthlessly 
invaded  and  devastated,  and  the  chief  town  of  that  island 
left  in  a  blaze.  Less  than  a  month  after  that,  as  we  know, 
or  exactly  eighteen  days  after  Milton's  letter  to  Heimbach, 
London  itself  was  in  a  blaze.  In  other  words,  the  Great 
Fire  of  London  (Sept.  2 — Sept.  5,  1666)  inserts  itself  into 
Milton's  biography  at  this  point. 

The  Fire  was  no  collateral  casualty  for  Milton,  but  an  actual 
and  tremendous  experience.  For  three  days  or  so  he  and  his 
household  were  among  the  huddled  myriads  on  the  edge  of  that 
roaring,  crackling,  conflagration,  which  was  reducing  two- 
thirds  of  the  entire  city  to  ashes,  drawing  down  the  vast  bulk 
of  St.  Paul's  and  a  hundred  other  towers  and  steeples  from 
their  familiar  solidity  on  the  old  sky-line,  hurling  burning 
timbers  and  scorching  smoke  whichever  way  the  wind  blew, 
turning  the  sun  overhead  by  day  into  a  blood-coloured  ball, 
and  lighting  up  the  sky  at  night  over  four  counties  with  a  lurid 
glare  like  that  from  a  thousand  furnaces.  Helpless  on  the 
edsre  of  this  horror  and  commotion,  only  the  sounds  of  which 
could  come  into  his  own  sensation,  while  the  sights  had  to 
be  reported  to  him,  the  blind  man  sat  for  three  days  and  three 
nio-hts. — Not  till  the  third  or  fourth  day  could  it  be  known 
where,  in  any  direction,  the  conflagration  would  stop,  or 
whether  it  would  ever  stop.  Then  it  was  known  that  the  area 
of  the  fire  included  the  436  scpiare  acres  from  the  Tower  to 

nothing  of  Heimbach  for  the  last  nine       bach  see  Stern's  Milton  nihl  Srine  Zeit, 
years,  had  reason  to  be  cautions.— For       III.  184  and  note  to  that  page, 
some  further  particulars  about  Heiin- 


504  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

Temple  Bar,  and  from  the  river  to  Aldersgate,  Cripplegate, 
and  Moorgate,  and  that  what  remained  of  London  was  but 
the  irregular  fringe   of  built   ground    round    this  desolated 
space,  consisting  of  a  shred  of  the  east  side  of  the  old  city 
within  the  walls,  and  of  the  suburbs  beyond  the  walls  to  the 
north.     Having  been  stopped  on  the  north,  by  the  City  Wall 
and  Ditch,  exactly  at  the  three  gates  mentioned,  it  had  spared 
the  two  suburbs  with  which  we  have  had  principally  to  associate 
Milton.     It  had  spared    the  Aldersgate    Street  suburb,   in- 
cluding  Aldersgate   Street  itself,  where  he  had  lived  from 
1640  to  1645,  the  Barbican,  where  he  had  lived  from  1645  to 
1647,  and  Jewin  Street,  where  he  had  lived  more  recently. 
It  had  spared,  and   only  just  spared,  the  church  of  St.  Giles, 
Cripplegate,  immediately  outside  the  walls, — the  church  which 
had  been  Milton's  parish  church  in  his  Barbican  days,  again 
his  parish  church  when  he  was  in  Jewin  Street,  and  which 
was  his  parish  church  still.     As  nearly  as  I  can  measure,  the 
fire  had  come  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  Milton's  house  in 
Artillery  Walk,  leaving  so  much  of  a  belt  of  unburn t  streets 
and  lanes,  Chiswell  Street  and  Grub  Street  among  them,  to 
separate  him  from   the  part  of  the  ruins  that  lay  between 
Cripplegate  and  Moorgate. — Inside,  among  the  ruins,  in  the 
very  centre  of  the  map  of  the  fire,  there  lay,  as  Milton  knew, 
whatever   remained    distinguishable    or   indistinguishable    of 
what   had  formerly  been  his  native   Bread  Street,  with  the 
rest  of  the  neighbourhood  of  old  Cheapside.     His  house  in 
Bread  Street,  the   Spread  Eagle  of  his  birth  and  boyhood, 
"  which  was  all  the  real  estate  he  had  then  left,"  as  Wood 
expressly  tells  us,  was,  of  course,  totally  gone,  its  very  site 
hardly  to  be  identified ;  and,  as  there  could  be  no  more  visits 
of  admiring  foreigners  to  that  house  "  to   see  the  chamber 
where   he   was   born,"    so    to    himself  there  was  to  be   the 
cessation  thenceforward  of  what   had   hitherto   been  no  un- 
important part  of  his  yearly  income.     It  is  to  be  remembered, 
therefore,  in  Milton's  biography,  that  he  was  not  merely  on 
the  edge  of  the  Great  Fire  among  the  myriads  of  witnesses 
for  three  days  and  nights,  but  was  also  one  of  the  sufferers 
by  it  in  property. 


MILTON    AND   THE   GREAT   FIRE   OP    LONDON.  505 

We  know  with  what  alacrity  the  Londoners  set  themselves 
to  repair  their  great  disaster.  Not  for  six  or  seven  years  was 
there  to  be  anything"  like  a  completely  re-edified  city  ;  but 
already,  through  the  winter  of  1666-7, — the  Sixth  Session  of 
the  Cavalier  Parliament  (Sept.  21,  1666— Feb.  8,  1666-7) 
having  thrown  the  necessary  legislative  energy  into  the 
business  by  enacting  bills  for  the  relief  of  the  dishoused 
citizens,  bills  for  rebuilding,  and  bills  for  a  judicature  to 
settle  disputed  sites  and  claims, — the  operations  had  begun. 
What  has  to  be  remembered,  however,  is  that  they  had  then 
only  just  begun,  and  that  through  that  winter,  and  into  the 
next  spring  and  summer,  the  whole  heart  of  London  remained 
one  vast  chaos  of  ruins  and  rubbish-heaps,  with  workmen  and 
surveyors  here  and  there  busy  among  them,  but  amid  which 
it  was  dangerous  for  any  others  to  walk.  "  This  day,"  says 
Pepys,  under  date  June  16,  1666-7,  more  than  four  months 
after  the  fire,  "  I  observe  still  in  many  places  the  smoking 
"remains  of  the  late  fire:  the  ways  mighty  bad  and  dirty;" 
and  again  on  the  26th  of  February,  "  I  did  within  these  six 
"days  see  smoke  still  remaining  of  the  late  fire  in  the  City;" 
and  yet  again,  as  late  as  the  16th  of  March,  "It  is  observable 
"  that  within  these  eight  days  I  did  see  smoke  remaining, 
"coming  out  of  some  cellars,  from  the  late  great  fire,  now 
"above  six  months  since."  After  that  the  smouldering  of 
actual  remains  of  the  fire  anywhere  among  the  rubbish-heaps 
may  be  supposed  to  have  ceased;  but  the  rubbish-heaps 
themselves  were  still  there,  with  charred  masses  of  wall 
wherever  a  church  or  other  strong  stone  building  had  not 
quite  fallen,  and  with  carts  and  men  moving  about  in  the 
unsightly  confusion.  Such  was  the  state  of  things  in  London 
when  Milton  began  the  printing  of  his  Paradise  Lost. 

It  is  possible  that  the  first  step  necessary  in  those  days 
towards  the  publication  of  a  book  had  been  taken  by  Milton 
before  the  Fire.  This  was  the  transmission  of  the  complete 
manuscript  to  the  appointed  official  licencer,  to  be  examined 
by  him  and  approved  as  fit  to  be  printed.  The  Press  Act  of 
May  1662,  reviving-  the  system  of  censorship  for  books  of  all 
kinds  as  well  as  for  newspapers,  was  now  very  stringently  in 


506  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   CF   HIS   TIME. 

force.  By  that  Act,  as  we  know,  the  duty  of  licensing-  books 
of  general  literature  had  been  assigned  to  the  Secretaries  of 
State,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  the  Bishop  of 
London;  but  it  was  exceptional  for  any  of  those  dignitaries 
to  perform  the  duty  in  person.  It  was  chiefly  performed  for 
them  by  a  staff  of  under-licencers,  paid  by  fees.  Roger 
L'Estrange,  one  of  the  censors  by  royal  appointment  since 
1663,  was  still  peculiarly  busy  as  a  licencer  of  books  in  1666  ; 
but  five  or  six  others,  most  of  them  chaplains  for  the  time 
to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  were  employed  in  the  work 
and  had  a  share  in  the  perquisites.  Whether  an  author  could 
choose  his  own  licencer,  or  whether  manuscripts  had  to  be 
left  at  the  porter's  lodge  in  Lambeth  Palace,  or  at  some 
other  appointed  place,  thence  to  be  distributed  among  the 
members  of  the  licensing  staff  and  take  their  chance,  does  not 
appear  very  distinctly.  In  either  case,  the  manuscript  of 
Paradise  Lost  came  into  the  hands  of  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Tomkyns,  M.A.  of  Oxford,  then  domestic  chaplain  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  also  rector  of  St.  Mary 
Aldermary, — in  which  living  he  had  recently  succeeded  Dr. 
Robert  Gell,  that  old  acquaintance  of  Milton,  who,  as  we  have 
seen  reason  to  believe,  had  performed  the  marriage  ceremony 
for  Milton  and  Elizabeth  Minshull,  not  long  ago,  in  St.  Mary 
Aldermary  church.  Tomkyns  was  not  more  than  eight-and- 
twenty  years  of  age ;  but  he  was  a  great  favourite  of  Arch- 
bishop Sheldon,  and  he  had  already  distinguished  himself  by 
one  or  two  publications  in  a  zealous  Royalist  and  High 
Church  spirit.  One,  which  had  appeared  in  1660,  bore  the 
title  The  Rebel's  Plea  Examined:  or  Mr.  Baxters  Judgment 
concerning  the  late  War ;  another,  which  appeared  in  1661, 
had  consisted  of  strictures  on  the  Covenant ;  and  to  these 
was  soon  to  be  added  a  third,  equally  characteristic,  under 
the  title  of  The  Inconveniencies  of  Toleration.  "  Liberty  of 
"conscience,"  says  Tomkyns  in  this  last,  "is  a  thing  which 
"  hath  often  made  a  very  great  noise  in  the  world,  and  is  at 
"  the  first  view  a  thing  highly  plausible ;  but,  although  it 
"looks  hugely  pretty  in  the  notion,  yet  it  was  always  found 
"  strangely  unmanageable  whenever  it  came  to  be  handled  by 


LICENSING    OF   PAHADISE  LOST.  507 

"experience;  and  we  shall  continually  find  that  those  which 
"  cried  it  up  for  the  most  reasonable  thing  in  the  world,  when 
"  themselves  stood  in  need  of  it,  as  soon  as  ever  they  came 
"  into  power  would  never  endure  to  hear  of  it  any  longer." 
Tomkyns,  one  can  see,  was  no  fool ;  but,  with  such  opinions, 
now  that  he  had  his  turn  of  power,  he  was  not  likely  to  be  a 
very  propitious  examiner  of  books  from  suspected  quarters. 
Next  to  Roger  L'Estrange  he  was  perhaps  the  most  active 
licencer  in  1666,  and  he  had  a  number  of  books  then  in 
hand1.  With  Sheldon  beside  him,  and  perhaps  talking  with 
him  about  the  manuscripts,  he  was  likely  to  examine  Parodist 
Lost  with  more  than  usual  vigilance.  Accordingly,  the  tra- 
dition, throug-h  Toland,  is  that  the  world  "had  like  to  be 
"  eternally  deprived  of  this  treasure  by  the  ignorance  or 
"malice  of  the  licencer;  who,  among  other  frivolous  ex- 
"  ceptions,  would  needs  suppress  the  whole  poem  for  imaginary 
"  treason  in  the  following-  lines  : — 


•fc> 


'As  when  the  Sun,  new-risen, 
Looks  through  the  horizontal  misty  air 
Shorn  of  his  beams,  or  from  behind  the  moon, 
In  dim  eclipse,  disastrous  twilight  sheds 
On  half  the  nations,  and  with  fear  of  change 
Perplexes  monarchs.' " 

One  would  think  that  Tomkyns  might  have  found  passages 
more  dangerous  to  Church  and  State  than  this  towards  the 
end  of  Book  I  (lines  594-599) ;  but,  whether  because  he  got 
tired  of  reading  beyond  that  Book,  or  because  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  reasoned  out  of  his  objections,  he  did  at  length 
give  his  imprimatur  to  the  whole  poem.  The  actual  press- 
manuscript  of  the  First  Book  still  exists,  with  this  inscription 
on  the  inside  of  the  first  leaf  in  Tomkyns's  hand,  applicable 
not  only  to  that  First  Book,  but  to  all  the  rest.  "  Imprimatur  : 
Tho.  Tomkyns,  P'"°.  in  Christo  Patri  ac  Domino,  D"°.  Gilberto, 
Divind  Providentid  Archiepiscopo  C&ntuariensi,  a  saeris  domes- 
ticis"  i.e.  "Authorized  to  be  printed:   Thomas  Tomkyns, 


1  Stationers'  Registers  of  the  time;       Ineonvenieneies  of    To\  ration;     New- 
Wood's  Ath.  111.  '  10iu'-6  ;   Tuiukyus's       court's  Rt'i-L-rtoiiuui,  1.  i-iO. 


508  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

domestic  chaplain  to  the  Right  Rev.  Father  and  Lord  in 
Christ,  Gilbert,  by  divine  providence  Lord  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  V 

With  Tomkyns's  authority  in  his  possession,  some  time 
early  in  1667,  Milton  was  free  to  negotiate  with  any  printer 
or  publisher.  It  was  a  bad  time  commercially.  The  Great 
Fire,  injurious  to  every  trade  in  London,  had  affected  the 
book-trade  in  particular.  "The  loss  of  books,"  says  Baxter 
in  his  account  of  the  Fire  in  his  autobiography,  i(  was  an  ex- 
"  ceeding  great  detriment  to  the  interests  of  piety  and  learning. 
"  Almost  all  the  booksellers  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  brought 
"  their  books  into  vaults  under  St.  Paul's  Church,  where  it 
"  was  thought  almost  impossible  that  the  fire  should  come. 
"  But,  the  church  itself  being  on  fire,  the  exceeding  weight 
"  of  the  stones  falling  down  did  break  into  the  vaults  and  let 
"  in  the  fire,  and  the}^  could  not  come  near  to  save  the  books. 
"  The  library  also  of  Sion  College  was  burnt,  and  most  of  the 
"  libraries  of  ministers,  conformable  and  nonconformable,  in 
"  the  City,  with  the  libraries  of  many  Nonconformists  of  the 
"  country,  which  had  been  lately  brought  up  to  the  City.  I 
"  saw  the  half-burnt  leaves  of  books  near  my  dwelling  at 
"  Acton,  six  miles  from  London  ;  but  others  found  them  near 
"  Windsor,  almost  twenty  miles  distant."  Pepys's  summary 
account  is  that  books  to  the  value  of  ^150,000  were  burnt  in 
and  round  St.  Paul's  and  "  all  the  great  booksellers  almost 
undone."  To  the  loss  of  their  stock  was  added  that  of  their 
premises.  Some  of  the  more  enterprising  of  them  found 
temporary  premises  outside  the  ring  of  the  ruins,  not  to  return 
to  their  former  quarters  for  several  years  ;  but  meanwhile  the 
London  book-trade  was  thrown  into  fewer  hands 2. 

The  leading  London  publisher  at  that  time,  as  we  know 
(ante,  pp.  403-405),  was  Henry  Herringman,  "at  the  sign  of 
the  Blue  Anchor  in  the  Lower  Walk  of  the  New  Exchange," 

1  Toland's  Life  of  Milton  (edit.  1761),  or  was  recently,   in  the   possession   of 

p.  121  ;  Sotheby's  Ramblings  in  Eluci-  William  Baker,  Esq.,  of  Bayfordsbury, 

dation   of  Milton's    Autograph   (1S61),  Herts. 

p.  165  and  p.  196.  with  plate  there.  The  2  Baxter's  Life  (1696),  Part  III.  p.  16  ; 

original   manuscript  press-copy   of  the  Pepys,  under  dates  Oct.  5,  1666  and  Jan. 

First  Book  of  Paradise  Lost,  mentioned  14,  1667-8. 

by  Newton  as  existing  in  1761,  is  now,  . . . 


milton's  agreement  with  simmons.  509 

in  the  middle  of  the  Strand.  As  his  shop  had  fortunately 
escaped  the  range  of  the  Great  Fire,  there  can  have  been 
less  of  interruption  to  his  business  than  to  that  of  most  of 
his  brethren.  It  would  not  have  been  surpising,  therefore,  if 
Paradise  Lost  had  been  published  by  Herring-man,  and  so  if 
Milton  had  been  remembered  as  one  of  that  numerous  group 
of  the  most  celebrated  authors  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  who 
were  to  be  seen  tending,  habitually  or  occasionally,  to  Herring- 
man's  shop  in  the  afternoons. 

Whether  he  did  go  to  Herringman  only  Herringman  knows. 
The  actual  bargain  was  with  a  printer  and  publisher  in  a  far 
inferior  way  of  business.  He  was  a  Samuel  Simmons,  "  next 
door  to  the  Golden  Lion  in  Aldersgate  Street,"  probably 
a  son  or  nephew  of  the  Matthew  Simmons,  of  the  same 
Aldersgate  Street  premises,  who  had  published  Milton's  Bucer 
Divorce  Tract  in  1644,  and  his  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates 
•in  1649,  and  who,  probably  by  Milton's  means,  had  been  the 
official  printer  for  the  Commonwealth  in  the  first  years  of 
Milton's  secretaryship,  and  had  in  that  capacity  published 
also  Milton's  Observations  on  Ormond's  Peace  with  the  Irish, 
and  his  EifconoMastes.  This  Matthew  Simmons  seems  to  have 
been  now  dead,  for,  on  the  7th  of  March  1663-4,  a  Mary 
Simmons,  probably  his  widow,  is  found  registering  a  part  of 
Caryl's  Commentary  on  Job,  the  previous  parts  of  which 
had  been  the  copyright  of  Matthew  Simmons.  The  Samuel 
Simmons  who  had  at  length  taken  up  the  family  business  in 
the  old  premises  was,  therefore,  new  in  the  business  when 
Milton  went  to  him;  but  his  relationship  to  the  former 
Simmons,  and  the  nearness  of  his  premises  to  Artillery  Walk, 
may  have  been  recommendations. 

The  following  is  the  agreement  between  Milton  and  Sim- 
mons in  the  matter  of  Paradise  Lost.  There  were,  of  course, 
two  copies  of  the  agreement ;  and  it  is  the  copy  signed  for 
Milton  by  proxy  and  kept  by  Simmons  that  has  been  pre- 
served : — 

These  Presents,  made  the  27th  day  of  Aprill  1667,  Betweene 
John  Milton,  gent.,  of  thone  ptie,  and  Samuel  Symons,  Printer,  of 
thother  ptie,  Wittness  :— That  the  said  John  Milton,  in  considera- 


510  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

tion  of  five  pounds  to  him  now  paid  by  the  said  Sam11.  Symons  and 
other  the  considerations  herein  mentioned,   hath   given,   granted, 
and  assigned,  and  by  these  pnts  doth  give,  grant,  and  assigne,  unto 
the  said  Sam11.  Symons,  his  executors  and  assignes,  All  that  Booke, 
Copy,  or  Manuscript  of  a  Poem  intituled  Paradise  lost,  or  by  whatso- 
ever other  title  or  name  the  same  is  or  shalbe  called  or  distinguished, 
now  lately  Licensed  to  be  printed,  Together  with  the  full  benefitt, 
proffitt,  and  advantage  thereof,  or  wh.  shall  or  may  arise  thereby. 
And    the    said   John  Milton,    for   him,    his   exrs.   and  ad8.,    doth 
covenant  with  the  said  Sam11.  Symons,  his  exrs.  and  assns.,  That  hee 
and  they  shall  at  all  tymes  hereafter  have,  hold,  and   enjoy  the 
same,  and  all    Impressions  thereof  accordingly,  without    the   lett 
or  hinderance  of  him,  the  said  John  Milton,  his  ex1"8,  or  assns.,  or 
any  pson  or  psons  by  his  or  their  consent  or  privitie,  And  that  the 
said  Jo.  Milton,  his  exrs.  or  ad8.,   or  any  other   by  his  or  their 
meanes  or  consent,  shall  not  print  or  cause  to  be  printed,  or  sell, 
dispose,  or  publish,  the  said  Booke  or  Manuscript,  or  any  other 
Booke  or  Manuscript  of  the   same  tenor   or  subject,  without  the 
consent  of  the  said  Sam11.  Symons,  his  exrs.  and  assns.     In  con- 
sideracion  whereof,  the  said  Sam11.  Symons,  for  him,  his  exrs.  and 
ads.,  doth  covenant  with  the  said  John  Milton,  his  exrs.  and  assns., 
well  and  truly  to  pay  unto  the  said  John  Milton,  his  exrs.  and  ad8., 
the  sum  of  five  pounds  of  lawfull  english  money  at  the  end  of  the 
first  Impression  which  the  said  Sam11.  Symons,  his  exrs.  or  assn8., 
shall  make  and  publish  of  the  said  Copy  or  Manuscript ;  Which  im- 
pression   shalbe  accounted  to  be  ended  when   thirteene  hundred 
Books  of  the  said  whole  Copy  or  Manuscript  imprinted  shalbe  sold 
and  retaild  off  to  pticular  reading  Customers :  And  shall  also  pay 
other  five  pounds  unto  the  said  Mr.  Milton,  or  his  asslis.,  at  the 
end  of  the  second  Impression,  to  be  accounted  as  aforesaid,  And  five 
pounds  more  at  the   end   of  the  third   Impression,  to  be  in  like 
manner  accounted ;  And  that  the  said  three  first  Impressions  shall 
not  exceed  fifteene  hundred  Books  or  volumes  of  the  said  whole 
Copy  or  Manuscript  a  peice  :  And  further,  That  he  the  said  Samuel 
Symons,  and  his  exrs.,  ad8.,  and  assus.,  shalbe  ready  to  make  oath 
before  a  Master  in  Chancery  concerning  his  or  their  knowledge  and 
beleife  of  or  concerning  the  truth  of  the  disposing  and  selling  the 
said  Books  by  Retail,  as  aforesaid,  whereby  the  said  Mr.  Milton  is 
to  be  intitled  to  his  said  money  from  time  to  time,  upon   every 
reasonable  request  in  that  behalfe,  or  in  default  thereof  shall  pay 


MILTON  S   AGREEMENT   WITH   SIMMONS. 


511 


the  said  five  pounds  agreed  to  be  paid  upon  each  Impression,  as  afore- 
said, as  if  the  same  were  due,  and  for  and  in  lieu  thereof. — In 
wittness  wher/eof  the  said  pties  have  to  this  writing  indented  inter- 
changeably sett  their  hands  and  seales,  the  day  and  yeare  first 
abovewritten. 


<r^ 


Sealed  and  delivered  in  the 
presence  of  us, 

John  Fisher, 

Beniamin  Greene,  serv*.  to  Mr.  Milton  l. 


1  The  original  of  this  famous  Agree- 
ment is  in  the  British  Museum,  having 
been  presented  to  that  collection  in 
1852  by  Samuel  Rogers,  the  poet,  who 
had  purchased  it  in  1831,  for  a  hundred 
guineas,  from  Mr.  Pickering,  the  pub- 
lisher. It  had  come  down  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  famous  publishing  family 
of  the  Tonsons,  who  had  acquired  part 
copyright  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1683  and 
the  whole  before  1691,  and  had  thus 
got  into  their  hands  this  evidence  of 
the  original  sale.  It  is  distinctly  men- 
tioned by  Bishop  Newton,  in  his  Life  of 
Milton  in  1749,  as  being  then  in  the 
possession  of  Jacob  Tonson,  tertius,  to- 
gether with  the  manuscript  copy  of  the 
First  Book  of  the  poem,  containing  Tom- 
kyns's  imprimatur.  After  the  death  of 
this  Jacob  Tonson  in  1767,  when  the 
great  publishing  business  of  the  Tonson 
family  ceased,  the  business  papers  of 
the  firm  were  negligently  kept  in  the 
premises  of  a  Bank  in  the  Strand,  of 
which  Tonson  had  been  a  partner.  Some 
of  them  got  astray  in  the  hands  of 
clerks,  who  appropriated  them  as  relics  ; 
and  not  till  1S24  is  the  contract  with 
Simmons  a?ain  heard  of.  It  was  then 
in  the  possession  of  a  tailor  in  Clifford 
Street,  Bond  Street,  who  said  it  had 
been  left  him,  with  other  papers,  by  a 
lodger,  who  had  been  iu  arrears  with 
his  rent.  It  was  sold  by  this  tailor, 
with  the  other  papers  (some  Tonson 
papers  relating  to  Dryden,  Addison, 
Steele,  &c),  for  £2o,  to  Mr.  Septimus 
l'mwett,  a  London  bookseller,  who  was 
then  bringing  out  an  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost  with  illustrations  by  Martin,  l'mw- 
ett sent  the  papers  to  a  sale  by  auction 


on  the  28th  of  February,  1826,  when 
the  Simmons  and  Milton  contract  was 
bought,  by  itself,  by  Mr.  Pickering,  for 
£15  3s.  Sold  afterwards  by  Mr.  Pick- 
ering for  £60  to  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence, 
it  remained  in  the  possession  of  Sir 
Thomas  till  his  death  in  1830,  when  Mr. 
Pickering  re-acquired  it,  to  sell  it  again, 
in  the  following  year,  to  the  poet  Rogers. 
For  farther  details  see  Mr.  Leigh 
Sotheby's  Rumblings,  pp.  202—204.— 
Notwithstanding  the  vague  history  of 
the  document  between  1767  and  1824, 
there  is  not  the  least  doubt  as  to  its 
genuineness.  It  is  the  actual  copy  of 
the  agreement  as  kept  by  Simmons. 
But  there  has  been  a  general  mistake 
as  to  the  signature.  The  poet  Rogers, 
who  was  proud  of  the  relic,  never. 
doubted,  when  he  showed  it  to  his 
friends,  that  the  signature  was  Milton's 
own  ;  most  of  those  who  now  look  at 
the  relic  in  the  British  Museum  never 
doubt  it.  Most  certainly,  however,  the 
signature  is  not  Milton's  own,  but  a 
signature  written  for  him  by  some  one 
else,  and  certified  by  the  touch  of  Mil- 
ton's finger  and  by  th«-  annexed  Hilton 
family  seal  of  the  Spread  Eagle.  This 
might  have  occurred  to  any  one  on  re- 
flecting that  Milton  in  1667  had  been 
fifteen  years  totally  blind.  The  signa- 
ture in'the  contract  is  not  like  any 
signature  of  Milton's  before  his  blind- 
ness ;  and  how  unlike  it  is  to  the  only 
now  known  signature  of  Milton  after  his 
blindness  will  be  apparent  to  any  one 
who  will  turn  l>a<k  to  p.  475.  The  pre- 
sent signature  cannot  even  have  been  by 
Milton's  pen  led  by  another  person.  The 
writing  is  too  neat  and  regular  for  that. 


512  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

The  substance  of  this  bargain,  drawn  up  in  such  unusually- 
strict  legal  form,  was  that  Milton,  for  five  pounds  paid  down, 
and  for  the  chance  of  three  future  payments  of  a  like  sum  of 
five  pounds,  had  parted  absolutely  and  for  ever  with  the  copy- 
right of  Paradise  Lost.  But  for  the  second  and  third  clauses, 
one  might  imagine  that  Milton  had  sold  only  the  three  first 
editions  of  the  book  for  the  £20  thus  part  paid  and  part  in 
prospect,  and  that  after  the  third  edition  the  copyright  would 
revert  to  himself  or  his  representatives.  As  the  copyright  of 
books  was  then  regarded  as  perpetual,  such  a  reversion  of  the 
book  to  the  author  after  a  certain  number  of  editions  might 
be  of  consequence.  Clearly,  however,  if  Milton  contemplated 
the  possibility  of  more  than  three  editions,  he  was  willing  to 
waive  any  interest  or  expectation  of  his  own  after  the  third. 
Simmons  was  to  be  the  proprietor  of  the  book  for  ever  ;  all 
impressions  of  it  to  the  end  of  time  were  to  be  by  him,  his 
representatives  and  assigns,  and  none  others  ;  and  for  this 
absolute  possession  he  had  settled  the  purchase  money  in  such 
a  way  that,  if  the  book  were  a  failure,  he  could  hardly  lose 
a  farthing  in  addition  to  his  costs  in  printing  and  the  <^5 
paid  down.  To  allow  a  margin,  perhaps,  for  gift-copies,  the 
first  edition  as  printed  off  might  actually  consist  of  1 500,  but 
in  the  account  with  Milton  1300  copies  were  to  constitute  an 
edition.  After  a  retail  sale  of  1300  copies  Milton  was  to  be 
entitled  to  another  £5  ;  if  1300  copies  more  should  go  off  in 
a  second  edition,  a  third  £5  would  be  due ;  a  fourth  £5 
would  follow  after  the  sale  of  a  third  edition  of  1300 ;  after 
that  nothing.  According  to  the  present  value  of  money  it 
was  as  if  Milton  had  received  £Y7  10s.  down,  and  had  to 
expect  at  the  utmost  three  more  sums  of  that  amount,  making 
£70  in  all  for  his  Paradise  Lost.  That  was  on  the  supposition 
of  a  sale  of  3900,  or  say  a  circulation  of  4500  copies.  Beyond 
that  Milton's  thoughts  did  not  range. 

From  April,  through  May,  June,  July,  and  August,  1667, 
we  are  to  conceive  the  proof-sheets  passing  between  Simmons;s 
printing  premises  at  the  Golden  Lion  in  Aldersgate  Street 
and  Milton's  house  in  Artillery  Walk,  and  most  careful  re- 
visions of  them  by  some  scholarly  person  or  persons  assisting 


PRINTING   OF   PABADISE   LOST.  513 

Milton,   and  also  by  Milton  himself,   so  far  as  his  sensitive 
ear  could  detect  mispunctuations  or  other  errors  in  the  suc- 
cessive pages  as  they  were  read  to  him  aloud.     But  through 
what  a  new  turmoil  in  London,  round  the  ruins  and  rubbish- 
heaps,   was    this   quiet    process   between   author  and  printer 
carried  on  !     The  public  debt  by  this  time  so  enormous,  and 
the  paralysis  of  trade  by  the  Great  Fire  so  complete,  that  the 
sailors  and   all  in  the  employment  of  Government  were   in 
mutiny  for  arrears  of  pay,  and  the  whole  population  excited 
and  turbulent,  with  outcries  growing  ever  louder  against  Cla- 
rendon and  the  Court !     Negotiations,  therefore,  reluctantly 
begun  by  Charles  for  a  peace  with  the  Dutch  ;  these  negotia- 
tions in  progress,  and  all  the  larger  vessels  of  war  in  the 
Thames  and  Medway  laid  up  in  dock,  and  the  works  of  forti- 
fication that  had  been  going  on  down  the  river  stopped,  and 
the  river-banks  crowded  with  the  mutinous  sailors,  and  dock- 
labourers,  and  their  wives, — when  lo,   from  the  10th  to  the 
14th  of  June,  that  disgrace  which  marked  England's  lowest 
point  of  degradation   even  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II,   and 
which  brought  back  to  the  lips  of  the  Londoners  the  name  of 
their  unforgotten,  and  now  sorely  regretted,  Oliver  !    Ruyter's 
Dutch  fleet  off  the  Nore,  come  to  revenge  Holmes's  outrage 
on  the  Isle  of  Schelling ;    Ruyter's  Dutch  fleet  up  the  river, 
breaking  booms  and    obstructions,    cannonading   forts,    cap- 
turing and  burning   at  will  the  best  ships  of  the  English 
navy  ;    London  blockaded,  and  uncertain  whether  the  Dutch 
would  not  be  in  what  remained  of  her  streets  for  sack  and 
pillage,   below    the  Tower  or   around  Whitehall  itself;    the 
Court  in  a  panic  ;   the   drums  beating  in  the  streets  to  call 
the  citizens  to  arms  ;    the  citizens  packing  their  goods  for 
escape  into  the   country  ;    the  country  itself  astir  for  miles 
and   miles,  as  far    as    there    was    the    sound    of  the    Dutch 
cannon !     During   those    five    dreadful    days    of   June    1667 
Simmons  in  Aldersgate  Street,  then  about  half  through  the 
printing  of  Paradise  Lost,  must  have  had   to  interrupt   the 
work.     But    on    the    14th    of  June   the   Dutch   were   gone, 
towing  the  Royal  Charles  in  flames  after  them,  and  having 
otherwise  had  revenge  enough ;    and,  though  the  execration 
VOL.  vi.  L  1 


514  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

against  the  Court  and  Clarendon  was  all  the  fiercer,  and 
Clarendon's  great  new  house  in  Piccadilly  was  attacked  by 
the  mob,  the  panic  had  passed  away.  On  the  21st  of  July 
peace  with  the  Dutch  was  concluded  at  Breda;  and  on  the 
29th  the  King,  meeting  the  two  Houses,  who  had  been 
summoned  in  the  panic  for  an  extraordinary  session,  informed 
them  that,  as  the  necessity  for  such  a  session  was  over,  he 
would  not  require  their  attendance  till  the  day  in  October 
to  which  they  stood  formally  prorogued.  The  printing  of 
Paradise  Lost  was  then  nearly  complete ;  and  our  next  notice 
of  it  is  in  the  Stationers'  Registers  under  date  Aug.  20,  when 
it  was  ready,  or  nearly  ready,  to  appear. 

In  the  seven  months  of  the  year  1667  preceding  that  of  the 
publication  of  Paradise  Lost,  there  had  been  forty-two  registra- 
tions in  the  books  of  the  London  Stationers'  Company.  Among 
them  I  note  the  following  :  —  Dryden's  Annus  Mirabilis, 
licensed  by  L'Estrange,  and  published  by  Herringman  (Jan. 
21,  1666-7)  ;  The  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religion,  by  Richard 
Baxter,  licensed  by  Mr.  Thomas  Cook,  and  published  by 
Mr.  Eyton  (March  12) ;  a  Translation  of  the  Visions  of  Bon 
Francisco  de  Quevedo,  licensed  by  L'Estrange,  and  published 
by  Herringman  (March  26,  1667) ;  The  Princes,  or  the  Death 
of  Richard  the  Third,  a  Tragedy,  licensed  by  L'Estrange,  and 
published  by  Thomas  Dring  (June  1) ;  the  second  part  of 
Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor's  Dissuasive  from  Popery,  licensed  by 
Tomkyns,  and  published  by  Royston  (June  29)  ;  Sprat's  His- 
tory of  the  Institution,  Design,  and  Progress  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  London  for  the  advancement  of  Experimental  Philosophy, 
licensed  by  Mr.  Secretary  Morrice,  and  published  by  John 
Martyn  and  James  Allestree  (July  25) ;  and  Memoirs  of  the 
Lives,  Actions,  Sufferings,  and  Death,  of  those  noble,  revered  and 
excellent  personages,  that  died  or  suffered  by  sequestration,  deci- 
mation, or  otherwise,  for  the  Protestant  Religion,  and  the  great 
principle  thereof,  Allegiance  to  their  Sovereign,  in  the  late  wars 
from  the  year  1627  to  1660,  the  author  being  David  Lloyd, 
the  licencer  Tomkyns,  and  the  publisher  Samuel  Speede  (July 
27).  The  following  is  a  complete  list  of  the  registrations 
for  August  1667,  the  Master  of  the  Stationers'  Company  being 


REGISTRATION   OF    PARADISE  LOST.  515 

then  Mr.  Humphrey  Robinson,  and  the  two  Wardens  being 
Mr.  Evan  Tyler  and  Mr.  Richard  Royston  : 

Aug.  7  : — Herringman  registers,  under  licence  from  L'Estrange, 
"three  new  plays:  viz.  The  Usurper,  a  tragedy,  The  Change  of 
Crowns,  a  play,  and  The  London  Gentleman,  a  comedy;  all  three 
written  by  the  Hon.  Edward  Howard,  Esq." 

Same  day: — Herringman  registers,  also  under  licence  from 
L'Estrange,  Mnstapha,  a  tragedy  by  the  Earl  of  Orrery. 

Same  day : — Herringman  registers,  also  under  licence  from 
L'Estrange,  "An  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie,  &c,  The  Wild 
Gallant,  a  comedy,  and  The  Maiden  Queen,  a  comedy,  by  John 
Dryden,  Esq." 

Aug.  12  : — Ralph  Needham  registers,  under  licence  from  Mr. 
John  Hall,  "  Disquisitio  anatomica  de  formato  foetu,  autore 
Gualtero  Needham." 

Aug.  19  : — Herringman  registers  his  acquisition,  by  purchase 
from  Anne  Moseley,  of  the  copyrights  of  the  following  books,  which 
had  belonged  to  her  late  husband,  Humphrey  Moseley : — Cowley's 
Miscellanies,  his  Mistress  or  Love  Verses,  his  Pindarique  Odes, 
and  his  Davideis;  Donne's  Poems,  Songs,  Sonnets,  and  Elegies; 
Davenant's  Love  and  Honour  (one-half),  Unfortunate  Lovers, 
Albovine,  Just  Italian,  Cruel  Brother,  Madagascar  with  other 
Poems,  and  the  masques  called  Luminalia,  Salmanda,  Thelia, 
Temple  of  Love,  and  Britannia  Triumphans ;  Carew's  Poems,  with 
a  masque  of  his ;  Crashaw's  Steps  to  the  Temple ;  Ben  Jonson's 
Works,  Vol.  Ill,  containing  fifteen  masques,  Horace's  Art  of  Poetry 
in  English,  English  Grammar,  Timber  and  Discoveries,  Under- 
woods,  The  Magnetic  Lady,  A  Tale  of  a  Tab,  The  Sad  Shepherd, 
The  Devil  is  an  Ass,  The  Widow;  Sir  Richard  Fanshawe's  transla- 
tion of  II  Pastor  Fido,  with  annexed  poems ;  Sir  John  Suckling's 
Poems,  Letters  and  Plays,  and  Remains ;  Denham's  Cooper's  Hill, 
The  Sophy,  and  Translation  of  the  Second  Aeneid.  These,  being 
old  copyrights,  did  not  need  fresh  licence. 

Aug.  20,  1667  : — "Mr.  Sam.  Symous  entered  for  his  copie,  under 
"  the  hands  of  Mr.  Thomas  Tomkyns  and  Mr.  "Warden  Royston,  a 
"  booke  or  copie  intituled  Paradise  lost,  a  Poem  in  Tenne  Bookes, 
"  by  J.  M."  The  association  of  the  name  of  one  of  the  wardens  in 
the  registration  with  that  of  the  official  licencer  is  not  peculiar  to 
this  entry,  but  occurs  in  nearly  all.  One  notes  it  as  curious,  how- 
ever, that  the  attesting  warden  in  this  case  should  have  been  the 
staunch  Royalist  Royston,  the  publisher  of  the  Eikon  Basili/ai  and 
the  other  works  of  Charles  I. 

Same  day  : — Thomas  Rooke  registers,  under  licence  from  Thomas 
Cook,  Decimal  Arithmetick,  or  a  Plainer  and  [inore]  Familiar 
Teaching  (lie  said  Art  titan  has  hitherto  been  published:  Also 
Tables  of  Interest  upon  Interest,  the  Value  of  all  Sorts  of  Purchases 

L  1  2 


516  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

at  any  rate  of  interest  from  five  to  twelve  j>er  cent.,  dec.     By  James 
Hodder,  Schoolmaster,  late  of  Lothbury,  now  at  Bow. 

Aug.  30 : — Mrs.  Anne   Maxwell  registers,    under    licence    from 
L'Estrange,  The  Life  and  Death  of  Mother  Shipton. 

Although  only  Milton's  initials  are  given  in  the  registra- 
tion, the  book  itself  appeared  with  Milton's  name  in  full 
on  the  title-page  thus : — "  Paradise  lost.  |  A  |  Poem  \  written 
in  |  Ten  Boohs  \  By  John  Milton.  |  Licensed  and  Entred  accord- 
ing |  to  Order.  |  London  \  Printed,  and  are  to  be  sold  by  Peter 
Parker  \  tinder  Creed  Church,  neer  Aldgate  ;  And  by  |  Robert 
Boulter  at  the  Turks  Head  in  Bishopsgate-street ;  \  And  Mat- 
thias Walker,  tinder  St.  Bunstons  Church  \  in  Fleet  -  street, 
1667/'  It  is  to  be  observed  that  in  this  title-page  the 
printer  Simmons  does  not  give  his  own  name,  but  only 
the  names  of  three  booksellers  whom  he  had  employed  to  sell 
the  book.  The  shops  of  these  three  booksellers  were,  of 
course,  in  the  unburnt  fringes  of  the  City,  two  at  the  east 
end,  and  one  at  the  west  end,  nearer  Westminster  and  the 
fashionable  world.  It  is  worth  while  also  to  note  that 
Simmons  cannot  have  at  once  distributed  the  whole  impres- 
sion he  had  printed  among  the  three  booksellers,  Parker, 
Boulter,  and  Walker,  but  only  a  certain  number  of  bound 
copies  for  the  first  supply  of  the  market,  keeping  the  rest  in 
sheets  on  his  own  premises  in  Aldersgate  Street. 

Copies  of  the  book  may  have  been  out  in  London  in  the 
last  week  of  August  1667.  The  selling  price  was  3*.  per 
copy ;  which  is  as  if  a  similar  book  now  were  to  cost  10*.  6d. 
The  volume  was  of  small  quarto  size,  and  of  rather  handsome 
appearance,  with  good  yellowish  paper,  and  good  legible  type. 
It  consisted  of  342  pages ;  but  this  could  not  be  ascertained 
from  immediate  inspection,  inasmuch  as  the  pages  were  not 
numbered,  the  heading  in  every  page  giving  only  the  running 
title  of  the  poem,  with  the  number  of  the  Book.  To  make 
up  for  this  deficiency,  the  lines  in  each  Book  were  numbered 
in  tens  on  the  outer  margin  of  each  page,  so  that  reference 
to  any  passage  might  be  easy.  Once  or  twice,  in  some  copies 
at  least,  there  is  a  miscounting  of  the  lines.  As  the  number- 
ings  on  the  outer  margins  are  contained  between  two  per- 


PUBLICATION    OF    PARADISE   LOST.  517 

pendicular  lines,  as  the  headings  are  within  two  similar 
parallels,  and  as  there  are  single  lines  along  the  inner  margin 
and  at  the  foot,  each  page  of  the  text  has  the  look  of  being 
inclosed  neatly  in  a  frame.  The  general  look  of  neatness 
thus  given  to  the  pages  is  not  belied  on  closer  examination 
of  the  text.  The  spelling  is,  of  course,  the  customary  one  of 
Milton's  day,  with  some  recurring  peculiarities  that  must 
have  been  regulated  by  himself,  but  in  the  main  exhibiting 
that  instability  or  want  of  uniformity,  that  alternation  at  will 
between  two  spellings  of  the  same  word,  or  variation  at  will 
among  three  or  four  different  spellings  of  the  same  word, 
which  characterizes  all  books  of  the  time  Nor  is  the  point- 
ing on  any  strictly  logical  principle,  or  uniformly  on  any 
principle  of  any  kind ;  it  is,  as  most  pointing  is  to  this  day, 
a  mere  empirical  compromise,  for  the  reader's  convenience, 
between  pause -marking'  and  clause -marking.  Altogether, 
however,  the  book  had  been  printed  with  wonderful  accuracy. 
I  do  not  know  that  any  other  book  of  Milton's  was  put  forth 
in  his  lifetime  so  accurately  printed  and  in  such  pleasant  form. 
One  peculiarity  of  the  form  was  that  the  book  contained  no 
preface  or  other  preliminary  matter  whatever.  You  passed  from 
the  title-page  at  once  to  the  text  of  the  Poem. 

Not  only  is  it  memorable  that  Paradise  Lost  appeared  in 
London  when  the  heart  of  the  City  was  one  great  space  of 
hardly  touched  ruins  after  the  Fire,  and  that  it  had  been 
printed  while  the  Londoners  were  in  their  first  phrenzy  of 
rage  and  shame  on  account  of  the  national  disgrace  inflicted 
by  the  Dutch  outrages  and  triumphs  on  the  Thames  and 
Medway  :  the  very  week  of  the  announcement  of  the  book 
is  marked  most  exactly  by  another  coincidence.  It  was  the 
week  of  Clarendon's  fall.  On  Monday,  the  20th  of  August, 
when  Simmons  was  registering  the  book,  Clarendon,  then  in 
mourning  for  his  wife,  whom  he  had  buried  three  days  before 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  could  still  hope  that  the  support 
of  the  King  and  the  Duke  of  York  would  carry  him  through 
the  crisis  of  his  unpopularity.  Only  a  day  or  two  after  that, 
however,  there  came  to  him  in  Piccadilly  the  stunning  mes- 
sage  from    the    King   that    he   must   resign    the   seals;    on 


518  LTFE   OF   MILTON  .AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

Monday  the  26th  there  was  that  interview  between  him  and 
the  King  when,  to  cut  short  his  passionate  remonstrances, 
the  King-  at  last  rose  in  gloom,  dismissing  him  through  the 
private  garden,  to  be  gazed  at  by  Lady  Castlemaine ;  and  it 
was  on  Friday  the  30th,  while  he  still  proudly  or  madly 
hesitated,  that  there  came  the  peremptory  warrant,  through 
Secretary  Morrice,  which  compelled  him  to  give  up  the  seals. 
The  first  copies  of  Paradise  Lost,  from  Parker's  shop  or 
Boulter's  in  the  east  end,  or  from  Walker's  in  the  west  end, 
may  then  have  been  in  the  hands  of  readers  here  and  there  in 
the  streets,  turning  over  the  leaves  as  they  went  along ;  and 
the  poem  was  gradually  to  find  its  way  about,  and  make  its 
first  impression,  during  those  next  three  months  of  the  year 
1667  which  were  the  time  of  Clarendon's  desperate  lingering 
in  London,  till  the  danger  of  capital  impeachment  by  the 
Parliament,  after  their  meeting  in  October  for  their  Seventh 
Session,  drove  him  into  his  perpetual  banishment. 

PARADISE  LOST. 

The  other  day,  tired  with  excess  of  readings  in  the  English 
Literature  of  the  Restoration,  I  took  up  again,  by  a  kind  of 
instinct,  Dante's  Divina  Commedia,  in  Cary's  translation.  I 
read  no  farther  than  to  where  Dante,  astray  in  the  gloomy 
wood,  is  met  by  Virgil,  who  offers  to  be  his  guide  through 
two  of  the  regions  of  the  eternal  world,  explaining  that  he 
has  been  sent  for  that  purpose  by  Beatrice,  and  promising 
that  Beatrice  herself  will  be  his  guide  into  the  realms  of  the 
highest.  At  that  point,  remembering  what  a  succession  of 
things  and  visions  was  to  follow,  first  in  the  Inferno,  then  in 
the  Purgatorio,  and  then  in  the  Paradiso,  I  had  suddenly  to 
stop,  overcome  by  the  thrill  already  as  I  held  the  book  in  un- 
hand, and  exclaiming  once  and  again,  "  Mercy  of  heaven ! 
this  is  a  book,  here  is  literature."  Hardly  otherwise  can 
a  reader  have  been  impressed  who  took  up  Paradise  Lost 
on  its  first  appearance  and  compared  it  with  the  printed  pro- 
ductions into  the  midst  of  which  it  had  come. 

The  comparison  of  Paradise  Lost  with  the  Divina  Commedia 


PARADISE  LOST.  519 

is  more  obvious  now  than  it  could  be  then.  In  the  one  poem 
as  in  the  other  we  have  the  personal  philosophy  of  a  great 
and  much  exercised  man,  set  forth  in  the  form  which  poetry 
requires,  and  which  alone  constitutes  poetry,  i.  e.  in  the  form 
of  optical  or  visual  phantasy.  Moreover,  in  the  actual  plans 
and  contents  of  the  two  poems  there  are  resemblances  or 
correspondences.  Both  are  cosmological  visions,  including 
things  and  ongoings  beyond  the  known  universe,  but  exhibited 
as  everlastingly  in  connexion  with  that  universe,  and  inter- 
involved  with  the  actions  of  mankind.  Under  this  general 
similarity,  however,  there  is  a  specific  difference.  It  may  be 
defined  in  terms  of  the  common  and  still  useful  distinction 
between  the  subjective  mood  or  genius  and  the  objective 
mood  or  genius  in  poetry. 

With  Dante,  preeminent]}"  a  subjective  poet,  the  vast 
personal  purpose  preceded  and  caused  the  cosmological  vision. 
His  head  and  heart  were  full  of  a  history  of  men  and  tilings 
on  earth,  this  history  composed  largely  of  personages  and 
transactions  belonging  to  the  Italy  of  his  own  time,  or  of 
times  lately  past,  but  ranging  a  little  over  the  rest  of 
mediaeval  Europe  for  select  figures  and  instances,  and  with  a 
winding  path  back  through  Roman  and  Greek  antiquity  to 
the  Hebrews  and  the  primeval  patriarchs.  He  had  formed 
his  theory  of  this  history,  concluded  what  had  been  good  and 
what  had  been  evil  in  it,  who  were  the  scoundrels  and  who 
the  heroes  or  the  more  or  less  meritorious.  He  had  his  ideal 
also  of  what  might  still  be  accomplished  in  the  moral  and 
political  system  of  Italy,  and  in  the  system  of  the  world  as 
instructed  and  regulated  from  that  centre.  When,  accord- 
ingly, he  had  resolved  to  express  all  that  was  thus  in  his 
mind,  his  ethics,  his  politics,  his  notions  of  empire,  his 
judgments  of  those  he  had  known,  his  hatreds  and  his  sorrows, 
his  admirations  and  his  hopes,  in  a  poem  that  should  In- 
adequately symbolic  of  such  a  mental  medley,  he  had  but  to 
fall  into  the  poetic  musing,  let  the  musing  protract  itself,  and 
accept  the  visions  as  they  then  infallibly  came.  It  was  in 
his  thirty-fifth  year,  as  he  tells  us,  while  he  was  still  in 
Florence,  that  his  dream  of  the  three  worlds  began,  and  it 


520  LIFE    OF   MILTON  AND  HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

followed  him,  haunted  him,  grew  upon  him,  in  his  subsequent 
years  of  exile,  wanderings,  and  penury,  till  it  was  optically 
complete,  and  nothing  remained  that  had  not  been  put  into 
it  somehow'.  He  had  actually  seen  the  three  worlds  in  suc- 
cession, circle  after  circle  of  each,  and  conversed  with  their 
inhabitants ;  and  what  he  had  thus  seen,  the  glorious  and  the 
grotesque  together,  was  to  be  regarded  as  nothing-  arbitrary 
or  determined  by  will  merely,  but  as,  by  strict  poetic  law,  the 
translation  of  his  entire  mind  and  life  into  the  one  visual 
phantasmagory  that  was  fully  and  exactty  equivalent.  In 
order,  therefore,  that  it  should  be  known  in  future  times  how 
Dante  had  thought  and  felt  on  all  subjects,  human  and 
divine,  while  he  was  alive,  he  would  report  this  strange 
vision  of  his  Hell,  his  Purgatory,  and  his  Paradise,  to  their 
last  particulars,  in  studied  song,  and  burn  it  into  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  Italians  for  ever. 

"  Se  mai  continga  che  '1  poerna  sacro 
Al  quale  ha  posto  mano  e  cielo  e  terra, 
Si  che  m'  ha  fatto  per  phi  anni  macro, 

Vinca  la  crudelta  che  fuor  mi  serra 
Del  bello  ovile  ov'  io  dormii  agnello 
Nimico  a'  lupi  che  li  darmo  guerra, 

Con  altra  voce  omai,  con  altro  vello, 
Eitornerb  poeta." 

In  the  case  of  Milton  the  process  was,  in  some  sense, 
reversed.  He  had  chosen  a  subject,  and  whatever  of  his  own 
mind  and  philosophy  he  could  insert  into  his  poem  had  to 
come  in  the  course  of  his  treatment  of  this  subject  as  already 
chosen.  Nor  was  Milton  different  in  this  from  his  former 
self.  Though  the  subjective  genius  of  a  great  personality 
was  as  conspicuous  in  his  life  as  in  Dante's,  though  he  had 
striven  and  suffered  in  the  actual  affairs  of  his  time  as 
vehemently  as  Dante  had  in  the  affairs  of  his,  though  he  too 
had  been  an  opinionist  and  idealist  in  ethics  and  politics,  a 
man  of  hatreds  and  antipathies,  a  controversialist  all  but  in- 
cessantly, one  observes  generally  in  his  poems  from  the  first 
less  of  the  subjective  element  than  in  Dante's,  and  more  of 
the   habit    of  the    objective   artist.     In   his    earlier    poems> 


PARADISE  LOST.  521 

Miltonic    though    they   all    are,    full    of  his    own    peculiar 
character  and  of  no  other,  what  one  generally  sees  is  a  theme 
or  incident  externally  given,  and  accepted  and  treated  artisti- 
cally on   its  own  account,  the  Miltonism  inevitable  indeed, 
but    infused   or  superinduced.      Even  in  his  Comus   this   is 
apparent.     If,    as    is   probable,  the   myth    or  story  of  that 
masque  was  an  invention  of  Milton's  own  in  the  interest  of  that 
principle  of  the   invincibility  of  virtue  which  he  meant  the 
masque  to  inculcate,  then  the  claim  of  the  poem  to  be  classed 
as  one  of  the  subjective  kind  would  be  considerably  enhanced  ; 
nor  on  any  other  supposition,  providing  an  independent  origin 
for  the  myth,  can   the  strongly  subjective  character  of  the 
poem  be  denied.     Milton  is  there  the  young  Plato  of  Horton, 
making   his   masque    for    Ludlow  Castle  enforce  a  spiritual 
lesson  and  subserve  an  idea  that  had  taken  possession  of  his 
own  mind.     But  what  fidelity  at  the  same  time  to  the  story 
itself,  what  pure  love  of  the  objective  phantasy  for  its  own 
sake,  what  artistic  tact  for   the  capability  of  beautiful  ad- 
dition, valuable  for  poetic  reasons  only,  in  every  turn  and 
circumstance  of  the  sylvan  vision !    And  so  when,  in  his  later 
age,  he  formally  resumed  his  "  singing-robes/'  after  so  long 
and  stormy  an   interval,  the  same  general  poetic  method  is 
still  visible,  the  same  essential  priority  of  the  objective  con- 
ception •  to    the    subjective   infusion.     Paradise  Lost,    at    all 
events,  is  primarily  a  poem  of  the  objective  order.     As  long 
ago  as  1640  or  1641,  when  he  set  down  on  paper  no  fewer 
than  a  hundred  subjects  miscellaneously  for  consideration,  with 
a  view  to  the  selection  of  that  one,  or  those  two  or  three, 
that  should  seem  fittest  eventually,  the  story  of  Adam  and 
Eve  had  fascinated  him  most,  captivated  him  most,  of  all  the 
hundred.     It  was  to  this  subject,  accordingly,  that  he  had 
returned  in   his   fiftieth  year,  when  the  competition  of  the 
rest  had  faded ;  and  the  great  epic  which  he  had  now  given 
to  the  world  in   his    fifty-ninth  year   was   simply  that    old 
Biblical  story  of  the  beginnings  of  humanity  on  our  earth, 
as  his  imagination  had  dared  at  last  to  shape  it  out  poetically 
and  perfectly,  with  the  Bible  for  his  main  authority  and  the 
Spirit  of  God  for  his  guide.     As  Dante's  conception  of  the 


522  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

three  worlds  in  connexion  with  ours  had  been  left  burnt  for 
ever  into  the  imaginations  of  his  countrymen,  so  was  this 
Miltonic  conception  of  the  beginnings  of  human  history  to 
be  impressed  with  luminous  distinctness  for  ever  on  the 
imaginations  of  all  who  should  read  or  speak  English.  The 
difference  is  that  the  visual  phantasy  bequeathed  by  Dante 
was  mainly  a  congeries  of  intense  and  intricate  symbolisms 
of  his  own  personality,  whereas  that  offered  by  Milton  was 
mainly  a  sublime  version  of  an  independent  objective  tra- 
dition. 

Be  the  genius  of  a  poet,  however,  as  resolutely  objective  as 
it  may,  the  personality  has  nevertheless  already  asserted  itself 
in  this  very  matter  of  his  choice  of  a  subject.  An  artist  left 
free  to  choose  his  subjects  will  be  drawn  to  those  with  which 
he  is  in  affinity  constitutionally  or  by  education,  those  into 
which  he  feels  he  can  put  most  of  himself.  The  subject  chosen 
by  a  poet  is  thus  a  kind  of  declaration  or  allegory  of  his  own 
mind  and  intentions.  Why  had  Milton  been  so  fascinated  by 
the  subject  of  Paradise  Lost  ?  Why  had  he  abandoned  all  the 
other  subjects  that  had  once  attracted  him,  and  fixed  at  last 
conclusively  on  this  as  the  subject  for  his  great  epic  ?  It  was 
because  he  felt  that  this  subject  would  enable  him  to  throw 
into  the  epic  form  the  largest  possible  amount  of  his  own 
philosophy  of  Man  and  History.  True,  the  title  he  hall  given 
to  the  subject  when  it  first  seized  him,  Paradise  Lost  or  Adam 
Unparadised,  did  not  necessarily  suggest  very  much.  It 
suggested,  indeed,  the  infant  earth,  with  two  human  being's 
upon  it,  and  the  garden  of  loveliness  in  which  they  moved, 
and  the  forbidden  tree  in  the  midst,  and  the  story  of  the 
temptation,  fall,  and  expulsion,  as  told  in  the  first  three 
chapters  of  the  Book  of  Genesis.  Adequately  treated,  there 
might  be  a  rich  and  beautiful  poem  out  of  the  subject  within 
those  limits.  But,  from  the  first  moment  when  Milton 
meditated  the  subject,  it  was  evident  that  he  did  not  mean 
to  remain  within  those  limits,  and  more  and  more,  as  he 
thought  of  the  subject,  those  limits  had  been  discarded.  In 
his  first  drafts  of  the  subject  for  an  intended  tragedy  one  had 
heard  of  Michael,  and  Gabriel,  and  Lucifer,  and  choruses  of 


PABADISE  LOST.  523 

Angels,  showing  that  even  then  the  scenery  and  action  were 
not  to  be  only  on  the  infant  earth,  but  there  were  to  be  con- 
nexions of  that  infant  earth  with  the  grander  pre-human 
realms  of  being,  out  of  which  earth  and  mankind  had  sprung, 
and  which  still  encircled  them  invisibly.  When  the  fuller 
epic  was  schemed  these  transcendental  connexions  of  the 
merely  terrestrial  story  had  necessarily  assumed  still  larger 
proportions.  At  the  core  of  the  epic  was  still  to  be  the  story 
of  Adam  and  Eve  in  Paradise  on  the  newly-created  earth  ; 
but,  in  the  interest  of  that  human  story  itself,  the  poet  was 
to  range  back  into  the  infinitudes  of  more  absolute  existence 
that  had  preceded  the  appearance  of  the  earth  in  space  and  the 
whole  rondure  of  luminaries  to  which  it  belongs.  Thus  the 
epic  was  to  be  no  epic  of  man  and  the  earth  merely,  but,  by 
implication  thence,  an  epic  of  the  entire  created  universe,  in 
its  relations  to  prior  and  aboriginal  eternity.  Here  was  a  sub- 
ject Miltonic  enough  even  for  Milton.  It  could  receive  and 
express  all  his  physics,  all  his  metaphysics,  all  his  theology. 
He  could  tell  the  story  of  the  Fall  of  Man  so  that  it  should 
be  a  poetic  representation  of  his  profoundest  views  as  to  the 
origin  of  the  world,  God's  purposes  with  mankind,  the  con- 
nexion through  all  historic  time  of  man  and  his  world  with 
other  realms  of  created  and  active  being,  the  causes  of  the 
sad  course  of  human  history  hitherto,  and  the  prospects  of 
simplification  and  recovery.  In  short,  Paradise  Lost,  as  it  left 
Milton's  hands,  was  a  complete  cosmological  epic,  setting 
forth  his  theory  of  all  things,  physical  and  historical,  in  the 
form  of  an  optical  and  narrative  phantasy,  conceived  mainly 
in  conformity  with  that  pre-Copernican  system  of  belief 
respecting  the  arrangements  of  the  universe  which  was  still 
prevalent  while  he  lived.  This  matter  of  the  Pre-Coperni- 
canism  of  Paradise  Lost  deserves  farther  attention. 

In  our  own  days  the  necessary  peculiarity  of  the  educated 
conception  of  nature,  the  cosmos,  the  mundus,  the  physical 
or  created  all  of  things,  is  absolute  unboundedness.  We  walk 
on  a  ball  8000  miles  in  diameter,  called  the  earth  ;  this  earth 
spins  on  its  axis,  and  the  attendant  moon  goes  round  the  earth 


524         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

in  an  orbit;  earth  and  moon  together  perform  their  longer 
annual  journey  round  the  sun  ;  this  sun,  however,  has  other 
bodies  also  obeying  him  and  wheeling  round  him  at  various 
distances, — two  of  them,  Mercury  and  Venus,  nearer  to  him 
than  the  earth,  and  others,  Mars,  the  asteroids,  Jupiter* 
Saturn,  Uranus,  and  Neptune,  farther  off,  some  with  moons 
and  some  without ;  and  the  eight  principal  planets,  with  their 
moons,  the  asteroids,  and  the  sun  himself,  form  what  is  called 
the  solar  system,  to  which  appertain  also  the  visitants  called 
comets.  But  this  solar  system,  enormous  as  is  its  extent  in 
our  measurements,  is  a  mere  shining  set  of  particles  in  the 
astronomical  whole.  It  is  but  a  small  frame-work  of  lamps, 
hung,  or  rather  sailing, — for  the  sun  himself  not  only  rotates 
on  his  axis,  but  is  advancing  in  some  mightier  orbit,  with  all 
the  planets  in  his  convoy, — in  a  vaster  vague  of  space,  studded 
with  similar  systems,  similar  orbs  and  star-islands,  all  glitter- 
ing and  all  moving.  There  are  the  stars,  the  galaxy,  the 
nebula?,  at  incredible  distances  from  the  solar  system,  the 
thousand  luminaries  that  we  see  in  the  nocturnal  heaven,  and 
the  myriads  more  that  the  telescope  reveals,  each  a  suggestion 
of  sun  and  planets,  or  whatever  else,  with  millions  and  billions 
of  miles  of  sheer  space  separating  the  twinkling  systems  ;  and 
these  banks  of  shining  worlds  recede  from  the  telescope  in 
depth  after  depth  of  circular  immensity,  the  last  depth  reached 
still  hazy  with  the  dispersed  shimmer  of  them,  and  the 
certainty  still  being  that  they  exist  and  sparkle  potentially 
in  endless  depths  beyond.  Our  imagination  of  the  physical 
cosmos,  therefore,  or  rather  that  inconceivable  puzzle  which 
our  imagination  cannot  compass  and  from  which  it  always 
retires  baffled,  is  that  of  an  absolute,  boundless,  ocean  of 
azure  space,  pervaded  by  stars  and  starry  archipelagos.  We 
cannot  by  any  effort  send  our  imaginations  completely  round 
it ;  we  cannot  at  any  point  of  telescopic  distance  say  "  Here 
iC  the  Universe  ends  :  here  the  boundary  is  reached."  Lo  !  at 
that  point,  though  it  would  take  millions  of  years  to  reach  it, 
we  can  still  stretch  out  the  arm  in  fancy  into  space  beyond, 
and  still  see  fresh  star-islands  glimmering  into  view  out  of 
the  unfathomable  obscurities.     By  a  daring  act,  we  may,  in 


PARADISE  LOST.  525 

our  fatigue,  refuse  to  imagine  the  starred  portion  of  space  as 
boundless  ;  but  then  all  we  can  do  is  to  conceive  the  enormous 
sphere  of  blue  in  which  our  astronomy  hangs  as  backed  and 
surrounded  at  last  by  a  still  outer  shell  of  blackness,  which 
must  itself  be  infinite.  Such  an  act  of  imagination  may  be 
illegitimate,  but  we  may  rest  in  it  if  we  like.  Anyhow, 
boundlessness,  infinitude,  space  out  and  out,  up  and  down, 
interspersed  with  starry  worlds,  but  of  immeasurable  pro- 
fundity in  every  direction,  without  bar  or  stoppage  anywhere 
against  which  the  thought  may  strike  and  from  which  it 
is  obliged  to  rebound  :  this  is  the  conception  of  the  cosmos 
to  which  we  are  habituated  by  the  teachings  of  modern 
science. 

Now,  this  was  not  always  the  mode  of  thinking  about  the 
physical  all  of  things.  There  was  the  pre-Copernican  mode 
of  thinking,  that  mode  of  thinking  which  prevailed  before  the 
views  of  Copernicus,  first  propounded  in  1543,  were  generally 
adopted.  The  pre-Copernican  system  of  astronomy  is  known 
more  specificially  as  the  Ptolemaic  system,  because  it  was 
expounded  in  its  main  extent  by  the  Greek  astronomer 
Ptolemy  in  the  second  century  of  our  era.  It  is  also 
called  the  Alphonsine  system,  because  it  was  expounded 
in  more  developed  form  by  the  famous  king  and  astronomer, 
Alphonso  X.  of  Castille,  in  the  thirteenth  century.  This 
Alphonsine  or  Ptolemaic  system,  though  there  had  been 
traces  of  dissent  from  it  here  and  there,  was  the  system  of 
belief  about  physical  nature  in  which  all  human  beings, 
in  the  most  civilized  countries  of  the  earth,  lived  and  died, 
till  it  was  superseded  by  the  system  of  Copernicus.  As  the 
doctrine  of  Copernicus  was  much  resisted  and  made  way  very 
slowly,  the  change  of  belief  was  not  complete  even  at  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century. 

What  was  this  Ptolemaic  or  Alphonsine  system  ?  In  brief, 
and  with  particulars  omitted,  it  was  that  the  earth  is  the 
fixed  and  immoveable  centre  of  the  physical  universe,  and 
that  all  the  rest  of  this  universe  consists  of  ten  successive 
spheres  of  space  wheeling  round  the  earth  with  diverse 
motions  of  their  own,  but  all  subject  to  one  outermost  motion 


5.26 


LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 


which  carries  the  whole  spectacle  of  the  heavens  regularly 
round  the  earth  every  twenty-four  hours.  More  in  detail,  it 
was  as  follows  : — 


The  earth  at  the  centre  :  a  small  orh,  with  the  element  of  air 
immediately  around  it. 


CD 

a    . 
4  S 

*»      33 
CD 


1st  sphere  :  that  of  the  moon,  regarded  as  a  planet. 

2nd  sphere  :  that  of  the  planet  Mercury. 

3rd  sphere  :  that  of  the  planet  Venus. 

4th  sphere  :  that  of  the  sun,  regarded  as  a  planet :  "  the 
glorious  planet  sol,"  as  Shakespeare  calls  him. 

5th  sphere  :  that  of  the  planet  Mars. 

6th  sphere  :  that  of  the  planet  Jupiter. 

7th  sphere :  that  of  the  planet  Saturn  (the  last  planet  then 
known). 

8th  sphere  :  that  of  all  the  fixed  stars  :  differing  from  the 
preceding  seven  spheres  in  this,  that,  while  each  of  those 
seven  spheres  had  hut  one  luminary  in  its  circumference, 
to  wit,  its  own  particular  planet,  this  8th  sphere  was 
studded  with  stars  multitudinously  throughout.  At  this 
8th  sphere  (which  was  called  also  the  firmament,  because 
it  "  walled  in  and  steadied  "  all  the  inner  spheres),  Ptolemy 


PARADISE  LOST.  527 

and  the  ancients  had  stopped,  reckoning  the  sphere  of  the 
fixed  stars  the  outermost,  and  attributing  to  it  the  general 
diurnal  motion  which  carried  all  the  heavens  round  in 
twenty-four  hours.  Observed  irregularities  in  the  heavenly 
motions  on  that  hypothesis,  however,  had  required  the 
addition,  before  the  time  of  King  Alphonso,  of  two  extra 
spheres  for  the  purposes  of  astronomical  explanation, 
thus : — 

9th  sphere  :  the  Crystalline. 

10th  sphere  :  the  primum  mobile,  or  "first  moved,"  en- 
closing all  like  a  solid  outermost  shell,  and  causing  the 
general  diurnal  wheeling  of  all  the  spheres,  while  the 
separate  motions  of  the  inner  spheres  accounted  for  other 
astronomical  phenomena. 


This  pre-Copernican  system  of  the  mundane  universe  was, 
certainly,  a  comfortable  system.  It  afforded  an  explanation  of 
phenomena  which  was  satisfactory  for  the  time,  and  yet  the 
conception  which  it  gave  of  the  totality  of  things  was  pleasant 
and  manageable.  It  was  not  unpleasant  to  think  of  oneself 
as  living  on  a  ball  fixed  at  the  very  centre,  and  of  ten  succes- 
sive heavens  or  spheres  of  space  wheeling  vai'iously  round 
this  ball,  most  with  their  single  lights,  but  one  radiant  with 
innumerable  lights,  and  all  strongly  shelled  in  by  the  primum 
mobile.  True,  this  primum  mobile  was  vastly  distant;  but 
vast  distance  does  not  burst  the  imagination  like  infinitude, 
and  here  there  was  no  infinitude.  All  was  comfortably 
bounded.  You  could  put  your  hand  round  the  whole,  as  it 
were,  and  pat  the  primum  mobile  on  the  outside. 

There  were  compunctions  and  difficulties,  nevertheless. 
There  was  some  difficulty,  for  example,  in  imagining  the  nine 
inner  spheres  as  concentric  and  yet  independent  spheres  of 
mere  transpicuous  space,  sliding  and  slipping  complexly  among 
each  other  at  different  angles  and  with  different  velocities, 
and  only  the  tenth  or  outmost  as  having  a  certain  shelly 
solidity,  like  that  of  opaque  or  dull-brown  glass.  There  may 
have  been  some  compunction  also  in  the  thought  of  so  many 
vast  motions  of  sun,  planets,  and  stars  round  so  small  a  body 
as  the  earth,  and  all  merely  for  her  particular  convenience  and 
pleasure.     That  compunction,  it  appears,  was  easily  pacified. 


528         LIFE    OP   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

Did  not  the  system  of  the  ten  revolving-  spheres  round  a  fixed 
earth  accord  with  the  glory  of  man  and  of  human  nature? 
What  better  occupation  for  sun,  planets,  and  stars,  than 
to  revolve  round  the  little  orb  on  which  man,  the  monarch  of 
the  created  universe,  had  his  abode,  delighting-  him  by  their 
chang-es  among  themselves,  and  exhibiting-  to  him,  every 
twenty-four  hours,  in  most  parts  of  the  earth,  the  eternally 
repeated  alternation  of  clear  sunlit  day  and  sapphire  night 
with  her  jewels?  A  third  difficulty  was  more  important. 
The  puzzle  of  infinitude  still  remained.  Though  the  Pto- 
lemaic system  rather  numbed  and  discouraged  the  sense  of  the 
boundlessness  of  space,  by  keeping-  men's  thoug-hts  mainly  to 
the  ongoings  in  the  great  visual  round  of  things  within  the 
primum  mobile,  yet  they  could  not  really,  if  they  did  persist 
in  thinking  and  imagining,  be  stopped  by  the  primum 
mobile.  They  could  send  their  thoughts  beyond  it,  and 
could  fancy  the  outer  ocean  of  space,  if  space  it  could  be 
called,  beating  and  roaring  against  the  opposing  and  exclud- 
ing bosses  of  the  last  sphere  of  the  mundane.  This  is  what 
the  pre-Copernicans  could  not  avoid  doing,  and  actually  did. 
But  even  here  they  extracted  a  kind  of  relief  for  their  reason 
out  of  the  crude  definiteness  of  their  peculiar  cosmology.  It 
was  a  comfort  to  them  to  call  all  within  the  primum  mobile 
by  one  name,  regarding  it  as  nature,  the  creation,  the 
cosmos,  the  mundane  universe,  man's  world  of  time  and 
space  and  motion,  about  which  he  could  speculate  and  have 
real  knowledge,  and  to  regard  all  beyond  that  boundary  by  a 
different  name,  voting  it  to  be  the  motionless  empyrean,  the 
supernatural  or  metaphysical  world,  the  universe  of  eternal 
mysteries,  the  home  of  Godhead,  the  restful  heaven  of  heavens, 
into  which  the  reason  of  man  could  never  penetrate,  and  of 
which  he  could  have  glimpses  only  through  faith  and  in- 
spiration. This,  accordingly,  may  pass  as  a  supplementary 
diagram  to  that  of  the  pre-Copernican  cosmology  : — 


PARADISE  LOST. 


529 


The  inner  circle  is  simply  the  previous  circle  of  the  ten 
spheres  of  the  knowable,  with  the  hounding-  lines  of  the  inner 
spheres  omitted.  It  is  the  entire  cosmos  or  mundane  uni- 
verse of  man,  consisting-  of  the  orb  of  earth  at  the  centre,  the 
seven  planetary  heavens  next  to  the  earth,  the  eighth  and 
more  distant  heaven  of  the  fixed  stars,  the  ninth  or  crys- 
talline heaven  beyond  all  the  stars,  and  the  tenth  heaven  or 
heaven  of  the  primum  mobile,  including  all.  It  represents, 
accordingly,  that  whole  round  of  visible  things  which  con- 
stitutes in  a  special  sense  the  heavens  and  the  earth  of 
Scripture  and  of  common  speech.  But  beyond  all  the 
mundane  heavens  is  the  empyrean  heaven,  or  heaven  of 
heavens,  the  abode  of  Deity  and  of  all  eternal    mysteries. 

vol.  vi.  m  m 


530  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

That  cannot  be  exhibited  as  bounded  in  any  way  by  any 
geometrical  figure  or  possible  circumference.  Let  the  out- 
going rays  of  corona  or  sunflower  round  the  primum  mobile 
suggest  at  once  the  mystery  and  the  infinitude. 

One  thing  more.  The  diagram  represents  infinitude  after 
the  universe  of  man,  or  the  present  cosmos  of  heavens  and 
earth,  had  come  into  being.  But  that  cosmos  had  not  been 
always  there.  It  had  been  created ;  and  the  creation  of  it, 
according  to  the  Biblical  belief,  had  been  the  work  of  six 
days  at  a  certain  definite  epoch  of  past  time.  What  had 
preceded  the  created  cosmos  in  that  part  of  infinitude  which 
it  now  occupies  ?  Was  infinitude  before  the  creation  of  the 
cosmos  all  one  pure  uninterrupted  empyrean,  or  had  there 
been  anything  intermediate,  in  the  space  of  the  present 
cosmos,  between  the  pure  aboriginal  empyrean  and  the 
orderly  heavens  and  earth  that  were  to  come?  There  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  perfect  uniformity  of  belief  or  imagina- 
tion on  this  point ;  nor  indeed  did  it  come  into  discussion 
much  among  the  ordinary  holders  of  the  pre-Copernican 
creed,  but  only  among  those  who  were  not  contented  with 
the  conception  of  the  mundane  universe  as  existing  round 
them,  but  would  speculate  on  the  mode  of  its  genesis.  Among 
these  the  general  belief,  favoured  by  primeval  and  even  classical 
tradition,  and  not  out  of  accord  with  hints  in  Scripture,  seems 
to  have  been  that  deity  did  not  create  the  mundane  universe 
immediately  out  of  nothing,  but  out  of  a  prior  chaos,  or  huge 
aggregate  of  formless  matter,  which  had  been  prepared  for 
the  purpose,  and  had  been  waiting  for  a  time  indefinite,  in 
and  round  the  predestined  purlieus  of  the  cosmos,  for  the 
consummating  miracle  of  the  six  days.  Perhaps  as  homely 
an  expression  of  this  traditional  belief  as  can  be  found  is  that 
of  Du  Bartas  in  Sylvester's  translation  : — 

"As  we  may  perceive 
That  he  who  means  to  build  a  warlike  fleet 
Makes  first  provision  of  all  matter  meet, 
As  timber,  iron,  canvas,  cord,  and  pitch,  .  .  . 
So  God,  before  this  Frame  he  fashioned, 
I  wot  not  what  great  word  he  uttered 
From's  sacred  mouth,  which  summoned  in  a  mass 


PABADISE  LOST.  531 

Whatsoever  now  the  heaven's  wide  arms  embrace  .  .  . 
That  first  world  yet  was  a  most  formless  form, 
A  confused  heap,  a  chaos  most  deform ; 
A  gulf  of  gulfs,  a  body  ill  compact, 
An  ugly  medley." 

Such  was  the  pre-Copernican  system  of  cosmology,  with  its 
common  adjuncts.     What  has  now  to  be  noted,  and  what  does 
not  seem  ever  to  have  been  noted  sufficiently  in  connexion 
with  the  literary  history  of  our  own  or  of  other  nations,  is  the 
immense  influence  of  this  system  on  the  thinkings  and  imagi- 
nations of  mankind  on  ail  subjects  whatsoever  till  about  two 
hundred  years  ag'o.     There  are  surviving  traces  of  Ptolemaism 
or  Pre-Copernicanism  in  our  current  speech  yet.      We  still 
speak  of  a  person  as  being  "  out  of  his  sphere,"  and  the  fine 
old  fancy   of  "  the  music  of  the  spheres  "   has  not  lost  its 
poetical  significance.     But  we  must  go  back  into  the  older 
literature,  and  especially  the  older  poetry,  of  the  various  coun- 
tries of  Europe,  to  be  aware  of  the  strength  and  the  multiform 
subtlety  of  the  effects  of  the  pre-Copernican  cosmology  on  all 
human  thought.     Of  course,  the  amount  of  Pre-Copernicanism 
discernible  in  any  old  poet  or  other  writer  will  vary  with  the 
nature  of  the  poetry  or  the  writing,  generally  or  in  particular 
pieces.     Where    the   themes   are    the    histories,   actions,  and 
humours  of  men  in  society  on  this  earth,  with  the  miscella- 
neous objects  and  scenery  of  earth  that  go  along  with  such 
social  history  and  action,  e.  g.  in  dramas  and  the  great  majority 
of  poems,  it  will  only  be  incidentally,  in  the  form  of  phrases, 
allusions,  or  short  passages,  that  the  pre-Copernican  mode  of 
thinking  will  be  detected.       These,   however,   are   far  more 
numerous  than  might  be  supposed.     From  the  whole  series 
of  the  English  poets,  from  Chaucer  to  the  Elizabethans  and 
beyond,  Shakespeare  not  excepted,  there  might  be  culled  an 
extraordinary  collection  of  passages  assuming  the  mundane 
constitution    of    the    successive    spheres,    with    the    primum 
mobile  as  the    last  of  them,   and   the    empyrean   over   and 
above,  and  requiring  the  recollection  of  that  system  for  their 
due  enjoyment  and  interpretation.     These  poets  lived  and  died 
in  the  pre-Copernican  belief,  and  thought  and  wrote  in  the 

m  m  2 


532  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

language  of  it  whenever  there  was  occasion.  Naturally,  how- 
ever, it  is  when  a  poem,  or  a  part  of  a  poem,  is  of  a  highly 
comprehensive  or  philosophical  kind,  when  the  nature  of  the 
subject  leads  the  poet  to  treat  in  any  way  of  the  world  and 
human  history  as  a  whole,  that  the  pre-Copcrnicanismbecomes 
pronounced  and  formal.  Then  the  poem  is  actually  unintel- 
ligible to  modern  readers,  or  at  least  fails  of  complete  effect, 
if  the  cosmology  which  it  assumes  is  not  taken  into  account. 
There  are  masses  of  old  poetical  matter,  in  English  and  in 
other  languages,  that  can  be  adequately  understood  by  no 
other  key  than  that  the  imagination  of  the  poet  worked  by  a 
distinct  optical  diagram  of  the  Ptolemaic  constitution  of  the 
universe,  or  by  some  personal  variation  from  that  model x. 

We  may  recur  to  Dante.  To  every  edition  of  the  D'wina 
Commedia  there  ought  to  be  prefixed  a  diagram,  however 
vague  and  crude,  of  the  cosmological  scheme  adopted  in  the 
poem  or  invented  for  it.  That  scheme  is  essentially  the 
Ptolemaic.  You  begin  on  the  surface  of  one  hemisphere  of 
the  earth,  and,  after  some  mystic  preliminaries,  you  find  your- 
self descending,  in  the  company  of  Virgil  and  Dante,  through 
a  kind  of  funnel  or  inverted  cone,  of  nine  successive  whorls  or 
circles,  shrinking  in  width  as  you  descend,  till  you  come  to 
the  very  apex  of  the  cone  at  the  earth's  centre.  This  descend- 
ing funnel  of  nine  whorls  is  Hell  or  the  Inferno  ;  in  the 
lowest  depth  of  which,  jammed  through  a  strange  aperture  at 
the  earth's  centre,  is  the  hideous  form  of  Satan  or  Lucifer, 
fi  the  abhorred  worm  that  boreth  through  the  world."  It  is 
only  by  clutching  the  hairy  hide  of  this  monster,  sinking  by 
such  clutches  to  his  middle,  and  then  turning  round  painfully 
at  the  proper  moment,  that  Virgil  and  Dante  wriggle  through 
the  aperture  and  find  themselves  on  the  other  side  of  the 
centre.  Thence  their  journey  is  no  longer  one  of  descent,  but 
of  ascent  to  the  air  again  through  the  bowels  of  the  other 
hemisphere    of  the    earth.      They   emerge  at   that    solitary 

1  I  may  mention  Sir  David  Lyndsay's  few  ;  Shakespeare  some,  but  fewest  of 

Vision  and  his  Monarchy,  Drummond's  all.     Shakespeare    recognised   all   that 

poetry  generally,  and  parts  of  Donne's.  "  heaven's    air    in   this    huge    rondure 

Chaucer,  I  should  say,  from  recollection,  hems  "  (Sonnet  21),  but  his  customary 

would  yield  many  illustrative  passages  ;  image  of  space  for  his  dramas  did  not,  I 

Spenser  and  other  Elizabethans  not  a  think,  go  beyond  the  orbit  of  the  moon. 


PABADISE   LOST.  533 

ocean-island  of  the  antipodes,  the  remains  of  the  original 
Eden,  where  the  Purgatorio  awaits  their  vision.  It  is  a  huge 
tapering  mountain  rising  from  the  island  into  the  ether,  and 
taking  the  form  at  last  of  seven  successive  ledges  or  terraces, 
corresponding  to  the  seven  deadly  sins  that  have  to  be 
cleansed,  each  ledge  and  the  ascent  to  it  easier  as  they 
rise  higher  in  the  ether.  When  they  do  reach  the  summit, 
they  are  in  the  upheaved  residue  of  the  terrestrial  Paradise 
which  was  once  Adam's ;  but  that  name  only  foreshows  what 
is  to  come.  Virgil  now  disappears,  leaving  Dante  suddenly, 
while  Beatrice  descends  to  undertake  the  rest  and  be  his  guide 
through  the  true  Paradiso.  It  is  represented  in  the  nine 
successive  heavens,  or  wheeling  spheres,  above  and  round  the 
precincts  of  earth.  First  there  is  the  heaven  of  the  moon, 
then  that  of  Mercury,  then  that  of  Venus,  and  so  on,  through 
the  fourth  heaven  or  sphere  of  the  sun,  the  fifth  heaven  or 
sphere  of  Mars,  the  sixth  heaven  or  sphere  of  Jupiter,  the 
seventh  heaven  or  sphere  of  Saturn,  and  the  eighth  heaven  or 
sphere  of  the  fixed  stars,  till  the  ninth  sphere  or  heaven  is 
reached.  That  sphere  is  the  last  or  highest  in  Dante's 
reckoning,  as  it  was  generally  in  the  reckoning  of  his  con- 
temporaries and  for  an  age  or  two  longer,  though  the 
Alphonsine  completion  of  the  Ptolemaic  system  required  a 
tenth.  In  fact  the  ninth  sphere  or  heaven  was  the  primum 
mobile  in  Dante's  reckoning,  the  outermost  sphere  of  the 
cosmos,  and  the  boundary  between  it  and  the  empyrean  or 
heaven  of  heavens.  Into  the  empyrean  itself,  the  con- 
summate and  eternal  Paradiso,  Dante  is  vouchsafed  admis- 
sion ;  and  the  poem  ends  with  a  glimpse  of  the  unspeakable 
glories  of  that  transcendental  world,  the  brightness  of  the 
living  Godhead,  and  a  vision  of  the  mystery  of  mysteries 
in  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation1. 

Such  is  the  general  optical  scheme  of  Dante's  poem.     The 
filling  out  of  the  vision,  with  all  the  dense  circumstance  of 

1  Diagrams  and  other  optical   helps  A  Shadow  of  Ihinlehy  Miss  Maria  Fran- 

for    the    Divina    Commedia    have,    of  cesca   Rossetti.      This  is  an  admirable 

course,  been   provided   by  the  Italian  and  most  compact  little  book  in  intro- 

commentators  ;   and  there  is  a  beauti-  duction   to   Dante,  a  book  which  it  is 

ful  reproduction  of  the  best  of  these,  a  pleasure  to  read  and  a  duty  to  re- 

with  additional  artistic  suggestions,  in  commend. 


534  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

figure,   physiognomy,  colloquy,    incident,  imaginary  scenery, 
and  grotesque  or  mystical   symbolism,  that  is   crowded  into 
every  part  of  it,  defies  all  art  of  diagram  or  continuous  paint- 
ing, and  will  remain  to  the  end  of  time  a  matter  of  negotia- 
tion between  Dante  himself  and  his  readers.     What  is  to  be 
observed  in  the  general  optical  scheme,  in  addition  to  the  fact 
that  it  adopts  the  customary  Ptolemaic  cosmology,  is  that  it 
makes    Hell,  Purgatory,   and   Paradise    itself,  parts   of  that 
cosmology,  i.  e.  intramundane.    Hell  is  a  funnel  down  through 
one  hemisphere  of  the  earth  to  the  centre ;  Purgatory  ascends 
skywards    from    the    other    hemisphere ;      and,    though    the 
Paradiso  ends  everlastingly  in  the  empyrean,  twenty-nine  of 
the  thirty-three  cantos  dedicated  to  it  detain  us  still  within 
the  cosmos,  in  the  spheres  of  wheeling  space  from  the  earth  to 
just  beyond  the  stars. 

Milton  also  inherited  the  Ptolemaic  cosmology.      In  pas- 
sages of  his  minor  poems,  e.  g.  The  Hymn  on  the  Nativity,  the 
Arcades,  and  Comus,  it  will  be  found  assumed,  especially  in 
the  form  of  a  delight  in  the  poetic  notion  of  the  music  of  the 
spheres  ;  which  notion  is  also  the  subject  of  one  of  his  Latin 
academic  exercises,  De  Sphcerarum  Concentu.      In  his  Italian 
tour,   in  1638   or  1639,  he  saw  and  conversed  with  Galileo, 
then  old  and  blind,  in  his  villa  near  Florence,  where  he  was 
still  in  a  manner  "  a  prisoner  to  the  Inquisition  for  thinking 
"  in  astronomy  otherwise  than  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
"  licencers  thought,"  i.  e.  for  his  obstinacy  in  the  Copernican 
heresy.     From  that  moment  Milton's  admiration  for  Galileo 
may  have  given  him  more  favourable  thoughts  of  that  heresy 
than   he   had   entertained   before ;    but,  after  his  return  to 
England,  we  still  find  him  so  far  a  Ptolemaist  that  the  book 
from  which  he  taught  astronomy  to  his  nephews  and  other 
pupils  from  1640  to  1647  was  the  De  SpJusra  of  Joannes  a 
Sacrobosco    or    John    Holywood,    a    popular    work    of    the 
thirteenth    century,    and    entirely    and   especially  Ptolemaic. 
Paradise  Lost  had  been  then  schemed ;  but,  before  he  began 
to  write  it  in  its  epic  form,  his  Ptolemaism  had  greatly  abated, 
if  it   had   not    been    wholly  exchanged   for   Copernicanism. 
There  is  some  uncertainty  on  the  point.      From  1650   on- 


PARADISE   LOST.  535 

wards  the  two  systems  of  astronomical  belief  were  still 
struggling  with  each  other  for  the  possession  of  even  the 
most  educated  intellects  in  England,  and  only  the  most 
forward  of  these,  Hobbes  conspicuous  among  them,  had  un- 
hesitatingly embraced  and  advocated  the  views  of  Copernicus 
and  Galileo.  Milton's  position  seems  to  have  been  that  of 
thorough  acquaintance  with  the  Copernican  system  and  with 
the  arguments  for  it,  and  of  private  conviction  of  its  truth, 
or  its  superiority  for  the  purposes  of  scientific  explanation. 
But,  for  the  purposes  of  his  Paradise  Lost,  what  was  he  to 
do?  He  required  a  cosmology  for  that  poem,  and  the  cos- 
mology of  all  European  poetry  hitherto,  of  his  own  poetic 
imaginings  hitherto,  had  been  the  Ptolemaic.  This  cosmology 
had  followed  him  into  his  blindness,  and  it  was  mainly  in 
accordance  with  it  that  the  optical  visions  rose, — those  visions 
of  heaven,  hell,  chaos,  and  the  mundane  universe,  in  their 
relations  to  each  other,  which  he  was  to  set  forth  in  his  epic. 
He  must  reduce  all  to  coherence  and  clearness,  and  for  that 
purpose  must  fuse  through  his  own  imagination  all  that 
he  could  remember  from  his  past  readings,  or  could  still  have 
read  to  him,  of  the  disquisitions  of  the  fathers,  the  tal- 
mudists,  the  mediaeval  doctors,  and  more  modern  scholars 
and  theologians,  on  such  fantastic  subjects  as  the  situa- 
tions of  hell  and  heaven  in  space,  the  time  and  process  of 
the  mundane  creation,  the  nature  of  the  angels,  and  the 
time  of  their  creation.  A  quantity  of  cumbrous  lore  of  this 
kind  he  must  have  let  pass  through  his  mind  for  the  sake  of 
a  hint  here  and  a  hint  there  ;  he  had  drunk  deeply  and  sym- 
pathetically of  Dante,  and  must  have  known  his  great  poem 
better  than  any  other  Englishman  alive ;  but  he  was  shaping 
out  a  phantasy  of  the  universal  by  independent  art.  And  so, 
his  very  blindness,  as  I  believe,  assisting  him  in  his  stupendous 
task,  by  having  already  converted  all  external  space  in  his 
own  sensations  into  an  infinite  globe  of  circumambient  black- 
ness or  darkness  through  which  he  could  dash  brilliance  at 
his  pleasure,  there  did  come  forth  a  cosmical  epic  which 
was  without  a  precedent  and  remains  without  a  parallel.  It 
adopted,  indeed,  in  the  main  the  Ptolemaic  or  pre-Copernican 


536         LIFE   OP   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

cosmology,  but  in  such  a  simplified  way,  with  such  inserted 
caveats,  and  with  such  extraordinary  Miltonic  adjuncts,  that 
the  poet  could  expect  the  effective  permanence  of  his  work  in 
the  imagination  of  the  world,  whether  Ptolemy  or  Coperuicus 
should  prevail. 

In  the  cosmology  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  indeed  in  the  whole 
matter  and  tenor  of  the  epic,  Milton,  it  is  interesting-  to 
know,  was  true,  as  far  as  a  poet  could  be  true,  to  his  personal 
beliefs.  What  appears  as  grand  song  and  free  imagination 
in  the  poem  may  be  seen  reduced  to  the  dry  bones  of  cor- 
responding theological  proposition  in  his  Latin  Treatise  of 
Christian  Doctrine.  That  treatise  illuminates  us  particularly  on 
two  matters  in  which  Milton  positively  rejects  the  cosmology 
of  the  Divina  Commedia.  Dante,  as  we  have  seen,  places  his 
hell  within  the  earth,  his  purgatory  on  the  earth,  and  makes 
even  his  heaven  in  some  sense  intramundane.  Milton,  on 
the  other  hand,  places  his  hell  and  his  heaven  out  of  the 
cosmos  altogether,  representing  them  as  necessarily  extra- 
mundane.  The  reasons  appear  in  his  theological  treatise, 
chap.  XXIII.,  where  he  says,  "  Hell  appears  to  be  situated 
beyond  the  limits  of  this  universe,"  refers  to  Chrysostom, 
Luther,  and  some  later  divines,  as  holding  this  opinion,  and 
quotes  texts  from  Scripture  decidedly  disproving  the  more 
general  opinion  that  hell  was  "  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth." 
Connected  with  this  is  his  difference  from  Dante  as  to  the 
date  of  the  creation  of  the  angels.  It  is  revealed  to  Dante 
by  Beatrice,  in  the  twenty-ninth  canto  of  the  Paradiso,  that 
the  creation  of  the  angels  was  contemporaneous  with  that  of 
mankind,  and  that  St.  Jerome's  opinion  to  the  contrary  was 
unsound.  Here  Beatrice  followed  Thomas  Aquinas  and  the 
orthodox  majority ;  but  Milton  decides  the  controversy  the 
other  way,  reverting  to  the  doctrine  of  St.  Jerome.  "  Not 
"  six  thousand  years  of  the  existence  of  our  world  have  yet 
"  been  fulfilled,"  that  father  had  said ;  "  and  so  it  is  to  be 
"imagined  what  eternities  there  were  before,  what  stretches 
"of  time,  what  cycles  of  ages,  in  which  angels,  thrones, 
"dominations,  and  other  virtues,  served  God,  and  subsisted 
"  by  God's  ordination,  without  our  changes  and  measures  of 


PARADISE   LOST. 


537 


"  season 1."  So  Milton,  in  chap.  VII.  of  his  treatise,  admitting 
that  "it  is  generally  supposed  that  the  angels  were  created 
at  the  same  time  with  the  visible  universe,"  argues  against 
that  opinion,  and  agrees  with  those  of  the  Fathers,  most  of 
them  Greek,  though  some  Latin,  who  had  maintained  the 
indefinite  pre-mundane  existence  of  the  angels.  This,  like 
the  other  supposition  as  to  the  situation  of  hell  and  heaven, 
is  a  necessary  postulate  in  the  Paradise  Lost.  For  the  rest, 
a  sketch  of  the  actual  story,  in  the  chronological  order  of  the 
incidents,  will  present  the  poem  in  the  aspects  in  which  it 
here  concerns  us,  as  a  revelation  of  Milton  himself,  and  as  a 
novelty  in  English  Literature  and  in  European  Literature  in 
the  year  1667.  I  avail  myself  partly  of  what  I  have  written 
already  on  the  subject 2 : — 

"  Before  the  creation  of  our  earth  or  of  the  starry  universe 
"  to  which  it  belongs,  universal  space  is  to  be  considered,  ac- 
"  cording  to  the  recpuisites  of  the  poem,  not  as  containing 
"  stars  or  starry  systems  at  all,  but  as,  so  to  say,  a  sphere  of 
"  infinite  radius,  divided  into  two  hemispheres,  thus — 


'  Cary's  note  to  line  38.  Canto  XXIX. 
of  his  translation  of  the  Paradiso. 


-  What  is  within  quotation  marks  in 
the  following  is  from  the  Introduction 


538  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

"  The  upper  of  these  two  hemispheres  of  primeval  infinity 
"  is  heaven,  or  the  empyrean^— a  boundless,  unimaginable 
"  region  of  light,  freedom,  happiness,  and  glory,  in  the 
"  midst  whereof  Deity,  though  omnipresent,  has  his  im- 
"  mediate  and  visible  dwelling,  and  where  he  is  surrounded 
"  by  a  vast  population  of  beings,  called  '  the  angels,'  or 
" '  sons  of  God,'  who  draw  near  to  his  throne  in  worship, 
"  derive  thence  their  nurture  and  their  delight,  and  yet  live 
"dispersed  through  all  the  ranges  and  recesses  of  the  region, 
"  leading  severally  their  mighty  lives  and  performing  the 
"  behests  of  Deity,  but  organized  into  companies,  orders,  and 
"  hierarchies.  Milton  is  careful  to  explain  that  all  that  he 
"  says  of  Heaven  is  said  symbolically,  and  in  order  to  make 
"  conceivable  by  the  human  imagination  what  in  its  own 
"  nature  is  inconceivable  ;  but,  this  being  explained,  he  is 
"  bold  enough  in  his  use  of  terrestrial  analogies.  Round  the 
"  immediate  throne  of  Deity,  indeed,  there  is  kept  a  blazing 
"  mist  of  vagueness,  which  words  are  hardly  permitted  to 
"  pierce,  though  the  angels  are  represented  as  from  time  to 
"  time  assembling  within  it,  beholding  the  divine  presence 
"and  hearing  the  divine  voice.  But  Heaven  at  large,  or 
"  portions  of  it,  are  figured  as  tracts  of  a  celestial  earth,  with 
"  plain,  hill,  and  valley,  whereon  the  myriads  of  the  sons  of 
"  God  expatiate,  in  their  two  orders  of  seraphim  and  cherubim, 
"  and  in  their  descending  ranks  as  archangels  or  chiefs, 
"princes  of  various  degrees,  and  individual  powers  and  in- 
"  telligences.  Certain  differences,  however,  are  implied  as 
"  distinguishing  these  celestials  from  the  subsequent  race  of 
"  mankind.  As  they  are  of  infinitely  greater  prowess,  im- 
"  mortal,  and  of  more  purely  spiritual  nature,  so  their  ways 
"  even  of  physical  existence  and  action  transcend  all  that  is 
"  within  human  experience.  Their  forms  are  dilatable  or 
"  contractible  at  pleasure ;  they  move  with  incredible  swift  - 
"  ness ;  and,  as  they  are  not  subject  to  any  law  of  gravitation, 
"  their  motion,  though   ordinarily  represented  as  horizontal 

to  Paradise  Lost  in  the  Cambridge  Golden  Treasury  and  Globe  Editions. 
Edition  of  Milton's  Poetical  Works  Where  I  add  or  deviate  the  quotation 
(1874),    and    also    in    the    subsequent       marks  cease. 


PABADISE  LOST.  539 

"  over  the  heavenly  ground,  may  as  well  be  vertical  or  in  any 
"  other  direction,  and  their  aggregations  need  not,  like  those 
"  of  men,  be  in  squares,  oblongs,  or  other  plane  figures,  but 
"  may  be  in  cubes,  or  other  rectangular  or  oblique  solids, 
"or  in  spherical  masses.  These  and  various  other  particulars 
"  are  to  be  kept  in  mind  concerning  Heaven  and  its  pristine 
"  inhabitants.  As  respects  the  other  half  or  hemisphere  of 
"  the  primeval  infinity,  though  it  too  is  inconceivable  in  its 
"  nature,  and  has  to  be  described  by  words  which  are  at  best 
"  symbolical,  less  needs  be  said.  For  it  is  chaos,  or  The  Un- 
inhabited— a  huge,  limitless  ocean,  abyss,  or  quagmire  of 
"universal  darkness  and  lifelessness,  wherein  are  jumbled  in 
"  blustering  confusion  the  elements  of  all  matter,  or  rather 
"  the  crude  embryons  of  all  the  elements,  ere  as  yet  they  are 
"  distinguishable.  There  is  no  light  there,  nor  properly  earth, 
"  water,  air,  or  fire,  but  only  a  vast  pulp  or  welter  of  un- 
"  formed  matter,  in  which  all  these  lie  tempestuously  inter- 
"  mixed.  Though  the  presence  of  Deity  is  there  potentially 
"too,  it  is  still,  as  it  were,  retracted  thence,  as  from  a  realm 
"  unorganized  and  left  to  night  and  anarchy ;  nor  do  any 
"  of  the  angels  wing  down  into  its  repulsive  obscurities. 
"  The  crystal  floor  or  wall  of  Heaven  divides  them  from  it ; 
"  underneath  which,  and  unvisited  of  light,  save  what  may 
"  glimmer  through  upon  its  nearer  strata,  it  howls  and  rages 
"  and  stagnates  eternally. 

"  Such  is  and  has  been  the  constitution  of  the  universal 
"  infinitude  from  ages  immemorial  in  the  angelic  reckoning. 
"  But  lo !  at  last  a  day  in  the  annals  of  Heaven  when  the 
"  grand  monotony  of  existence  hitherto  is  disturbed  and 
"  broken.  On  a  day — '  such  a  day  as  Heaven's  great  year 
"  brings  forth ' — all  the  empyreal  host  of  angels,  called  by 
"  imperial  summons  from  all  the  ends  of  Heaven,  assemble 
"  innumerably  before  the  throne  of  the  Almighty ;  beside 
"  whom,  imbosomed  in  bliss,  sat  the  Divine  Son.  They 
"  had  come  to  hear  this  divine  decree : — 

'  Hear,  all  ye  Augels,  progeny  of  Light, 
Thrones,  dominations,  princedoms,  virtues,  powers, 
Hear  my  decree  which  unrevoked  shall  stand  ! 


540  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

This  day  I  have  begot  whom  I  declare 

My  only  Son,  and  on  this  holy  hill 

Him  have  anointed,  whom  ye  now  behold 

At  my  right  hand.     Your  Head  I  him  appoint ; 

And  by  myself  have  sworn  to  him  shall  bow 

All  knees  in  Heaven,  and  shall  confess  him  Lord.' 

"  With  joy  and  obedience  is  this  decree  received  throughout 
'  the  hierarchies,  save  in  one  quarter.  One  of  the  first  of  the 
'  archangels  in  heaven,  if  not  the  very  first — the  coequal  of 
'  Michael,  Gabriel,  and  Raphael,  if  not  their  superior — is  the 
'  archangel  known  afterwards  (for  his  first  name  in  Heaven  is 
'  lost)  as  Satan  or  Lucifer.  In  him  the  effect  of  the  decree 
'  is  rage,  envy,  pride,  the  resolution  to  rebel.  He  conspires 
'  with  his  next  subordinate,  known  afterwards  as  Beelzebub  ; 
'  and  there  is  formed  by  them  that  faction  in  Heaven  which 
'  includes  at  length  one  third  of  the  entire  heavenly  host. 
'  Then  ensue  the  wars  in  Heaven — Michael  and  the  loyal 
'  angels  warring  against  Satan  and  the  rebel  angels,  so  that 
'  for  two  days  the  Empyrean  is  in  uproar.  But  on  the  third 
'  day  the  Messiah  himself  rides  forth  in  his  chariot  of  power, 
'  armed  with  ten  thousand  thunders.  Bight  on  he  drives, 
'  in  his  sole  might,  through  the  rebel  ranks,  till  they  are 
'  trampled  and  huddled,  in  one  indiscriminate  flock,  incapable 
'  of  resistance,  before  him  and  his  fires.  But  his  purpose  is 
'  not  utterly  to  destroy  them, — only  to  expel  them  from 
'  Heaven.  Underneath  their  feet,  accordingly,  the  crystal  wall 
'  or  floor  of  Heaven  opens  wide,  rolling  inwards,  and  disclosing 
'  a  spacious  gap  into  the  dark  Abyss  or  Chaos.  Horrorstruck 
'  they  start  back  ;  but  worse  urges  them  behind.  Headlong 
'  they  fling  themselves  down,  eternal  wrath  burning  after 
'  them,  and  driving  them  still  down,  down,  through  Chaos, 
'  to  the  place  prepared  for  them. 

"  The  place  prepared  for  them  !  Yes,  for  now  there  is  a 
'  modification  in  the  map  of  universal  space  to  suit  the 
'  changed  conditions  of  the  universe.  At  the  bottom  of 
1  what  has  hitherto  been  Chaos  there  is  now  marked  out  a 
'  kind  of  antarctic  region,  distinct  from  the  body  of  Chaos 
1  proper.     This  is  hell — 


PARADISE  LOST. 


541 


"  a  vast  region  of  fire,  sulphurous  lake,  plain,  and  mountain, 
"  and  of  all  forms  of  fiery  and  icy  torment.  It  is  into  this 
"  nethermost  and  dungeon-like  portion  of  space,  separated 
"  from  Heaven  by  a  huge  belt  of  intervening  Chaos,  that  the 
"  fallen  angels  are  thrust.  For  nine  days  and  nights  they 
"  have  been  falling  through  Chaos,  or  rather  being  driven 
"  down  through  Chaos  by  the  Messiah's  pursuing  thunders, 
"  before  they  reach  this  new  home.  ^Yhen  they  do  reach  it, 
"  the  roof  closes  over  them  and  shuts  them  in.  Meanwhile 
"  the  Messiah  has  returned  in  triumph  into  highest  Heaven, 
"  and  there  is  rejoicing  over  the  expulsion  of  the  damned. 

"  For  the  moment,  therefore,  there  are  three  divisions  of 
"  universal  space  —  heaven,  chaos,  and  hell.  Almost  im- 
"  mediately,  however,  there  is  a  fourth.  Not  only  have  the 
"  expelled  angels  been  nine  days  and  nights  in  falling  through 
"  Chaos  to  reaeh  Hell ;  but,  after  they  have  reached  Hell  and 
"  it  has  closed  over  them,  they  lie  for  another  period  of  nine 
"  days  and  nights  stupefied  and  bewildered  in  the  fiery  gulf. 
"  It  is  during  this  second  nine  days  that  there  takes  place  a 
"  great  event,  which  farther  modifies  the  map  of  infinitude. 
"  Long  had  there  been  talk  in  Heaven  of  a  new  race  of  beings 


542  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  to  be  created  at  some  time  by  the  Almighty,  inferior  in 
"  some  respects  to  the  angels,  but  in  the  history  of  whom  and 
"  of  God's  dealings  with  them  there  was  to  be  a  display  of  the 
"  divine  power  and  love  which  even  the  angels  might  contem- 
"  plate  with  wonder.  The  time  for  the  creation  of  this  new 
"  race  of  beings  has  now  arrived.  Scarcely  have  the  rebel 
"  angels  been  enclosed  in  Hell,  and  Chaos  has  recovered  from 
"  the  turmoil  of  the  descent  of  such  a  rout  through  its  depths, 
"  when  the  paternal  Deity,  addressing  the  Son,  tells  him  that, 
"  in  order  to  repair  the  loss  caused  to  Heaven,  the  predeter- 
"  mined  creation  of  Man  and  of  the  World  of  Man  shall  now 
"  take  effect.  It  is  for  the  Son  to  execute  the  will  of  the 
"  Father.  Straightway  he  goes  forth  on  his  creating  errand. 
"  The  everlasting  gates  of  Heaven  open  wide  to  let  him  pass 
"  forth ;  and,  clothed  with  majesty,  and  accompanied  with 
"  thousands  of  seraphim  and  cherubim,  anxious  to  behold  the 
"  great  work  to  be  done,  he  does  pass  forth — far  into  that 
"  very  Chaos  through  which  the  rebel  angels  have  so  recently 
"  fallen,  and  which  now  intervenes  between  Heaven  and  Hell. 
"  At  length  he  stays  his  fervid  wheels,  and,  taking  the 
"  golden  compasses  in  his  hands,  centres  one  point  of  them 
"  where  he  stands  and  turns  the  other  through  the  obscure 
"  profundity  around.  Thus  are  marked  out,  or  cut  out, 
"  through  the  body  of  Chaos,  the  limits  of  the  new  Universe 
"  of  Man — that  starry  universe  which  to  us  seems  measureless 
"  and  the  same  as  infinity  itself,  but  which  is  really  only  a 
"  beautiful  azure  sphere  or  drop,  insulated  in  Chaos,  and  hung 
"  at  its  topmost  point  or  zenith  from  the  Empyrean.  But, 
"  though  the  limits  of  the  new  experimental  creation  are  thus 
"  at  once  marked  out,  the  completion  of  the  creation  is  a  work 
"  of  six  days.  On  the  last  of  these,  to  crown  the  work,  the 
"  happy  earth  received  its  first  human  pair — the  appointed 
"  lords  of  the  entire  new  creation.  And  so,  resting  from  his 
"  labours,  and  beholding  all  that  he  had  made,  that  it  was 
"  good,  the  Messiah  returned  to  his  Father,  reascending 
"  through  the  golden  gates,  which  were  now  just  over  the 
"  zenith  of  the  new  World,  and  were  its  point  of  suspension 
"  from  the  Empyrean  Heaven  ;  and  the  seventh  day  or  Sabbath 


PAEADISE  LOST. 


543 


"  was  spent  in  songs  of  praise  by  all  the  heavenly  hosts  over 
:'  the  finished  work,  and  in  contemplation  of  it  as  it  hung 
"  beneath  them, 

'another  Heaven, 
From  Heaven-gate  not  far,  founded  in  view 
On  the  clear  hyaline.' 

"  And  now,  accordingly,  this  was  the  diagram  of  the  universal 
"  infinitude  : — 


There  are  the  three  regions  of  heaven,  chaos,  and  hell,  as 
before  ;  but  there  is  also  now  a  fourth  region,  hung  drop- 
like into  Chaos  by  an  attachment  to  Heaven  at  the  north  pole 
or  zenith.  This  is  the  new  world,  or  the  starry  universe 
— all  that  universe  of  orbs  and  galaxies  which  man's  vision 
can  reach  by  utmost  power  of  telescope,  and  which  even  to 
his  imagination  is  illimitable.  And  yet  as  to  the  propor- 
tions of  this  World  to  the  total  map  Milton  dares  to  be 
exact.  The  distance  from  its  nadir  or  lowest  point  to  the 
upper  boss  of  Hell  is  exactly  equal  to  its  own  radius ;  or,  in 
other  words,  the  distance  of  Hell-gate  from  Heaven-gate  is 


544  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOEY  OF  HIS  TIME. 

"  exactly  three  semi-diameters  of  the  Human  or  Starry  Uni- 
"  verse." 

This  new  world,  introduced  by  Milton  into  his  map  of 
infinitude  at  this  point  in  the  chi-onology  of  his  poem,  is 
substantially  the  Ptolemaic  cosmos.  In  his  account  of  the 
creation  of  the  six  days,  indeed  (Book  VII,  lines  205-550), 
there  is  no  specific  mention  of  the  ten  Ptolemaic  spheres, 
nor  anything  that  compels  the  supposition  of  them.  After 
the  earth,  the  sun  is  first  made,  as  being  the  chief  of  celestial 
bodies ;  then  the  moon,  as  the  lesser  of  the  two  great  lights 
for  the  use  of  man  ;  and  on  the  same  fourth  day  all  the  other 
luminaries  appear,  stars  and  planets  together,  with  no  enume- 
ration of  the  latter  by  their  orbs  or  distances.  This  is  in 
strong  contrast  to  the  description  of  the  fourth  day's  creation 
in  Du  Bartas,  which  propounds  the  procedure  most  elaborately 
according  to  the  Ptolemaic  mechanism  and  nomenclature, 
with  an  inserted  passage  of  anti-Copernican  invective.  Clearly 
Milton  did  not  want  to  commit  himself.  The  Ptolemaism 
of  his  general  conception  is  implied,  however,  in  two  things. 
In  the  first  place,  the  suggestion  decidedly  is  that  the  earth 
is  steady  at  the  centre,  and  that  all  the  other  bodies,  the 
great  sun  himself  included,  move  round  her  and  minister  to 
her.  In  the  second  place,  and  more  emphatically,  it  is  an 
absolute  postulate  of  the  poem  that  there  is  a  definite  boundary 
to  the  created  universe,  an  uttermost  convex  of  the  great 
round,  by  which  it  is  all  walled  in  from  circumambient 
chaos : — 

"  Thus  far  extend,  thus  far  thy  bounds  ; 
This  be  thy  just  circumference,  0  "World," 

had  been  the  words  of  the  Messiah,  as  he  turned  the  point 
of  the  golden  compasses  through  chaos  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  circumscribing  that  scoop  of  chaos  that  was  to  be 
occupied  by  the  new  cosmos.  Hence,  whatever  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  interior  of  the  spherical  World  of  Man  seen  pendent 
in  the  last  diagram  from  the  Empyrean  into  remaining  Chaos, 
the  circular  boundary  has  necessarily  to  be  imagined  as  a 
hard,  impervious  shell,  equivalent  to  the  Ptolemaic  primum 


PARADISE  LOST.  545 

mobile.  This  requisite  of  the  poem  is  maintained  through- 
out ;  the  action  from  first  to  last  depends  upon  it ;  and 
it  is  pressed  upon  the  attention  with  every  study  of  optical 
art  in  several  very  notable  passages.  It  is  in  one  of  these 
that  the  poet  does  seem  to  intimate  formally  in  three  lines 
that  he  does  not  care  though  he  should  accept  wholly  for  his 
poetical  purpose  the  Ptolemaic  constitution  of  man's  world. 
In  those  lines  he  not  only  affixes  to  the  outermost  convex  its 
Ptolemaic  name  of  primum  mobile,  or  "  first  moved,"  but  also 
mentions  rapidly  the  seven  planetary  spheres,  the  sphere  of 
the  fixed  stars,  and  the  ninth  or  crystalline  sphere,  as  the 
successive  heavens  or  divisions  of  cosmical  space  that  must  be 
passed  through  in  ascending  from  the  earth  to  the  primum 
mobile  (III.  481-483).  But  for  that  passage  we  should 
hardly  have  been  able  to  say  that  the  interior  of  Milton's 
cosmos  was  imagined  by  him  with  strict  Ptolemaic  precision. 
The  impression  would  rather  have  been  of  an  uninterrupted 
single  sphere  or  hollow  round,  centred  by  the  little  earth, 
irradiated  by  stars  and  other  luminaries,  but  with  the  sun 
predominant  in  size  and  splendour. 

"  Meanwhile,  just  as  the  final  modification  of  the  map  of 
"  infinitude  has  been  accomplished  by  the  creation  of  the  six 
"  days,  Satan  and  his  rebel  adherents  in  Hell  begin  to  re- 
"  cover  from  their  stupor — Satan  the  first,  and  the  others 
"  at  his  call.  There  ensue  Satan's  first  speech  to  them, 
"  their  first  surveys  of  their  new  domain,  their  building  of 
"  their  palace  of  Pandemonium,  and  their  deliberations  there 
"  in  full  council  as  to  their  future  policy.  Between  Moloch's 
"  advice  for  a  renewal  of  open  war  with  Heaven,  and  Belial's 
"  and  Mammon's  counsels,  which  recommend  acquiescence  in 
"  their  new  circumstances  and  a  patient  effort  to  make  the 
"  best  of  them,  Beelzebub  insinuates  the  proposal  which  is 
"  really  Satan's,  and  which  is  ultimately  carried.  It  is  that. 
"  there  should  be  an  excursion  from  Hell  back  through  Chaos, 
''  to  ascertain  whether  that  new  universe,  with  a  new  race  of 
"  beings  in  it,  of  which  there  had  been  so  much  talk  in 
'  Heaven,  and  which  there  was  reason  to  think  might  come 
"into   existence  about  the  time,    had   come   into    existence. 

vol.  vi.  n  n 


>46  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

'  If  it  Lad,  might  not  means  be  found  to  vitiate  this  new 
'  universe  and  the  favourite  race  that  was  to  possess  it,  and 
'  to  drag  them  down  to  the  level  of  Hell  itself?  Would  not 
'  such  a  ruining  of  the  Almighty's  new  experiment  at  its 
'  outset  he  a  revenge  that  would  touch  him  deeply  ?  Would 
'it  not  be  easier  than  open  war?  And  on  the  stepping- 
'  stone  of  such  a  success  might  they  not  raise  themselves  to 
'  further  victory,  or  at  least  to  an  improvement  of  their 
'  present  condition,  and  to  an  extent  of  empire  that  should 
'  include  more  than  Hell  ? 

"  Satan's  counsel  having  been  adopted,  it  is  Satan  himself 
'  that  adventures  the  perilous  expedition  up  through  Chaos  in 
'  quest  of  the  new  Universe.  He  is  detained  for  a  while  at 
'  Hell-gate  by  the  ghastly  shapes  of  Sin  and  Death,  who  are 
'  there  to  guard  it ;  but,  the  gates  being  at  length  opened 
'  to  him,  never  to  shut  again,  he  emerges  into  the  hideous 
'  Chaos  overhead.  His  journey  up  through  it  is  arduous. 
'  Climbing,  swimming,  wading,  flying,  through  the  boggy 
'  consistency — now  falling  plumb-down  thousands  of  fathoms, 
'  again  carried  upwards  by  a  gust  or  explosion — he  reaches 
'  at  length,  about  midway  in  his  journey,  the  central  throne 
'  and  pavilion  where  Chaos  personified  and  Night  have  their 
'  government.  There  he  receives  definite  intelligence  that 
'  the  New  World  he  is  in  search  of  has  actually  been  created. 
'  Thus  encouraged,  and  directed  on  his  way,  again  he  springs 
'upward,  'like  a  pyramid  of  fire,'  through  what  of  Chaos 
'  remains ;  and,  after  much  farther  flying,  tacking,  and 
'  steering,  he  at  last  reaches  the  upper  confines  of  Chaos, 
( where  its  substance  seems  thinner,  so  that  he  can  wing 
'  about  more  easily,  and  where  a  glimmering  dawn  of  the 
'  light  from  above  begins  also  to  appear.  For  a  while  in  this 
'  calmer    space    he  weighs   his  wings   to    behold   at   leisure 

(II.   1046)    the    sight   that   is  breaking  upon  him.      And 

what  a  sight ! — 

'  Far  off  the  Empyreal  Heaven  extended  wide 
In  crescent,  undetermined  square  or  round, 
"W  th  opal  towers  and  battlements  adorned 
Of  living  sapphire,  once  his  native  seat, 


PARADISE  LOST.  547 

And,  fast  by,  hanging  in  a  golden  chain, 
This  pendent  World,  in  bigness  as  a  star 
Of  smallest  magnitude  close  by  the.  moon.' 

"  Care  must  be  taken  not  to  misinterpret  this  passage. 
"  Even  Addison  misinterpreted  it  woefully.  He  speaks  of 
"  Satan's  distant  discovery  '  of  the  earth  that  hung  close  by 
"  the  moon '  as  one  of  the  most  '  wonderfully  beautiful  and 
"  poetical '  passages  of  the  poem.  But  it  is  more  wonderfully 
"  beautiful  and  poetical  than  Addison  thought.  For,  as  even 
"  a  correct  reading  of  the  passage  by  itself  would  have  shown, 
"  ;  the  pendent  world  '  which  Satan  here  sees  is  not  the  earth 
"  at  all,  but  the  entire  starry  universe,  or  mundane  sphere, 
"  hung  drop-like  by  a  golden  touch  from  the  Empyrean  above 
"  it.  In  proportion  to  this  Empyrean,  at  the  distance  whence 
"  Satan  gazes,  even  the  starry  universe  pendent  from  it 
"  is  but  as  a  star  of  smallest  magnitude  seen  on  the  edge  of 
"  the  full  or  crescent  moon. 

"  At  length  Satan  alights  on  the  opaque  outside,  or  convex 
"  shell,  of  the  New  Universe.  As  he  had  approached  it,  what 
"  seemed  at  first  but  as  a  star  had  taken  the  dimensions  of 
"  a  globe ;  and,  when  he  had  alighted,  and  begun  to  walk  on 
"  it,  this  globe  had  become,  as  it  seemed,  a  boundless  con- 
"  tinent  of  firm  land,  exposed,  dark  and  starless,  to  the  stormy 
"  Chaos  blustering  round  like  an  inclement  sky.  Only  on  the 
(i  upper  convex  of  the  shell,  in  its  angles  towards  the  zenith, 
u  some  reflection  of  light  was  gained  from  the  wall  of  Heaven. 
"  Apparently  it  was  on  this  upper  convex  of  the  outside  of 
"  the  new  world,  and  not  at  its  nadir,  or  the  point  nearest  Hell, 
"  that  Satan  first  alighted  and  walked.  At  all  events  he  had 
"  to  reach  the  zenith  before  he  could  begin  the  real  business 
"  of  his  errand.  For  only  at  this  point — only  at  the  point  of 
"  attachment  or  suspension  of  the  New  Universe  to  the  Em- 
"  pyrean — was  there  an  opening  into  the  interior  of  the 
"  Universe.  All  the  outer  shell,  save  at  that  point,  was  hard, 
"  compact,  and  not  even  transpicuous  to  the  light  within, 
"  as  the  spherical  glass  round  a  lamp  is,  but  totally  opaque, 
"  or  only  glistering  faintly  on  its  upper  side  with  the  re- 
"  fleeted  light  of  Heaven.     Accordingly, — after  wandering  on 

N  n  2 


548         LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS  TIME. 

"  this  dark  outside  of  the  Universe  long"  enough  to  allow 
"  Milton  that  extraordinary  digression  (III.  440-497)  in 
"  which  he  finds  one  of  the  most  magnificently  grotesque 
"  uses  for  the  outside  of  the  Universe  that  it  could  have 
"  entered  into  the  imagination  of  any  poet  to  conceive, — the 
"  Fiend  is  attracted  in  the  right  direction  to  the  opening  at 
"  the  zenith.  What  attracts  him  thither  is  a  gleam  of  light 
"  from  the  mysterious  structure  or  staircase  which  there  serves 
"  the  angels  in  their  descents  from  Heaven's  Gate  into  the 
"  Human  Universe,  and  again  in  their  ascents  from  the  Uni- 
"  verse  to  Heaven's  Gate.  Sometimes  these  stairs  are  drawn 
"  up  to  Heaven  and  invisible  ;  but  at  the  moment  when  Satan 
"  reached  the  spot  they  were  let  down,  so  that,  standing 
"  on  the  lower  stair,  and  gazing  down  through  the  opening 
'•  right  underneath,  he  could  suddenly  behold  the  whole  in- 
"  terior  of  the  Starry  Universe  at  once.  He  can  behold  it 
"  in  all  directions — both  in  the  direction  of  latitude,  or  depth 
"  from  the  pole  where  he  stands  to  the  opposite  pole  or  nadir, 
"  and  also  longitudinally, — 

'  from  eastern  point 

Of  Libra  to  the  fleecy  star  that  bears 

Andromeda  far  off  Atlantic  seas 

Beyond  the  horizon.' " 
Into  this  glorious  world,  through  the  opening,  the  Fiend, 
after  a  pause  of  wonder,  suddenly  precipitates  himself.  Wind- 
ing his  way  among  the  fixed  stars,  he  makes  first  for  the  sun, 
which  attracts  him  by  its  all-surpassing  magnitude.  Alight- 
ing on  its  body,  and  finding  the  archangel  Uriel  there,  who 
has  been  sent  down  from  the  empyrean  to  be  regent  of  the 
great  luminary,  he  disguises  himself  and  pretends  to  be  one 
of  the  lesser  angels  who,  not  having  been  present  at  the 
creation,  has  now  come  alone,  out  of  curiosity,  to  behold  its 
glories.  To  his  inquiries  as  to  the  particular  orb  which  is  the 
abode  of  newly-created  man,  Uriel  replies  by  pointing  out 
the  earth  shining  at  a  distance  in  the  sunlight.  Thus  in- 
formed, he  wings  off  again  from  the  sun's  body,  and,  wheeling 
his  steep  flight  towards  the  earth,  alights  at  length  on  the 
top  of  Mount  Niphates,  near  Eden. 


PARADISE   LOST.  549 

It  might  seem  at  first  sight  that  the  advent  of  Satan  into 
the  mundane  universe  and  his  arrival  on  the  earth  took  place 
only  a  day  or  two  after  the  creation.  There  are  passages  of 
the  poem  which  suggest  this  interpretation.  It  is  evident, 
however,  that  a  transcendental  or  arbitrary  measure  of  time 
has  to  be  applied  to  some  of  those  extra-mundane  actions 
which  had  brought  Satan  from  Hell  to  Earth  ;  for,  when  we 
first  see  the  primal  pair  and  hear  them  conversing  in  their 
bowers  of  happiness,  with  the  Fiend  now  close  by  their  side, 
and  eyeing  them  with  mingled  envy  and  pity,  we  are  aware 
that  the  paradisaic  life  has  already  for  some  time  been  going 
on,  and  that  the  new  universe  has  been  wheeling  for  some 
time  in  quiet  beauty,  diurnal  and  nocturnal,  round  the  earth 
and  its  creatures.  "  That  day  I  oft  remember,"  Eve  is  made 
to  say  to  Adam  in  their  first  dialogue,  describing  her  sensa- 
tions when  she  first  awoke  to  the  amazement  of  existence, 
and  to  the  sight  of  him  as  the  sole  other  human  being ;  and 
there  are  various  other  passages  which  similarly  throw  back 
the  beginnings  of  the  paradisaic  life  to  a  considerable  distance. 
Not  till  now,  however,  when  the  Fiend  is  at  hand  on  the 
scene,  does  the  poet  put  forth  his  hand  to  paint  for  us  all  the 
loveliness  of  that  grand  and  simple  life  of  original  innocence, 
with  all  the  richness  and  deliciousness  of  beauty  round  it  in 
Paradise  itself,  bound  in  by  its  verdurous  wall  and  steep  woody 
slopes  from  the  rest  of  Eden.  But  now  he  does  put  forth  his 
hand,  and  succeeds  to  a  marvel.  The  Adam  and  Eve  of 
Milton  are  ':  not  intended  in  any  sense,"  it  has  been  well  said, 
"  to  represent  men  and  women  such  as  we  know  them, 
"worn  with  the  wars  of  thought  and  passion,  made  complex 
"or  dwarfed  by  civilization,  but  the  archetypal  man  and 
"  woman,  fresh  from  the  hand  of  God  1."  Here  was  Milton's 
difficulty,  and  he  has  overcome  it.  He  abstains  from  all 
attempt  at  complexity  or  intricacy  of  portraiture ;  the  linea- 
ments are  simple,  unsophisticated,  and  majestic ;  and  yet  the 
characters  are  distinct,  the  pure  masculine  and  feminine  of 
the   imaginary  primal   world.     Nor    are    their    surroundings 

1  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's  Milton  in  Mr.  Green's  Series  of  Classical  Writers. 


550  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

unworthy  of  themselves.  Did  ever  a  blind  man  before  so 
trust  to  his  own  mastery  in  recollections  of  the  world  of  sight 
and  colour  as  did  Milton  when  he  dreamt  out  in  his  darkness 
a  fit  paradise  for  his  first  human  pair,  lavishing  on  it  such 
wealth  of  lawn  and  hillock,  golden  dawn  and  sparkling 
night-sky,  sylvan  shade  and  fruit-trees  blooming,  bowers  of 
myrtle  and  walks  of  roses  ? 

Uriel,  whose  gaze  has  followed  Satan  from  the  sun,  and 
discovered  by  his  gestures  on  earth  that  he  was  probably  one 
of  the  rebel  spirits  escaped  from  Hell,  has  descended  to  give 
warning  to  the  archangel  Gabriel,  who  commands  the  legion 
of  angels  that  are  in  guard  of  Paradise.  Through  the  night, 
accordingly,  Paradise  is  searched  ;  and  Satan,  detected  by  the 
scouts,  "  squat  like  a  toad,  close  at  the  ear  of  Eve,"  insinuating 
false  dreams  into  her  sleep,  starts  up  in  his  own  gigantic 
shape,  and  is  brought  before  Gabriel.  They  exchange  words 
of  mutual  defiance,  and  there  was  about  to  be  battle  between 
Satan  and  the  angelic  guard,  when,  reading  the  result  in  one 
of  the  shining  constellations,  the  Fiend  betakes  himself  to 
flight,  one  knows  not  whither.  Next  day  rises,  presenting 
Eve  alarmed  by  her  dream  and  Adam  consoling*  her,  and  then 
their  hymn  of  worship,  and  their  pleasant  work  in  the  garden, 
till  at  noon  there  is  the  glorious  apparition  of  the  Archangel 
Raphael,  who  has  been  despatched  from  Heaven  that  Adam 
may  be  fortified  against  the  coming  danger  by  his  discourses 
and  admonitions.  The  conversations  between  Raphael  and 
Adam  begin  at  line  361  of  Book  V.,  and  extend  through  the 
rest  of  that  Book,  and  the  whole  of  Books  VI.,  VII.,  and 
VIII. ;  and  it  is  in  these  that  there  comes  in,  by  relation 
from  Raphael  to  Adam,  that  history  of  pre-mundane  events, 
including  the  rebellion  of  a  third  part  of  the  Angels,  the  wars 
in  Heaven,  the  expulsion  of  the  rebel  Angels  from  Heaven, 
their  inclosure  in  Hell  and  the  subsecpuent  creation  of  man's 
universe  in  Chaos  immediately  under  Heaven,  which  is 
already  assumed  in  the  poem,  but  which  Adam  had  not  yet 
known.  In  return,  Adam  relates  to  Raphael  his  recollections 
of  his  first  existence  and  thoughts  and  of  the  creation  of  Eve. 
It   is    in   these  conversations   also  that  there  occur  poetical 


PAEADISE   LOST.  551 

summaries  of  Milton's  physics,  physiology,  and  metaphysics. 
Especially  curious  is  that  long  passage  (VIII.  15-178)  in 
which  the  relative  merits  of  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the  cosmos 
and  the  Copernican  theory  are  made  the  subject  of  an  express 
discussion  between  Adam  and  the  Archangel.  Adam  is  repre- 
sented as  having  arrived  by  intuition  at  the  Copernican  theory ; 
and  Raphael,  in  reply,  leans  also  distinctly  to  that  side,  and 
criticises  severely  the  intricacy  of  the  Ptolemaic  system,  with 
the  shifts  of  "  centric  and  eccentric,"  "  cycle  and  epicyle,"  to 
whieh  it  had  been  driven  to  save  its  main  notion  of  "  orb  in 
orb."  On  the  whole,  however,  he  discourages  the  speculation 
as  too  abstruse,  and  represents  the  decision  either  way  as  of  no 
great  consequence  to  man's  chief  business,  which  is  to  enjoy 
life  innocently,  do  his  duty,  and  fear  God.  After  these  con- 
versations, at  only  part  of  which  Eve  has  been  present,  the 
two  colloquists  part,  the  Archangel  to  Heaven  and  Adam  to 
his  bower. 

Six  days  have  passed  since  the  departure  of  Raphael  when 
Satan,  who  has  meanwhile  been  winging  vaguely  in  the 
mundane  spaces  round  and  round  the  earth,  keeping  in  her 
shadow  as  much  as  possible,  returns  to  Paradise  as  a  mist  in 
the  night,  enters  the  sleeping  serpent,  and  addresses  himself 
in  that  guise  to  his  work  of  evil.  Finding  Eve  alone,  the 
Fiend  succeeds.  At  his  temptation,  she  eats  of  the  forbidden 
fruit ;  at  hers,  Adam,  when  she  has  rejoined  him,  eats  of  it 
also  ;  and  mankind  is  ruined. 

"  Earth  trembled  from,  her  entrails,  as  again 

In  pangs,  and  Nature  gave  a  second  groan  ; 

Sky  loured,  and,  muttering  thunder,  some  sad  drops 

Wept  at  completing  of  the  mortal  sin 

Original." 
The  rest  is  misery.  The  Angels  forsake  the  Earth;  Satan 
hies  back  to  Hell  to  announce  his  victory ;  the  Son  of  God 
comes  down  to  pronounce  doom ;  and  the  guilty  pair,  who, 
after  their  first  delirium  of  guilt,  have  broken  out  in  mutual 
reproaches  and  revilings,  are  left  wailing  a  night  and  a  day  in 
inconsolable  despair.  Their  wild  rage  of  wailing  and  mutual 
revilings  dies  at  last  into  a  kind  of  sobbing  calm,  with  some 


552         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ray  of  hope  from  recollection  of  the  very  words  in  which  they 
had  been  judged;  and  they  fall  prostrate  in  prayer.  Their 
prayer  is  heard.  Another  of  the  archangels,  Michael,  is  sent 
down  from  Heaven,  with  a  band  of  cherubim,  to  expel  the 
fallen  pair  from  Paradise,  but  also  to  comfort  them  before  their 
expulsion  by  foreshowing  them  the  future  history  of  the 
ruined  world  to  the  very  end  of  things,  with  the  golden  thread 
through  that  history  which  certifies  retrieval  and  redemption. 
The  last  two  books  of  the  poem  relate  this  prospective  vision, 
vouchsafed  to  Adam  through  Michael,  of  the  things  that  were 
to  be  on  earth  ;  and  at  the  close  of  all  we  see  the  eastern  side 
of  Paradise  waved  over  by  a  flaming  brand,  and  the  gate 
thronged  with  dreadful  faces  and  fiery  arms,  while  the  ejected 
pair,  with  slow  footsteps,  are  taking  their  solitary  way  through 
Eden,  hand  in  hand. 

"  The  world  was  all  before  them,  where  to  choose 
Their  place  of  rest,  and  Providence  their  guide." 

Already,  before  their  expulsion,  there  had  been  certain 
modifications  in  the  structure  of  the  Mundane  Universe  in 
consequence  of  their  sin.  "  In  the  first  place,  there  had  been 
"  established,  what  did  not  exist  before,  a  permanent  communi- 
"  cation  between  Hell  and  that  Universe.  When  Satan  had 
"  come  up  through  Chaos  from  Hell-gate,  he  had  done  so  with 
"  toil  and  difficulty,  as  one  exploring  his  way ;  but  no  sooner 
"  had  he  succeeded  in  his  mission  than  Sin  and  Death,  whom  he 
"  had  left  at  Hell-gate,  felt  themselves  instinctively  aware  of 
"  his  success,  and  of  the  necessity  there  would  thenceforward 
"  be  for  a  distinct  road  between  Hell  and  the  New  World,  by 
"  which  all  the  infernals  might  go  and  come.  Accordingly, 
"  they  had  constructed  such  a  road, — a  wonderful  causey  or 
"  bridge  from  Hell-gate,  right  through  Chaos,  to  that  part  of 
••  the  outside  of  the  New  Universe  where  Satan  had  first 
"  alighted, — i.  e.  not  to  its  nadir,  but  to  some  point  near  its 
"  zenith,  where  there  is  the  break  or  orifice  in  the  primum 
"  mobile  towards  the  Empyrean.  And  what  a  consequence 
"  from  this  vast  addition  in  the  physical  constitution  of  the 
"  Cosmos !     The  infernal  host  are  no  longer  confined  to  Hell, 


PABADISE  LOST.  553 

"  but  possess  also  the  New  Universe,  like  an  additional  island 
"  or  pleasure-domain,  up  in  Chaos,  and  on  the  very  confines  of 
"  their  former  home,  the  Empyrean.  Preferring'  this  conquest  to 
"their  proper  empire  in  Hell,  they  have  been  thenceforth  perhaps 
"  more  frequently  in  our  World  than  in  Hell,  winging-  through 
"■  its  various  spheres,  but  chiefly  inhabiting  the  air  round  the 
"  central  earth  and  passing"  as  the  gods  and  demigods  of  the 
"  earth's  various  polytheisms  and  mongrel  religions.  But  the 
"  new  causeway  from  Hell  to  the  World,  constructed  by  Sin  and 
"  Death,  was  not  the  only  modification  of  the  physical  universe 
"  consequent  on  the  fall.  The  interior  of  the  Human  World  as 
"  it  hangs  from  the  Empyrean  received  some  alterations  for  the 
"  worse  by  the  decree  of  the  Almighty  himself.  The  elements 
"  immediately  round  the  earth  became  harsher  and  more 
"  malignant;  the  planets  and  starry  spheres  were  so  influenced 
"  that  planets  and  stars  have  ever  since  looked  inwards  upon 
"  the  central  earth  with  aspects  of  malevolence  ;  nay,  perhaps 
"  it  was  then  first  that,  either  by  a  heaving  askance  of  the 
"  earth  from  her  former  position,  or  by  a  change  in  the  sun's 
"  path,  the  ecliptic  became  oblique  to  the  equator.  All  this 
"  apart  from  changes  in  the  actual  body  of  the  earth,  including 
"  the  obliteration  of  the  site  of  the  desecrated  paradise,  and 
"  the  outbreak  of  virulence  among  all  things  animate  since 
"  Sin  and  Death  fastened  on  the  Earth  to  begin  their  ravages. " 
And  so  it  has  been,  and  so  it  will  be,  a  world  always  from 
worse  to  worse,  but  for  the  remedy.  That  had  been  predicted 
in  the  invocation  beginning  the  epic,  where  it  had  been 
announced  that  the  theme  of  the  poem  was  to  be  man's  first 
disobedience,  with  its  consequences  of  death,  woe,  and  the 
loss  of  Eden, 

"  till  one  greater  Man 
Restore  us  and  regain  the  blissful  seat." 

From  this  sketch  and  exposition  it  will  have  appeared  thai 
Paradise  Lost  was,  properly  and  professedly,  as  we  have  called 
it,  a  new  cosmical  epic.     The  very  characteristic,  in  respect  of 
aim  and  matter,  by  which  it  offered  itself  as  one  of  the  great 
poems  of  the  world,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  as  a  contri- 


554  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

bution  to  the  permanent  mythology  of  the  human  race,  was 
that  it  connected,  by  a  narrative  of  vast  construction,  the 
inconceivable  universe  anterior  to  time  and  to  man  with  the 
beginnings  and  history  of  our  particular  planet.  This  it  had 
done  by  fastening  the  attention  on  one  great  supernatural 
being,  supposed  to  belong  to  the  angelic  crowd  that  peopled 
the  empyrean  before  our  world  was  created,  by  following  this 
being  in  his  actions  as  a  rebel  in  heaven  and  an  outcast  in 
hell,  and  by  leaving  him  at  last  in  apparently  successful  pos- 
session of  the  new  universe  for  which  he  had  struggled.  If 
"  the  hero  "  of  an  epic  is  that  principal  personage  who  figures 
from  first  to  last,  and  whose  actions  draw  all  the  threads,  or 
even  if  success  in  some  sense,  and  command  of  our  admiration 
and  sympathy  in  some  degree,  are  requisite  for  the  name,  then 
not  wrongly  have  so  many  of  the  critics  regarded  Satan  as 
"  the  hero  "  of  Paradise  Lost.  There  is,  at  all  events,  no  other 
"  hero  "  there,  unless  Humanity  itself,  which  is  the  noble  con- 
trary object  of  our  affections  and  hopes  throughout,  and  which 
we  may  accept  as  personified  distributively  in  Adam  and  Eve, 
can  stand  to  us  in  that  character.  But,  however  that  verbal 
question  may  be  settled,  it  remains  incontestable  that  the 
heroic  substance  of  the  poem,  though  it  all  bears  on  the  cata- 
strophe on  earth,  includes  an  extraordinary  proportion  of  the 
superhuman  and  extramundane.  The  action  in  the  empyrean 
or  heaven  of  heavens  itself,  direct  or  reported,  occupies  about 
a  fourth  part  of  the  whole;  that  in  hell  and  chaos  not  much 
less ;  a  certain  proportion  even  of  the  intramundane  action  is 
not  on  the  earth,  but  in  the  mundane  spaces  round  the  earth  ; 
the  sum  of  the  extramundane  action  and  the  non-terrestrial 
action  within  the  mundus  taken  together  considerably  exceeds 
all  that  is  left  of  the  properly  terrestrial ;  and  even  of  the 
properly  terrestrial  action  it  is  but  a  portion  that  consists  of 
the  sweet  human  life  paradisaic.  This  must  have  been  per- 
ceived at  once  by  the  first  readers  of  the  book.  They,  of 
course,  were  at  liberty,  while  perceiving  the  compound  cha- 
racter of  the  whole,  and  acknowledging  the  wonderful  poetical 
unity,  the  organic  necessity  of  the  interconnexion,  to  divide 
the  book  into  parts  on  the  more  private  ground  of  their  own 


PARADISE   LOST.  555 

preference  for  this  or  the  other  moiety  of  the  contained  matter. 
Some  of  them,  perhaps,  may  have  had  the  feeling"  to  which 
not  a  few  have  confessed  from  that  time  to  this,  and  to  which 
Tennyson  has  given  such  subtle  expression  in  his  Horatian 
ode  : — 

"  O  mighty-mouth'd  inventor  of  harmonies, 
0  skill'd  to  sing  of  Time  or  Eternity, 
God-gifted  organ- voice  of  England, 

Milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages  ; 
Whose  Titan  angels,  Gabriel,  Abdiel, 
Starr'd  from  Jehovah's  gorgeous  armouries, 
Tower,  as  the  deep-domed  Empyrean 

Rings  to  the  roar  of  an  Angel-onset : 
Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  of  cedar  arches 

Charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean, 
Where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  India 
Streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean  isle 

And  crimson-hued  the  stately  palmwoods 
WThisper  in  odorous  heights  of  even." 

Praise  like  this,  whether  of  the  angelic  grandeurs  of  the 
poem  or  of  its  paradisaic  beauties,  could  come  only  after 
consent  that  the  artistic  execution  had  not  fallen  beneath  the 
sublime  conception.  On  this  question,  whether  the  verdict 
were  to  come  sooner  or  later,  there  could  be  no  doubt  what 
it  would  be.  The  "  mighty-mouthed,"  the  "  skilled  to  sing"," 
the  "  organ-voice  of  England/'  the  "  inventor  of  harmonies," 
were  epithets  for  Milton  which  remained  to  be  devised,  but 
some  presentiment  of  which  could  not  but  be  felt  wherever  the 
first  copies  of  the  poem  came  into  the  hands  of  fit  readers. 
In  whatever  respect  the  poem  was  examined,  it  answered  the 
test  of  the  superlative.  Was  it  the  conduct  of  the  story  ;  was 
it  the  sustained  elevation  of  the  style  and  the  perfect  texture 
and  finish  of  the  wording  ;  was  it  the  music  of  the  verse, 
varying  from  the  roar  of  hurricane  and  the  tramp  of  bannered 
hosts  to  the  charm  of  bees  and  birds ;  was  it  the  plenitude  of 
gem -like  phrases  and  of  passages  memorable  individually  and 
sure  to  be  quoted  for  ever  ;  was  it  wealth  of  maxim  and  weight 
of  thought ;   was  it  the  incessant  suggestion  of  subjects  for 


556  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

other  forms  of  art,  whether  of  single  figures  and  statuesque 
moments  for  the  sculptor,  or  of  groups,  incidents,  and  land- 
scapes for  the  painter  ?  In  any  or  all  of  these  respects  what 
a  poem  it  was !  Then,  through  all,  and  imparting  to  all  a 
sense  of  difference  from  anything  known  before,  who  could 
miss  that  tone  of  a  certain  personal  something,  that  boom  of 
self-conscious  magnanimity,  for  which  we  have  no  name  yet 
but  the  Miltonic  ?  Even  the  occasional  languours  and  lapses 
into  the  prosaic,  as  when  some  doctrine  of  Puritan  theology 
had  to  be  expounded  in  set  terms,  might  give  pleasure  to 
many.  What  were  they  but  the  rests  or  sinkings  of  the 
eagle,  that  he  might  prove  his  strength  of  plume  the  next 
moment  by  again  soaring  to  his  highest  in  the  sunbeams  ? 

Apart  from  every  other  recommendation  of  the  poem, 
its  scholarliness,  its  extraordinary  fulness  of  erudition  of  all 
sorts,  must  have  been  admired  immediately.  What  abund- 
ance and  exactness  of  geographical,  as  well  as  of  astronomical, 
reference  and  allusion  ;  what  lists  of  sonorous  proper  names 
rolled  lovingly  into  the  Iambic  chaunt ;  what  acquaintance 
with  universal  history  ;  what  compulsion  of  all  the  lusciousness 
of  iEgean  myth  and  Mediterranean  legend  into  the  service  of 
the  Hebrew  theme  !  This  man,  who  had  the  Bible  by  heart, 
whose  verse,  when  he  chose,  could  consist  of  nothing  else  than 
coagulations  of  texts  from  the  Bible  or  concurrent  Biblical 
gleams  from  the  first  of  Genesis  to  the  last  of  the  Apocalypse, 
had  also  ransacked  and  enjoyed  the  classics.  Though  his 
flight  was  above  the  Aonian  mount,  yet  Jove  and  Jason, 
Proteus  and  Apollo,  Pan  and  the  Nymphs,  the  Fauns  and 
the  Graces,  all  came  into  view  as  they  were  wanted,  captives 
to  his  heavenly  muse.  The  epic,  while  planned  from  the 
Bible,  and  while  original  in  the  entire  conception  and  in 
every  part,  was  also  a  mosaic  of  recollections  from  all  that 
was  best  in  Greek  and  Latin  literature.  Homer,  Hesiod,  the 
three  Greek  tragedians,  Plato,  Lucretius,  Cicero,  Virgil,  Ovid, 
and  the  rest,  had  all  yielded  passages  or  flakes  of  their 
substance  to  be  melted  into  the  rich  English  enamel.  But 
the  learning  displayed  included  more  than  the  classics.  The 
author's  readings  had  evidently  been  wide  and  various  in  the 


PAEADISE  LOST. 


557 


mediaeval  Latinists  and  later  scholars  of  different  countries, 
and  especially  close  and  familiar  in  Dante,  Petrarch,  Ariosto, 
Tasso,  and  others  of  the  Italians.  Of  his  acquaintance  with 
all  the  preceding-  poetry  of  his  own  tongue  there  was  no  room 
for  doubt.  There  were  proofs,  more  particularly,  of  his 
intimacy  with  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  those  minor  English 
poets  of  his  own  century  who  are  best  described  as  the 
Spenserians,  and  of  whom  Browne,  Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher, 
and  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  were  the  finest  representa- 
tives. Had  it  been  worth  while,  it  could  have  been  proved 
from  Paradise  Lost  that  Milton  was  no  stranger  to  the 
writings  of  Cowley  and  Davenant1. 

We  are  thus  brought  back  to  the  fact  that  Paradise  Lost 
made  its  appearance  in  Davenant's  Laureateship  and  belongs 
by  right  of  date  to  the  English  literature  of  the  first  years  of 
the  Restoration.  On  a  comparison  of  the  poem  with  all  that 
was  then  recent  or  current  what  can  have  been  the  impression  ? 
The  last  things  even  nominally  of  the  heroic  or  epic  kind  in 


1  In  connexion  with  this  subject  of 
the  learning  shown  in  Paradise  Lost 
one  might  lose  oneself  again  in  the  in- 
quiry, prosecuted  at  such  length  by 
Todd  and  others,  as  to  the  amount  of 
Milton's  possible  indebtedness  to  pre- 
vious writers,  Italian.  Spanish,  Latin, 
German,  Dutch,  and  English,  for  this 
or  that  in  his  epic.  Having  elsewhere 
{Cambridge  Milton,  I.  36—40)  given  my 
impressions  of  the  results  of  these  mis- 
cellaneous bibliographical  researches, 
and  characterized  them  as,  with  one  or 
two  exceptions,  "laborious  nonsense," 
I  will  advert  here  only  to  that  one  form 
of  the  inquiry  which  seems  to  me  the 
most  curious  biographically.  Was  Mil- 
ton acquainted  with  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Casdmon  ?  The  Cosmos  of  Caedmon 
has,  of  course,  nothing  in  common  with 
Milton's  Cosmos,  and  is  but  a  very 
limited  and  homely  old  Northumbrian 
world  indeed  ;  but  there  are  some  strik- 
ing coincidences  between  notions  and 
phrases  in  Satan's  soliloquy  in  Hell  in 
the  Cnedmonian  Genesis  and  notions  and 
phrases  in  the  description  of  Satan's 
rousing  himself  and  his  fellows  in  the 
first  book  of  Paradise  Lost.  Very  pro- 
bably the  coincidences  imply  only  strong 
conception  of  the  same  traditional  situa- 


tions by  two  different  minds  ;  but  it  is 
just  possible  that  there  was  more.  When 
the  Caedmonian  fragments  were  first 
published,  at  Amsterdam,  in  1655,  by 
the  Teutonic  scholar  Franciscus  Junius, 
i.e.  Francois  Dujon,  Milton,  it  is  true, 
had  been  blind  for  three  years,  and 
there  is  some  difficulty  in  understand- 
ing how  he  could  then  have  found  a 
reader  fit  to  spell  out  to  him  the  small 
quarto  of  106  pages  containing  the  frag- 
ments, printed  as  they  were  in  the  old 
Anglo-Saxon  characters,  running  on 
painfully  in  prose  fashion,  without 
metrical  break,  and  without  comment 
or  translation  of  any  kind.  The  unique 
manuscript  from  which  the  volume  was 
printed,  however,  had  been  in  Arch- 
bishop Usher's  library,  and  had  been 
given  by  the  Archbishop  to  Junius  about 
1651 ;  and  Junius,  having  been  a  resident 
in  London  continuously  from  1620  to 
that  year,  must  almost  certainly  have 
been  a  personal  acquaintance  oi  Wilton's. 
Hence  it  is  just  possible  that  Milton 
had  become  acquainted  with  the  precious 
Cfedmonian  manuscript  before  he  was 
blind.  If  he  heard  of  the  discovery 
of  such  a  thing,  he  was  not  likely  to 
remain  ignorant  of  its  nature  or  con- 
tents. 


558  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

English  poetry  were  Cowley's  Davideis,  Davenant's  Gondibert, 
and  Dryden's  Annus  Mirabilis.  None  of  these,  of  course,  could 
stand  within  the  sight  of  such  an  epic  as  this  ;  nor,  in  going 
back  through  previous  English  poetry  in  search  of  the  latest 
book,  nominally  of  the  epic  order,  worthy  of  being  named  with 
this  in  respect  of  general  importance,  could  one  bestow  even 
a  passing  thought  on  Drayton,  Daniel,  or  any  of  the  rest  of 
that  century,  or  stop  short  of  the  Faery  Queeite.  Then,  the 
view  enlarging  itself,  and  the  distinction  of  poetry  into  kinds 
ceasing  to  be  relevant  for  the  farther  purpose  of  estimate,  the 
recollection  would  be  that  the  English  nation  had  hitherto 
possessed  but  three  poets  of  any  kind  that  all  the  world  could 
regard  as  really  consummate.  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Shake- 
speare were  the  trio  of  England's  greatest,  with  none,  later 
or  intermediate,  that  could  rank  in  their  company.  And 
now  what  had  happened  ?  A  fourth  poet  had  stepped  out 
who  must  be  associated  for  ever  with  those  three  predecessors. 
He  had  stepped  out, — who  could  have  expected  it  ? — in  the 
person  of  a  blind  man  domiciled  in  an  obscure  suburb  of 
London,  who,  though  there  was  a  dim  remembrance  that  he 
had  professed  poetry  in  his  youth,  had  been  known  through 
his  middle  life  as  a  Puritan  pamphleteer,  a  divorcist,  an 
iconoclast  in  Church  and  State,  and  who  seven  years  ago,  when 
Charles  came  to  the  throne,  had  been  so  specially  infamous  for 
his  connexion  with  the  Republic  and  the  Regicide  that  he  had 
barely  escaped  the  gallows.  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakespeare, 
and  Milton,  were  thenceforth  to  be  the  quaternion  of  largest 
stars  in  the  main  portion  of  the  firmament  of  English  poetry. 
Nay,  if  there  was  to  be  a  discrimination  of  degrees  among  the 
four,  was  it  not  Milton  that  was  to  be  named  inevitably 
whenever,  on  any  plea  of  coeijuality  of  poetic  genius  visible 
through  difference  of  modes,  the  supreme  radiance  of  Shake- 
speare was  to  be  challenged  by  the  contrast  of  a  peer  or 
second  ?  That  is  the  understanding  now,  and  it  was  formed 
with  unusual  rapidity,  we  shall  find,  in  Milton's  own  genera- 
tion. Meanwhile  we  are  still  in  the  year  1667.  Paradise  Lost 
has  yet  to  find  its  readers,  and  there  are  lions  in  the  path. 


BOOK  III. 

AUGUST  1667— NOVEMBER  1674. 

HISTORY : — English   Politics   and   Literature   from  1667 
to  1674. 

BIOGRAPHY : — The  Last  Seven  Years  of  Milton's  Life. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ENGLISH    POLITICS    AND    LITERATURE    FROM    1667    TO    1674. 

There  are  few  periods  during1  which  it  is  more  difficult  to 
describe  the  mechanism  of  the  English  government  than 
during  the  seven  years  following  the  fall  of  Clarendon.  The 
difficulty  has  been  acknowledged,  rather  than  explained,  by 
calling  the  period,  or  the  greater  part  of  it,  The  time  of  the 
Cabal  Administration. 

No  need  now  to  correct  the  old  popular  fallacy  that  the  word 
cabal  was  an  invention  of  that  time.  Most  people  know 
that  the  word  cabal  had  already  been  in  use  in  England,  as  a 
designation  for  any  number  of  persons  putting  their  heads 
together  for  any  object  whatever,  but  more  especially  as  an 
alternative  name  for  that  secret  committee  of  the  King's 
privy  council  and  ministry  which  had  been  long  known  as 
The  Junto,  and  which  we  now  call  The  Cabinet.  Though  the 
strict  constitutional  theory  was  that  the  right  and  duty  of 
advising  the  sovereign  lay  in  the  whole  body  of  the  privy 
council,  and  that  each  minister  was  the  independent  servant 
of  the  crown  in  his  own  department,  the  two  connected  insti- 
tutions of  The  Junto  and  The  Premiership  are  so  rooted  in  the 
very  necessities  of  politics  and  of  human  nature  that  the 
existence  of  one  or  other,  or  of  both  together,  had  been  more 
or  less  an  open  fact  in  the  reigns  of  all  recent  English 
sovereigns.  That  neither  was  liked,  that  both  were  regarded 
as  unconstitutional,  and  that  the  premier  or  favourite  for  the 
time  being,  and  other  members  of  the  Junto  or  Cabal  for  the 
time  being,  always  ran  peculiar  risks,  had  not  prevented  the 

vol.  vi.  o  o 


562  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

definite  transmission  of  both  institutions  through  the  reigns 
of  James  I.  and  Charles  I.  The  Clarendon  Administration 
for  Charles  II.  from  1660  to  1667  had  been  in  reality  a 
government  by  intermixed  cabal  and  premiership.  What, 
then,  was  the  difference  from  1667  onwards?  It  was  that, 
instead  of  a  government  by  continued  cabal  and  premiership 
in  combination,  there  was  now  a  government  by  continued 
cabal  without  any  steady  premiership.  In  other  words, 
Charles  himself,  so  far  as  he  took  trouble  with  public  affairs, 
was  now  more  the  master  than  he  had  been.  No  one  stood 
now  by  his  side  as  indubitably  and  necessarily  the  prime 
minister ;  and,  while  he  still  had  his  general  privy  council 
and  ministry  of  some  thirty  or  forty  persons,  to  be  used  as  a 
formal  agency  of  state,  he  could  depute  the  real  work  of 
deliberation  for  him  and  co-operation  with  him  in  state- 
affairs  to  any  five  or  six,  or  any  seven  or  eight,  of  the  privy 
councillors  and  ministers  most  in  his  confidence.  These  were 
his  Cabal  or  Cabinet,  as  distinct  from  the  general  body  of  the 
privy  council  and  ministry ;  and  the  peculiarity  was  that,  as 
the  composition  of  the  cabal  depended  entirely  on  his  own 
pleasure,  it  might  fluctuate  from  month  to  month,  or  even 
from  week  to  week.  At  certain  times,  indeed,  there  might 
even  be  two  halves  of  the  one  nominal  cabal,  separately  em- 
ployed and  consulted  by  the  King,  and  played  off  against  each 
other. 

FKOM  AUGUST  1667  TO  APEIL  1670. 

Immediately  after  the  fall  of  Clarendon,  the  Duke  of 
Ormond  being  then  absent  in  his  Lord-Lieutenancy  of 
Ireland,  the  cabal  round  Charles  for  English  affairs  con- 
sisted of  the  Duke  of  York,  the  Duke  of  Albemarle,  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  Sir  Orlando  Bridgman  (made  Lord 
Keeper  in  succession  to  Clarendon  as  Lord  Chancellor'),  Lord 
Privy  Seal  Roberts,  and  Lord  Arlington  and  Sir  William 
Morrice,  the  two  Secretaries  of  State ;  with  whom,  for  occa- 
sional purposes,  were  associated  Lord  Ashley,  as  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer  and  one  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Treasury, 
Sir  Thomas  Clifford,  as  Comptroller  of  the  Household  and  one 


THE  CABAL  FROM  1667  TO  1670.         563 

of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Treasury,  and  Sir  William  Coventry, 
as  one  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Treasury.  This  cabal  was 
modified  by  some  subsequent  changes.  In  June  1668  Clifford 
was  promoted  to  the  Treasurership  of  the  Household,  the  Comp- 
trollers/tip going  to  Lord  Newport.  In  September  in  the 
same  year  Sir  William  Morrice,  who  had  been  dwindling-  in 
importance,  retired  from  his  Secretaryship  of  State  for  i£Jl  0,000, 
and  was  succeeded  by  Sir  John  Trevor.  In  March  1668-9, 
in  consequence  of  a  quarrel  with  Buckingham,  Sir  William 
Coventry  was  dismissed.  Early  in  1669,  the  Duke  of  Ormond 
having  been  removed  from  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  of  Ireland 
by  Buckingham's  contrivance,  Lord  Roberts  went  to  Ireland 
as  his  successor.  On  the  3rd  of  January  1669-70  Monk  died 
of  a  dropsy,  at  the  age  of  sixty-one,  and  there  was  to  be  no 
farther  influence  of  his  in  the  affairs  of  the  Restoration.  The 
general  effect  of  these  changes  had  been  to  increase  the  im- 
portance of  Ashley  and  Clifford  in  the  cabal.  On  the  whole, 
however,  the  chiefs  from  the  beginning  were  Buckingham 
(without  office  till  he  became  Master  of  Horse  by  purchase 
from  Monk)  and  Lord  Secretary  Arlington.  A  kind  of 
pseudo-premiership,  indeed,  had  been  accorded  to  Bucking- 
ham, which  might  have  been  turned  into  a  real  premiership 
but  for  his  incorrigible  fitfulness  and  the  scandal  of  his 
private  profligacies.  As  it  was,  the  steadier,  calmer,  and 
more  laborious  Arlington  was  more  than  his  rival,  especially 
in  the  foreign  department.  Ashley  was  first  distinctly 
adopted  into  the  cabal  as  an  adherent  of  Buckingham,  and 
Clifford  as  an  adherent  of  Arlington  1. 

Consisting  mainly  of  a  selection  of  the  politicians  that  had 
been  in  opposition  to  Clarendon,  the  very  characteristic  of  this 
cabal  of  Buckingham's  pseudo-premiership  was  its  willing 
agreement  with  the  King  in  an  endeavour  to  reverse  some 
parts  of  Clarendon's  policy,  and  more  especially  his  rigid 
church-policy,  as  it  had  taken  shape  in  such  barbarities  as 
the  Act  of  Uniformity,  the  Conventicles  Act,  and  the  Five 
Miles  Act. 

1  Beatson's  Political  Index ;   several       Pepys    in    various    places ;    Christie  'a 
Articles   in  Wood's   Ath.   and   Fasti;       Life  of  Shaftesbury,  II.  1— -4. 

0  0  2 


564  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Already,  since  the  Great  Fire  of  London,  and  partly  in 
consequence  of  that  event,  there  had  been  a  considerable  re- 
laxation of  the  severities  against  Nonconformists.  After  the 
burning  of  so  many  churches,  it  was  thought  "  a  thing  too 
gross  "  to  try  to  prevent  the  ejected  Nonconformist  ministers 
of  London  from  meeting  their  distressed  and  impoverished 
old  congregations  in  the  open  air,  or  in  temporary  tabernacles 
amid  the  ruins.  The  liberty  thus  recovered  by  sheer  necessity 
in  London  had  extended  itself  by  contagion  into  most  parts 
of  the  country.  Nonconformist  ministers  everywhere  were 
preaching  openly,  and  crowds  were  flocking  to  hear  them. 
With  this  breaking"  down  of  the  practice  of  the  Acts  against 
Nonconformity  there  had  naturally  come  a  disposition  to 
revive  the  question  of  their  expediency.  Now  that  England 
had  an  established  Episcopal  Church,  with  abundant  powers 
and  revenues,  and  that  Church  was  safe,  was  there  no  other 
mode  of  dealing  with  the  dissenters  from  that  Church  than 
the  systematic  coercion  by  pains  and  penalties,  the  systematic 
persecution,  that  had  seemed  necessary  to  Clarendon,  Sheldon, 
and  the  rest,  and  had  been  organized  into  statutes  by  the 
Cavalier  Parliament?  Might  there  not  be  a  return  to  that 
policy  of  a  moderate  indulgence  in  religious  matters,  a 
regulated  toleration  of  Nonconformist  worship,  which  the 
King  had  promised  from  the  first,  which  he  had  again  and 
again  recommended  in  vain,  and  which  he  was  understood 
still  to  favour 1  ? 

Buckingham's  Cabal,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  took  this  very 
proper  view  of  things,  and  were  all  so  far  of  the  King's  mind 
in  that  matter.  There  were,  however,  two  sets  of  politicians 
in  the  Cabal,  with  a  corresponding  difference  in  their  reasons 
for  inclining  to  a  policy  of  toleration.  There  was  the  Protestant 
Liberal  section  of  the  Cabal,  consisting  of  Lord  Keeper 
Bridgman,  who  was  an  Episcopalian  of  a  temperate  order, 
Monk  and  Roberts,  who  had  been  Presbyterians  and  retained 
Presbyterian  sympathies,  and  Buckingham  and  Ashley,  who 
were  Sceptics  or   Deists  in  the  guise  of  Church- of-En gland 

J  Baxter,  Part  III.  p.  22. 


CHURCH-POLICY   FROM    1667   TO    1670.  565 

men.  There  was  also  the  crypto-Catholic  section  of  the  Cabal, 
represented  by  the  Duke  of  York,  Arlington,  and  Sir  Thomas 
Clifford.  The  former  were  inclined  to  a  policy  of  toleration 
by  arguments  of  natural  good  sense,  Buckingham  by  far  the 
most  liberal  of  them,  and  willing  to  go  to  great  lengths,  but 
the  rest  recognising  limits,  and  Ashley  with  an  express 
reservation,  which  he  had  put  on  paper,  that  no  toleration  to 
be  granted  could  with  political  safety  be  extended  to  the 
Roman  Catholics  or  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men 1.  One  of  the 
very  motives  of  the  crypto-Catholics  of  the  Cabal,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  concurring  in  a  policy  of  toleration  for  the 
Presbyterians,  the  Independents,  the  Baptists,  and  other 
Protestant  sects,  was  that  the  Roman  Catholics  might  be 
included,  and  there  might  thus  be  farther  study  of  Roman 
Catholic  interests  and  prospects  in  England.  Charles  him- 
self, it  was  to  appear  very  notoriously,  was  inspired,  and  had 
all  along  been  inspired,  by  this  peculiar  motive  in  Ms  efforts 
for  a  toleration.  His  Majesty,  therefore,  was  best  represented, 
and  knew  himself  to  be  best  represented,  in  the  religious 
question,  by  the  crypto-Catholic  section  of  his  Cabal.  They 
were  sincere  enough  in  their  desire  for  a  general  toleration, 
and  were  influenced  by  the  same  reasons  of  good  sense  and 
good  nature  that  actuated  their  liberal  Protestant  colleagues; 
but  their  conduct  of  the  toleration  question  practically  was 
liable  to  a  subtle  influence  from  their  secret  motive.  A 
toleration  of  the  Roman  Catholics  being  a  notion  to  which 
the  mass  of  the  English  people  were  obstinately  opposed, 
might  not  the  only  way  to  educate  them  in  that  notion,  and 
to  obtain  a  toleration  for  the  Roman  Catholics,  be  to  give  full 
rein  now  and  then  to  the  persecution  of  the  Protestant  Non- 
conformists of  all  varieties?  Might  not  the  Nonconformists 
be  thus  driven,  for  their  own  sakes,  into  conjunction  with  the 
Roman  Catholics  and  a  demand  for  a  general  toleration  of  all 
religionists  ?  This  peculiar  subtlety  of  motive  on  the  part  of 
the  crypto-Catholic  tolerationists  of  the  Cabal  of  1667  was 
to  take  effect  in  occasional  infidelities  to  their  principle  of 
toleration,  and  relapses  into  the  persecuting  policy. 

'  Memorial  on  Toleration  by  Ashley  in  Christie's  Shaftesbury,  Vol.  II.  Appendix. 


566  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

Not,  however,  at  any  time  between  1667  and  1670.  During" 
those  years  the  King  and  the  Cabal  collectively  moved  in 
a  straightforward  course  on  the  religious  question.  They 
allowed  the  subject  of  toleration  to  be  freely  ventilated  and 
discussed ;  Sheldon,  Morley,  and  the  other  High  Episcopal 
divines  found  themselves  out  of  favour ;  and  the  agreement 
was  to  let  the  persecuting  Acts  be  as  inoperative  as  possible. 
They  even  did  their  best  for  a  repeal  in  Parliament  itself  of 
the  Clarendonian  Acts  against  the  Nonconformists.  Here, 
however,  they  ran  against  a  rock. 

Parliament  was  not  sitting  when  the  Buckingham  Cabal 
was  formed  ;  and,  when  it  did  meet  for  its  Seventh  Session  on 
the  10th  of  October  1667,  the  great  business  for  some  time 
was  the  impeachment  of  Clarendon.  That  having  been  ended 
by  Clarendon's  flight  to  France  and  an  Act  for  his  perpetual 
banishment,  and  the  two  Houses,  after  an  adjournment  for 
seven  weeks,  having  reassembled  on  the  6th  of  February, 
1667-8,  the  question  of  a  toleration  for  the  Nonconformists 
was  most  expressly  recommended  to  them  by  a  speech  from 
the  King.  Neither  the  speech  nor  the  subsequent  exertions 
of  ministers  and  others  in  debate  had  any  effect.  The  Parlia- 
ment, though  it  had  just  been  impeaching  Clarendon  for  high 
treason,  was,  in  two  thirds  of  its  bulk,  an  obdurate  mass  of 
unmitigated  Clarendonianism  still  in  all  matters  ecclesiastical. 
There  were  resolutions  in  the  Commons  humbly  desiring  the 
King  "  to  enforce  obedience  to  the  laws  in  force  concerning 
'•religion  and  church-government;"  there  were  complaints 
of  the  "  insolent  carriages  "  of  Nonconformists  ;  and,  after  a 
debate  of  several  days  on  the  motion  "  that  his  Majesty  be 
"  desired  to  send  for  such  persons  as  he  shall  think  fit  to 
"  make  proposals  to  him  in  order  to  the  uniting  of  his 
"  Protestant  subjects,"  the  proposal  was  lost  on  the  8th  of 
April  by  176  votes  to  70.  There  had  also  been  brought  in 
a  bill  for  continuing  the  Conventicles  Act  of  May  1664,  which 
had  expired  on  the  2nd  of  March  1667-8,  and  the  expiry  of 
which  had  contributed  somewhat  to  the  recent  liberty  of  the 
Nonconformists.  This  bill  passed  the  Commons  by  144  votes 
to  78  on  the  28th  of  April,  and  it  would  doubtless  have  passed 


CHURCH-POLICY   FROM    1667    TO    1670.  567 

the  Lords  too,  had  not  the  two  Houses  adjourned  themselves 
for  three  months,  by  the  King's  desire,  on  the  9th  of  May. 
By  farther  adjournments,  followed  by  a  prorogation,  they  were 
to  be  kept  from  farther  concern  with  public  affairs  for  seven- 
teen months1. 

Evidently,  it  was  better  for  the  Nonconformists  that 
Parliament  should  not  be  sitting,  and  that  they  should  be 
left  to  the  mercies  of  the  King  and  the  Cabal.  For  seventeen 
months,  accordingly,  there  was  a  continued  breathing-time 
for  the  milder  Nonconformist  sects.  The  King  and  the 
Cabal  even  persevered  in  the  design  in  which  they  had  been 
baffled  by  Parliament.  Dr.  John  Wilkins  having  been  made 
Bishop  of  Chester  in  November  1668,  there  was  a  negotiation 
in  the  following  year  by  this  liberal  bishop,  Lord  Keeper 
Bridgman,  and  Chief  Justice  Matthew  Hale,  on  the  part  of 
the  government,  with  Baxter,  Manton,  and  other  leading 
Nonconformists,  pointing  not  only  to  a  settlement  of  terms 
for  a  limited  toleration  of  sects  beyond  the  Established  Church, 
but  even  to  a  revival  of  the  question  of  a  comprehension.  The 
negotiation  was  still  in  progress  when  Parliament  met  again, 
Oct.  19,  1669  2. 

This,  the  Eighth  Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament,  was  a 
short  one,  for  the  Houses  were  again  prorogued  by  the  King 
on  the  11th  of  December.  But  in  those  two  months  they  fell 
again  with  such  fury  on  the  Nonconformists  that  the  King 
and  the  Cabal  had  to  succumb.  The  negotiation  with  the 
Presbyterians  was  quashed  ;  there  were  numerous  informations 
and  complaints  in  the  two  Houses  as  to  evasions  of  the 
Conformity  Acts,  the  increase  of  conventicles  and  wooden 
"  tabernacles  "  in  London,  &e. ;  and  a  bill  was  again  brought 
in  for  renewing  the  Conventicles  Act.  Only  the  brevity  of  the 
session  prevented  the  passing  of  such  a  bill.  That  and  other 
things  were  reserved  for  the  Ninth  Session  of  the  Parliament, 
which  was  to  meet  on  the  14th  of  February  1669-70. 

Connected  more  intimately  than  was  then  known  with  the 

1  Commons  Journals  and  Tail.  Hist,  of  dates. 

2  Baxter,  III.  23,  et  seq. 


568  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

domestic  question  of  religion  which  had  been  thus  managed 
by  the  Cabal  from  1667  to  1670,  and  agitated  between  them 
and  Parliament,  had  been  certain  transactions  of  the  foreign 
policy  of  Charles  and  the  Cabal  during  the  same  years. 
They  cluster  themselves  in  English  history  under  the  two 
names  of  The  Triple  Alliance  and  The  Secret  Negotia- 
tion with  France. 

Since  the  death  of  Mazarin  in  1661  Louis  XIV.  had  been 
acting  the  Grand  Monarque  superbly  and  laboriously  for 
himself.  The  dominant  idea  of  this  young  monarch  in  his 
foreign  relations,  the  idea  which  was  to  determine  all  the 
vicissitudes  of  his  unusually  long  reign,  had  been  fully  re- 
vealed. He  was  bent  on  the  Spanish  Succession,  i.e.  on  the 
triumph  of  France  at  last  over  her  European  rival,  the  decay- 
ing empire  of  Spain,  by  the  assertion  of  the  rights  of  his 
wife,  Maria  Teresa,  the  daughter  of  Philip  IV.  of  Spain,  to 
her  full  Spanish  inheritance  after  her  father's  death.  Direct 
application  to  Philip  IV.  having  failed,  Louis  had  negotiated 
on  the  subject  with  other  powers,  and  especially  with  the 
Dutch.  Admitting  that  the  succession  to  the  main  Spanish 
monarchy  should  belong,  by  Spanish  law,  to  Philip's  male 
heir,  the  young  child  Carlos,  born  by  a  second  marriage,  he 
had  contended  that  a  portion  of  the  Spanish  Netherlands 
ought  to  come  at  once  to  Maria  Teresa  on  the  death  of 
Philip.  To  induce  the  Dutch  to  favour  his  claim,  he  had 
proposed  that  they  and  he  should,  on  Philip's  death,  partition 
the  Spanish  Netherlands  between  them.  The  Dutch  had 
declined  the  temptation,  dreading  the  proximity  of  such  a 
power  as  the  French  to  their  Republican  seven  provinces, 
and  thinking  it  better  that  those  dear-bought  provinces 
should  continue  to  have  their  old  enemies,  the  now  weakened 
Spaniards,  for  their  neighbours  and  their  barrier  against 
France.  Accordingly,  when  Philip  IV.  of  Spain  did  die  in 
1665,  leaving  all  his  dominions  to  the  feeble  and  sickly 
Carlos  II.,  Louis  had  acted  alone.  Having  reiterated  his 
demands  on  Spain  for  the  immediate  cession  of  the  portion  of 
the  Spanish  Netherlands  which  he  claimed  as  his  wife's,  he 
had,  in  1667,  sent  an  invading  French  army  into  the  disputed 


THE   TRIPLE    ALLIANCE.  569 

territory.  But  the  invasion  had  spread  uneasiness  throughout 
Europe.  The  Pope,  the  German  Emperor,  and  other  friends 
of  Spain,  were  in  alarm  ;  the  Dutch  were  in  alarm  :  how  was 
England  to  act  ?  Anxious  to  secure  the  co-operation  or  the 
neutrality  of  England,  Louis  had  sent  an  embassy,  with  mag- 
nificent offers  to  Charles  himself,  and  with  money  to  bribe 
his  advisers ;  but,  though  Charles  inclined  decidedly  to  a 
bargain  with  Louis,  popular  feeling  and  the  feeling  of  a  part 
of  the  Cabal  ran  in  the  other  direction.  The  result  was  that 
Sir  William  Temple,  then  English  agent  at  Brussels,  had 
been  instructed  to  open  negotiations  with  the  Dutch.  Sir 
William,  in  a  few  interviews  at  the  Hague  with  the  Dutch 
Grand  Pensionary  De  Witt,  had  done  his  work  well ;  and,  on 
the  23rd  of  January,  1667-8,  there  was  the  famous  Triple 
Alliance,  consisting  of  three  treaties,  one  of  them  secret, 
pledging  England,  the  United  Provinces,  and  Sweden,  to  act 
in  concert  in  compelling  Louis  to  accept  one  or  other  of  two 
alternative  sets  of  terms  he  had  been  offered  by  Spain.  Then, 
more  easily  than  had  been  expected,  Louis  had  given  way. 
On  the  15th  of  April  1668  he  made  peace  with  Spain  on  the 
arrangement  of  keeping  his  conquests  in  Flanders  and  re- 
signing others.  He  had  so  managed  matters  that,  while 
seeming  to  yield,  he  lost  nothing.  But  the  conduct  of  the 
Dutch  rankled  in  his  memory.  By  adopting  the  alternative 
which  allowed  him  to  retain  his  conquests  in  Flanders,  he  had 
become  deliberately  their  close  neighbour ;  and  he  had  vowed 
a  terrible  revenge  \ 

Hardly  had  the  Triple  Alliance  been  formed  when  there 
began  The  Secret  Negotiation  with  France  for  undoing 
it.  The  first  overtures  were  made  by  Charles  himself,  in 
conversation  with  the  French  ambassador  Ruvigny,  in  April 
1668 ;  and  through  the  rest  of  that  year  and  the  whole  of 
1669  the  negotiation  went  on,  with  missions  and  cross-missions, 
divisions  in  the  Cabal,  distributions  of  French  money  among 
the  members  of  it,  and  the  employment  of  Buckingham  and 
Arlington  alternately  as  chief  negotiator  for  Charles. 

1  Mignet's  great  work  entitled  Nkgo-  to  such  a  work  as  this,  so  masterly  in 

ciations  relatives  a  la  Succession  d'Es-  its  kind  for  luminousness,  accuracy,  and 

pagne  sous   Louis  XIV.  :    Introd.  and  insight. 
Vols.  I.  and  II.   It  is  a  pleasure  to  refer 


570  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

What  Louis  wanted  was  simply  the  co-operation  of  England 
in  his  meditated  war  against  the  Dutch ;  and  for  this  he  was 
ready  to  pay  Charles  most  handsomely.  So  far  nothing  could 
be  more  agreeable  to  Charles.  What  he  wanted  above  all 
things  was  money.  The  vast  sums  voted  him  by  Parliament 
had  been  squandered  no  one  knows  how  ;  he  was  immeasurably 
in  debt ;  the  pay  of  the  navy,  the  household,  the  public  offices, 
was  wretchedly  in  arrears ;  the  daughters  of  the  horse-leech 
were  clamorous.  Readiness  to  accept  money  in  the  largest 
possible  quantity  from  any  quarter  had  thus  become  nine- 
tenths  of  the  whole  soul  of  Charles.  He  hated  the  Dutch, 
and  was  pleased  enough  to  be  a  party  to  a  war  against  them, 
and  to  receive  money  on  that  account.  But  in  the  proposed 
partnership  with  his  young  cousin  Louis  he  foresaw  a  splendid 
futurity  of  money  generally.  Might  he  not  increase  his  price 
at  once  by  throwing  something  else  into  the  bargain  besides 
that  promise  of  co-operation  against  the  Dutch  which  Louis 
wanted  ?  Might  he  not,  for  example,  offer  to  declare  himself 
a  Roman  Catholic?  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  crypto- 
Catholicism  of  Charles  was  as  sincere  a  sentiment  as  any  he 
felt,  and  that  he  had  never  ceased  in  a  lazy  way  to  re- 
member his  secret  overtures  to  the  Pope  in  1662-3.  Equally 
certain  it  is,  however,  that  his  negotiation  with  Louis  came 
upon  him  rather  unexpectedly  as  a  fit  opportunity,  and  that 
a  judicious  use  of  the  opportunity  for  money  purposes  was  part 
of  his  calculations.  There  were  family  consultations  on  the 
subject,  ending  in  a  conference  held  in  the  Duke  of  York's 
house  on  the  25th  of  January  1668-9.  It  was  at  this  con- 
ference, at  which,  besides  Charles  himself  and  the  Duke,  there 
were  present  Arlington,  Clifford,  and  the  Roman  Catholic 
Lord  Arundel  of  Ward  our,  that  the  scheme  took  formal 
shape.  The  Duke  had  for  some  time  been  so  honestly  a 
Roman  Catholic  as  to  be  uneasy  in  concealing  the  fact,  and  it 
was  agreed  that  he  and  Charles  should  declare  themselves 
Roman  Catholics  together  at  the  right  moment.  It  was 
then  communicated  to  Louis  that  Charles  desired  to  enlarge 
the  scope  of  the  negotiation  that  had  been  going  on  between 
them.    He  would  assist  Louis,  as  required,  against  the  Dutch ; 


THE   SECRET    NEGOTIATION    WITH    FRANCE.  571 

but  he  would  also  declare  his  change  of  religion,  and  thus 
take  a  step  towards  the  re-establishment  of  Catholicism  in  his 
dominions,  if  Louis  would  be  his  patron  in  that  intention. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  Louis  altogether  liked  the  idea  of 
becoming  patron  and  paymaster  of  so  stupendous  an  enter- 
prise as  the  conversion  of  the  British  Islands  to  the  true  faith 
in  the  manner  proposed.  He  felt  it  impossible,  however,  to 
decline  ;  and  so  the  negotiation  did  proceed  on  the  double 
basis  of  the  Declaration  of  Catholicity  and  Partnership  in  a  War 
against  the  Dutch.  Tbe  utmost  secrecy  had  now  to  be  studied. 
All  but  the  crypto-Catholic  members  of  the  Cabal  were  kept 
in  the  profoundest  ignorance  of  the  extended  purpose  of  the 
negotiation ;  even  M.  Colbert  de  Croissy,  who  had  succeeded 
Ruvigny  as  French  ambassador  in  London,  was  kept  in 
ignorance  for  a  time.  The  agents  for  Charles  and  his  brother 
were  Arlington,  Clifford,  Lord  Arundel,  and  Sir  Richard 
Bellings;  and  the  special  link  of  communication  between 
king  and  king  was  Charles's  favourite  and  only  remaining 
sister,  the  Princess  Henrietta,  now  for  seven  years  the  un- 
happy wife  of  Philip,  Duke  of  Orleans,  the  only  brother  of 
Louis.  The  differences  that  arose  in  the  course  of  the  enlarged 
negotiation  were  on  two  questions.  Whether  should  the 
declaration  of  Catholicity  or  the  war  with  the  Dutch  have  the 
precedence  ;  and  how  much  would  Louis  give  to  Charles  on 
the  two  accounts  ?  While  Louis  was  for  the  war  first  and  the 
declaration  of  Catholicity  afterwards,  Charles  and  the  Duke 
of  York  were  for  giving  precedence  to  the  declaration  of 
Catholicity  ;  and,  while  Louis  wanted  to  give  as  little  on 
either  account  as  would  be  accepted,  Charles  wanted  all  he 
could  obtain.  On  the  18th  of  December  1669,  Colbert  having 
by  this  time  been  taken  into  complete  confidence,  there  was 
submitted  to  him,  on  the  part  of  Charles,  a  draft  treaty, 
reducing  all  to  regular  form.  It  fixed  the  price  of  the 
Declaration  of  Catholicity  at  ^200,000  sterling,  stipulating 
farther  that  Louis  should  "  assist  his  Britannic  Majesty  with 
troops  and  money  "  if  there  should  be  any  rebellion  in  England 
in  consequence  of  the  declaration;  and  it  fixed  the  subsidy  to 
be  paid  by  Louis  to  Charles  for  the  Dutch  War  at  i£J800,000 


572  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

a  year  while  the  war  should  last.  Louis,  at  sight  of  the 
draft  ti-eaty,  pronounced  the  demands  exorbitant;  Charles 
intimated  that  they  might  be  lowered ;  and,  Louis  having 
agreed  that  the  time  of  the  declaration  of  Catholicity  should 
be  left  to  the  discretion  of  Charles,  the  two  King's  were 
chaffering  over  the  sums  when  the  Ninth  Session  of  the 
English  Parliament  met1. 

From  Feb.  14,  1669-70,  when  Parliament  met,  to  April  11, 
1670,  when  it  adjourned,  much  of  its  attention  was  occupied 
by  a  piece  of  business  of  an  apparently  private  nature.  This 
was  known  as  "  Lord  Roos's  business,"  and  consisted  in  the 
pushing  of  a  bill  through  the  two  Houses  to  enable  John 
Manners,  Lord  Roos,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Rutland, 
to  marry  again,  notwithstanding  that  his  wife,  accused  of 
infidelities  to  him,  was  still  alive. 

What  gave  importance  to  the  bill  was  the  knowledge  that 
it  was  pushed  with  an  ulterior  purpose,  interesting  to  the 
whole  kingdom.  Charles's  Portuguese  Queen  was  childless, 
and  an  heir  by  her  to  the  throne  seemed  an  impossibility. 
Would  Charles  acquiesce  in  leaving  the  succession  to  his 
brother,  or  to  that  brother's  children,  the  grandchildren  of  the 
exiled  Clarendon  ?  Might  he  not  be  either  divorced  from  his 
present  wife,  so  as  to  be  able  to  marry  again,  or  permitted 
that  bigamy  for  which  there  had  been  precedents  in  other 
countries  and  arguments  by  some  of  the  reforming  divines  ? 
The  method  of  divorce  seeming  the  easiest,  Buckingham  had 
undertaken  to  create  the  necessary  precedent  for  legitimizing 
a  second  marriage  after  divorce  by  carrying  the  Lord  Roos 
bill.  Introduced  into  the  Lords  on  the  5th  of  March,  it  did 
not  pass  the  first  reading  till  the  17th,  when,  after  a  long  and 
vehement  debate,  there  was  the  narrow  success  of  41  present 
lords  and  15  proxies  in  favour,  to  42  present  lords  and  6 
proxies  against.     The  Duke  of  York,  whose  interests  were  at 


1  Sir  John  Dalrymple's   Memoirs  of  relations  was  first   given  to  the  world 

Great  Britain  and  Ireland  (1771 — 1778),  by    Dalrymple    from   archives   in    the 

II.   3 — 56 ;    Lingard    (second  edition),  French   Foreign   Office ;    but   Mignet's 

XII.  200—206 ;   Mignet,  III.   1 — 168.  narrative   is  the  most    elaborate    and 

The  substance  of  the  extraordinary  re-  thorough. 


THE   LORD   ROOS   DIVORCE   BILL.  573 

stake,  was,  of  course,  one  of  the  most  strenuous  opponents  of 
the  bill ;  and  he  was  backed  by  the  two  archbishops,  nearly- 
all  the  bishops,  and  a  number  of  the  peers,  among*  whom  were 
Bristol  and  other  Roman  Catholics.  The  second  reading- 
having-  been  carried  with  the  same  extraordinary  difficulty, 
it  seemed  very  likely  that  it  might  be  thrown  out  on  the 
third.  What  was  the  surprise  of  their  Lordships  when,  at 
this  stage, — to  wit,  on  the  21st  of  March, — the  King  sauntered 
into  the  House  unexpectedly,  and  announced  that  he  meant 
to  renew  a  laudable  custom  of  his  predecessors  long  ago,  by 
coming  in  among  them  now  and  then  in  a  friendly  and 
informal  way  and  listening  to  their  debates !  Their  Lord- 
ships, though  much  perplexed,  thanked  his  Majesty  for  his 
condescension  :  and  from  that  dav  all  order  was  at  an  end  in 
the  upper  House,  in  consequence  of  the  King's  formed  habit 
of  dropping  in  when  he  liked,  standing  by  the  fire,  chatting 
with  the  peers  in  groups,  and  soliciting  them  for  anything  he 
wanted.  He  had  been  several  times  in  the  House  in  this 
fashion  when,  on  the  28th  of  March,  the  Lord  Roos  bill 
passed  the  third  reading,  still  after  much  opposition,  and  with 
the  recorded  dissents  of  the  Duke  of  York  and  many  bishops 
and  peers.  Going  into  the  Commons  that  day,  it  passed  the 
second  reading  there  next  day  by  141  votes  to  65,  and  the 
third  reading  on  March  31 1. 

The  bill  for  enabling  Lord  Roos  to  marry  again  was  con- 
sequently one  of  the  bills  to  which  Charles  had  the  pleasure 
of  giving  his  assent  on  the  11th  of  April  1670,  when  there 
was  an  adjournment  of  the  two  Houses  for  six  months. 
Another  of  the  bills,  to  which  he  gave  his  assent  more 
reluctantly,  was  a  New  Conventicles  Act.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  session  he  had  let  it  be  known  to  the  Nonconformists 
that,  as  he  needed  supplies  from  Parliament,  he  could  no 
longer  resist  the  determination  of  that  highly  Clarendon ian 
assembly  to  revert  to  the  full  stringency  of  Clarendon's 
ecclesiastical  laws.  The  New  Conventicles  Act  had,  accord- 
ingly, been  carried  without  more  formidable  opposition  than 

1  Lords   and   Commons  Journals  of  dates ;    Pari.   Hist.  IV.  447  ;  Burnet,  I. 
452—455  ;  Lingard,  XII.  -210—214. 


574  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

could  be  offered  by  private  members.  In  some  respects  it  was 
more  severe  than  the  former  Act,  and  Marvell  calls  it  the 
"  quintessence  of  arbitrary  malice."  It  denned  an  illegal 
conventicle  to  be  any  meeting*  for  worship,  otherwise  than 
according  to  the  practice  of  the  Church  of  England,  at  which 
more  than  four  persons  should  be  present  in  addition  to  the 
members  of  the  family  in  whose  house  it  should  be  held,  or  at 
which,  if  it  were  in  the  fields  or  an  uninhabited  place,  more 
than  four  persons  should  be  present  in  all.  Any  person  over 
sixteen  years  of  age  attending  such  a  conventicle  was  to  be 
liable  to  a  fine  of  five  shillings  for  the  first  offence,  and  of  ten 
for  every  subsequent  offence,  while  the  penalties  for  preachers 
or  teachers  in  conventicles  were  to  be  <^J20  for  the  first  offence 
and  ^40  for  every  other,  and  householders  allowing  con- 
venticles in  their  premises  were  to  forfeit  £20  for  each 
offence.  One  third  of  the  fines  in  every  case  was  to  go  to  the 
informer  and  his  assistants.  Justices  of  peace  and  constables 
were  empowered  to  break  open  doors  if  necessary  in  execution 
of  the  Act ;  lieutenants  and  deputy-lieutenants  of  counties, 
and  officers  of  the  militia,  were  to  disperse  conventicles  with 
horse  or  foot,  if  necessary  ;  and,  in  all  cases  of  doubt,  the  Act 
was  to  be  interpreted  most  beneficially  for  the  suppression  of 
conventicles 1. 

PROM  APRIL  1670  TO  JUNE  1673. 

The  most  curious  result  of  Charles's  interest  simultaneously 
in  two  such  matters  as  the  Secret  Negotiation  with  France 
and  the  Marriage  Bill  of  Lord  Roos  was  the  disintegration 
of  the  Cabal  for  the  time  into  two  halves.  For  the  negotia- 
tion with  France  the  real  Cabal  consisted  only  of  the  crypto- 
Catholic  members  of  the  nominal  Cabal, — viz.  the  Duke  of 
York,  Arlington,  and  Clifford, — while  Buckingham,  Ashley, 
Trevor,  and  the  rest,  were  kept  quite  in  the  dark  as  to  the 
King's  true  drift.  For  the  Lord  Roos  business,  on  the  other 
hand,  Charles  had  worked  precisely  through  Buckingham, 
Ashley,  and  Trevor,  with  assistance  from  Lauderdale  and  the 
Earl  of  Orrery,  while  the  Duke  of  York,  and  Arlington  and 

1  Statutes  at  Large,  22  Car.  II.  cap.  1 ;  Grosart's  edition  of  Marvell,  II.  316. 


THE   CABAL   FROM    1670   TO    1673.  575 

Clifford,  in  the  Duke's  interest  and  in  the  interest  of  Roman 
Catholicism,  were  keenly  in  the  opposition.    This  co-existence 
of  two  Cabals  could  hardly  continue  long-;   and  it  depended 
on    Charles's   choice    between    perseverance   in    the    French 
negotiation  and  perseverance  in  the  design  of  a  second  mar- 
riage  which   of  the  two  should  have  to  be  discharged  and 
which  extended  to  the  necessary  dimensions  by  recruitment. 
The  difficulty  was  solved  by  the  abandonment  of  the  project 
of  a  second  marriage.     Although  there  was  talk  of  a  Royal 
Divorce  Bill,  to  be  brought  into  Parliament  when  it  reas- 
sembled, Charles  seems  to  have  given  little  attention  to  the 
subject  after  the  passing  of  the  Lord  Roos  Bill,  or  rather 
to  have  made  up  his  mind  that  it  would  be  harsh  and  un- 
necessary to  insult  and  disturb  the  poor  Portuguese  lady  who 
was  his  wife.    Hence,  from  April  1670  onwards,  an  apparently 
reunited  Cabal.     It   consisted   of  Buckingham,  Arlington, 
Ashley,   Clifford,  the  Scottish  Lauderdale,  the  Duke  of 
York,  Lord  Keeper  Bridgman,    and    co-Secretary   Sir    John 
Trevor,  with  one  or  two  subordinates.     The  first  five  being 
the  real  chiefs,  and  some  ingenious  person  having  observed 
that  the  initials  of  their  names,  if  taken  in  a  certain  order, 
actually  formed  the  word  Cabal,  the  anagram  has  come  down 
as   a   convenient   device    for   recollecting   the  personal  com- 
position of  Charles's  Cabinet  from  1670  to  1673.     It  is  not 
to  be  forgotten,  however,  that  there  was  still  a  division  of 
the  Cabal,  which  Charles  could  recognise  on  occasion.     There 
was  the  Liberal  Protestant  section,  of  which  the  chiefs  were 
the  Deists  Buckingham  and  Ashley  and  the  Scottish  Pres- 
byterian   Lauderdale ;    and    there    was    the    crypto  -  Catholic 
section,  headed  by  Arlington  and  Clifford,  in  private  league 
with  Charles  and  the  Duke  of  York  for  the  secret  purposes 
of  the  negotiation  with  France  *. 

That  negotiation  reached  a  definite  conclusion  in  the  so- 
called  Secret  Treaty  of  Dover  of  May  22,  1670.  The 
Duke  of  Orleans  had  sulkily  consented  that  his  wife,  the 
Princess  Henrietta,  should  visit  her  brother  in  England  for 

1  Burnet,   I.   454—455;   Liugard,  XII.   233—238;    Christie's  Shaftesbury,  II. 
53—55. 


576  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  purpose,  on  the  strict  condition  that  she  should  remain 
but  a  few  days  and  should  not  go  to  London.  Charles  had 
met  her,  on  her  arrival  at  Dover  on  the  15th,  with  the 
fondest  demonstrations  of  affection  ;  and  it  was  under  cover 
of  festivities  in  honour  of  her  visit,  dramatic  performances 
for  her  entertainment,  and  the  like,  that  the  treaty  was  ar- 
ranged, signed,  and  sealed.  The  signatories  on  the  English 
side  were  Charles  himself,  and  Lord  Arlington,  Lord  Arundel, 
Sir  Thomas  Clifford,  and  Sir  Richard  Bellings,  as  his  com- 
missioners, while  M.  Colbert  de  Croissy  alone,  as  representa- 
tive of  Louis,  signed  on  the  other  part.  The  treaty  consisted 
of  one  general  article,  constituting  perpetual  alliance  and  amity 
between  the  two  kingdoms,  and  of  ten  specific  articles. 
Nine  of  these  ten  specific  articles  related  to  the  co-operation 
of  the  two  powers  for  the  assertion  of  any  rights  to  the 
Spanish  succession  that  might  eventually  accrue  to  Louis, 
but  chiefly  to  their  co-operation  in  an  immediate  war  with  the 
Dutch.  Charles  bound  himself  to  furnish  a  land  force  of  6000 
foot,  in  aid  of  the  French  army  invading  the  United  Pro- 
vinces, and  to  be  paid  and  maintained  by  Louis,  and  also 
to  furnish  a  fleet  of  fifty  men-of-war  to  be  conjoined  with 
a  smaller  French  fleet,  the  combined  fleets  to  be  under  the 
command  of  the  Duke  of  York.  For  this  service  Charles  was 
to  receive  from  Louis  an  annual  subsidy  of  three  millions  of 
livres  tournois  (about  .^230,000  sterling)  as  long  as  the  war 
should  last.  This  subsidy  was  to  be  quite  independent  of  what 
was  promised  to  Charles  by  the  first  of  the  ten  specific  articles. 
That  article,  the  article  of  The  Declaration  of  Catholicity,  ought 
to  be  given  textually  : — 

"  His  Majesty  the  King  of  Great  Britain,  being  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  the  Catholic  Religion,  and  resolved  to  make  his  declaration 
of  the  same,  and  to  reconcile  himself  with  the  Church  of  Rome,  as 
soon  as  the  interest  of  the  affairs  of  his  kingdom  may  permit,  has 
every  ground  of  hope  and  assurance,  from  the  affection  and  loyalty 
of  his  subjects,  that  none  of  them,  even  of  those  on  whom  God  may 
not  yet  have  so  abundantly  shed  his  grace  as  to  dispose  them  by 
this  so  august  example  to  a  like  conversion,  will  ever  fail  in  the 
inviolable  obedience  which  all  peoples  owe  to  their  sovereigns,  even 
when  of  a  contrary  religion.  Nevertheless,  as  there  are  found 
sometimes  turbulent  and  unquiet  spirits  who  endeavour  to  trouble 


THE    SECRET   TREATY   OF   DOVER. 


577 


the  public  tranquillity,  especially  when  they  can  cover  their  designs 
with  a  plausible  pretext  of  Religion,  his  Majesty  of  Great  Britain, 
who  has  nothing  more  at  heart,  after  the  peace  of  his  own  con- 
science, than  to  confirm  that  which  the  gentleness  of  his  govern- 
ment has  procured  for  his  subjects,  has  thought  that  the  best  means 
to  prevent  alteration  of  the  same  will  be  to  be  assured,  in  case  of 
need,  of  the  assistance  of  his  Most  Christian  Majesty :  who,  on  his 
part,  wishing  to  give  to  the  King  of  Great  Britain  indubitable 
proofs  of  the  sincerity  of  his  friendship,  and  to  contribute  to  the 
good  success  of  a  design  so  glorious,  so  useful  to  his  Majesty  of 
Great  Britain,  and  even  to  the  whole  Catholic  Religion,  has  pro- 
mised and  hereby  promises  to  give  for  this  purpose  to  the  said 
King  of  Great  Britain  the  sum  of  2,000,000  livres  tournois  [about 
£154,000  sterling]  ;  of  which  one  half  shall  be  paid  in  cash  three 
months  after  exchange  of  ratifications  of  the  present  Treaty  to  the 
order  of  the  said  King  of  Great  Britain  at  Calais,  Dieppe,  or  Havre 
de  Grace,  or  remitted  by  letters  of  change  to  London,  at  the  risk, 
peril,  and  expense  of  the  said  Most  Christian  King,  and  the  other 
half  in  the  same  manner  three  months  afterwards.  Moreover,  the 
said  Most  Christian  Kiug  binds  himself  to  assist  with  troops  his 
Majesty  of  Great  Britain,  to  the  amount  of  6000  foot  if  necessary, 
and  also  to  raise  and  maintain  them  at  his  own  charge  and  ex- 
pense, so  long  as  the  said  King  of  Great  Britain  shall  judge  them 
needful  for  the  execution  of  his  design ;  and  the  said  troops  shall 
be  transported  by  vessels  of  the  King  of  Great  Britain  to  such 
places  and  ports  as  he  shall  judge  the  fittest  for  the  interest  of  his 
service,  and  from  the  day  of  their  embarkment  shall  be  paid  as 
aforesaid  by  his  Most  Christian  Majesty,  and  shall  obey  the  orders 
of  the  said  King  of  Great  Britain.  And  the  time  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Catholicity  is  left  entirely  to  the  choice  of  the  said  King  of 
Great  Britain  V 

"  Vetididit  hie  aura  patriam:  This  man  sold  his  country 
"  for  gold."  If  ever  that  sentence  of  infamy  to  all  ages  was 
applicable  to  an  English  sovereign,  it  was  to  Charles  II.  after 
these  transactions  with  Louis.  Had  they  been  divulged  at 
the  moment,  who  knows  what  might  have  happened  ?  But 
the  Treaty  of  Dover  was  kept  as  secret  as  the  grave,  and  the 


1  The  substance  of  the  story  of  this 
treaty  was  first  given  to  the  world  as 
late  as  1773  in  Sir  John  Dalrymple's 
Memoirs;  but  the  text  of  the  perfected 
Treaty  had  eluded  his  researches  in  the 
French  Foreign  Office.  It  was  first  pub- 
lished in  1829,  in  the  original  French, 
by  Dr.  Lingard,  who  had  obtained  his 
copy  from  Lord  Clifford  of  Ghudleigh, 
the  descendant  of  the  Clifford  of  the 


Treaty  (Lingard,  2nd  edit.  XII.  215— 
218,  and  note  at  end  of  the  volume). 
Bnt  all  the  facts  and  particulars,  with 
the  most  correct  text  of  the  Treaty 
and  elucidations,  arc  now  to  be  studied 
best  in  the  third  rolnme  of  Mignet's 
Nigociationt  Relatives  &  la  Succession 
d'Espagne,  published  in  1842.  The 
French  dating  of  the  Treaty  is  "  June 
1,  1670." 


VOL.  VI. 


Pp 


578         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOKY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

gathering  of  so  many  people,  French  and  English,  for  a 
fortnight  or  three  weeks  in  the  English  port-town  nearest  the 
French  coast,  seemed  only  the  natural  celebration  of  the  visit 
of  the  charming  Duchess  of  Orleans  to  her  native  land  and 
her  meeting  with  her  brother.  For  her  the  festivities  were  to 
have  a  swift  confusion.  She  had  parted  from  her  brother  at 
Dover  a  few  days  after  the  treaty  had  been  signed,  and  had 
returned  to  her  husband  at  St.  Cloud,  when  the  shocking 
news  came  of  her  death  there  on  the  20th  of  June  after  a 
sudden  and  short  illness.  The  suspicion  ran  immediately  that 
she  had  been  poisoned  by  her  husband,  or  by  persons  about 
him,  and  it  was  not  allayed  by  the  negative  evidence  of  a 
post-mortem  examination  attended  by  two  English  physicians. 
Charles  was  greatly  shaken  ;  but  he  lived  on  to  prosecute  for 
many  years  yet  the  compact  with  Louis  which  his  sister  had 
arranged  for  him.  At  the  age  of  forty  years  he  had  become 
the  pensionary  of  a  foreign  King,  eight  years  his  junior,  but 
with  fifty  times  his  intellect  and  a  thousand  times  his  dignity  ; 
and  from  this  moment  he  was  never  to  dream  of  being  anything 
else.  He  was  to  go  on  begging  and  receiving  new  sums  and 
subsidies  of  French  money,  permitting  his  ministers  and 
mistresses  to  receive  French  presents  and  pensions,  and  in 
return  taking  instructions  from  Louis  on  all  the  affairs  of  the 
British  Islands,  even  in  such  matters  as  the  times  of  calling, 
proroguing,  and  dissolving  the  Parliaments  of  England.  One 
agreeable  fruit  of  his  secret  alliance  with  Louis  was  the  arrival, 
in  November  1670,  of  a  clever  and  beautiful  young  French- 
woman, Mademoiselle  Louise  de  Querouaille,  who  had  been 
maid  of  honour  to  his  dead  sister,  and  was  now  sent  over  by 
Louis  to  be  a  new  mistress  for  his  Britannic  Majesty  and  a 
connecting  link  between  the  two  nations.  Lady  Castlemaine, 
this  year  created  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  had  been  in  and  out  of 
favour  very  often  of  late,  and  had  for  some  time  had  publicly 
established  competitors  in  Nell  Gwynn  and  Moll  Davis  ; 
but  now  Mademoiselle  de  Querouaille,  made  a  lady  of  the  Bed- 
chamber to  the  Queen,  took  her  place  as  chief  of  the  harem1. 

i  Mignet,   III.    206—214 ;    Lingard,       July  and  Aug.  1667,  et  sen. ;  Evelyn, 
XII.  218  ;  Burnet,  I.  522—527  ;  Pepys,       Nov.  1670. 


THE   SECRET   TREATY   OF   DOVER.  579 

Just  before  the  arrival  of  the  new  mistress,  viz.  on  the  24th 
of  October  1670,  the  Ninth  Session  of  the  Parliament  was 
resumed  after  its  six  months  of  adjournment.  There  was,  of 
course,  not  the  least  idea  in  either  House  of  any  alliance 
between  Charles  and  Louis,  or  any  suspicion  that  the  Triple 
Alliance  of  January  1667-8  was  not  still  in  full  force  as  the 
compact  paramount  in  the  foreign  relations  of  England.  It 
was,  therefore,  by  various  general  pretexts,  and  even  with 
professions  of  zeal  for  the  maintenance  of  the  Triple  Alliance, 
that  Charles  contrived,  through  his  ministers,  to  extract  from 
Parliament  the  very  considerable  subsidies  he  wanted  for 
fitting  out  a  fleet  and  raising  some  land  forces.  Having  been 
tolerably  successful  in  this,  and  not  desiring  that  the  Parlia- 
ment should  be  in  session  when  he  should  proclaim  the  Triple 
Alliance  defunct  and  proceed  to  carry  out  the  Secret  Treaty 
of  Dover,  he  got  rid  of  the  two  Houses  by  another  proroga- 
tion on  the  22nd  of  April  1671.  The  prorogation  was  to 
be  extended  twice,  and  Charles  was  not  to  see  the  face  of 
Parliament  again  for  nearly  two  years1. 

Meanwhile,  formal  ratifications  of  the  Secret  Treaty  of  Dover 
having  been  exchanged  between  Charles  and  Louis,  the  only 
remaining  obstruction  to  Charles,  in  the  matter  of  a  war  with 
the  Dutch,  to  be  conducted  by  himself  and  his  Cabal  in  the 
abeyance  of  Parliament,  had  been  cleverly  removed.  Only 
two  members  of  the  Cabal,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  had  signed 
the  treaty  of  Dover,  the  crypto-Catholics  Arlington  and 
Clifford,  while  the  other  three  chiefs,  Buckingham,  Ashley, 
and  Lauderdale,  had  been  kept  purposely  ignorant  that  there 
was  such  a  treaty  at  all.  They  were,  and  were  to  remain,  as 
ignorant  of  the  fact  as  the  rest  of  the  world.  Not  the  less  was 
it  necessary,  for  the  carrying  out  of  the  treaty,  that  these 
Protestant  chiefs  of  the  Cabal  should  be  made  parties  to  it  in 
all  save  the  promised  Declaration  of  Catholicity.  With  no 
engagement  of  that  kind  could  they  or  would  they  have 
concurred  ;  they  would  probably  have  broken  with  Charles  on 
the  mention  of  it,  and  appealed  to  the  nation.     There  was  no 

1  Lords  Journals  of  date,  and  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  456—497. 
P  p  3 


580         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

reason,  however,  why  they  should  not  consent  easily  enough 
to  all  in  the  treaty  that  concerned  the  promised  co-operation 
with  Louis  in  a  war  against  the  Dutch.     And,  in  fact,  their 
consent  had  been  brought  about  by  a  most  extraordinary  and 
prolonged    deception.      Buckingham    had   been    sent   on    an 
embassy    to    France,   as  if  to  end   by  his  own  abilities  and 
exertions  the  intricate  negotiations  that  had  been  going  on 
between  Louis  and  the  whole  Cabal  in  1668  and  1669, — from 
which   negotiations  with  the    whole    Cabal   the    Catholicity 
project  had  been  always  carefully  excluded.    The  result  was  that 
Buckingham,  gravely  fooled  by  Louis  in  Paris,  and  fooled  and 
played  with  after  his  return  to  London  by  Arlington,  Clifford, 
and  Colbert,  worked  out,  apparently  by  his  own  exertions  and 
against  irritating  opposition,  a  treaty  which  was  identical  in 
all  points   with  the  secret  treaty  of  Dover,  except  that  the 
article  about  religion  was  omitted  and  the  ^154,000  sterling 
promised  by  that  article  to  Charles  for  his  change  of  creed 
was  promised  in  the  other  form  of  an  increase  exactly  to  that 
amount    in    the    subsidy   for    the    Dutch    war.     This    traite 
simule  or  "  mock  treaty,"  as  it  was  called  at  the  time  in  the 
correspondence  of  Charles  and  Louis,  had  been  solemnly  con- 
cluded at  London  on  the  21st  of  December  1670,  Buckingham, 
Ashley,   and   Lauderdale   putting    their  names  to  it,  in  the 
belief  that  it  was  the  only  and  real  one,  while  Arlington  and 
Clifford  also  signed,  to  complete  the  delusion.    The  whole  of  the 
Cabal  was  thus  pledged  to  the  war  with  the  Dutch  by  the  later 
document,  while  Charles  and  the  ciypto-Catholics  of  the  Cabal 
were  pledged  also  to  the  Catholicity  project  by  the  earlier1. 

Charles,  when  he  had  received  the  ^154,000  for  his  De- 
claration of  Catholicity,  seemed  suddenly  less  eager  about  that 
part  of  his  bargain.  His  brother  James  was  behaving  man- 
fully, not  indeed  proclaiming  himself  a  Papist,  but  not  caring 
who  knew  the  fact ;  and,  after  May  31, 1671,  when  he  lost  his 
Duchess,  Clarendon's  daughter,  and  it  transpired  that  she  had 
been  a  Roman  Catholic  for  some  time,  the  fact  became 
notorious.     But  through  the  whole  of  1671,  when  all  seemed 

1  Mignet,  III.  199—268. 


THE   SECRET   TREATY   OF   DOVER.  581 

ready  for  the  royal  Declaration  of  Catholicity,  Charles  pro- 
crastinated. He  was  not  so  sure  now  that  the  declaration 
should  precede  the  war  with  the  Dutch.  He  wanted  to 
consult  theologians  as  to  the  proper  method  ;  he  wanted  to 
consult  the  Pope ;  he  wanted  the  Pope  to  send  a  French 
legate  into  England  to  manage  the  business ;  he  was  of 
opinion  that  the  concession  by  the  Pope  of  the  sacrament  in 
both  kinds  and  the  mass  in  English  would  gain  most  of  the 
English  bishops  and  facilitate  a  national  reunion  with  the 
Roman  Church.  He  was  more  and  more  convinced  that  a 
precipitate  declaration  would  cause  enormous  commotion 
among  his  subjects,  and  that  only  extensive  foreign  help,  and 
a  much  larger  amount  of  money  than  the  ^154,000  he  had 
received,  could  carry  him  through  the  crisis.  He  could  not 
expect  more  from  his  brother  Louis,  who  had  been  very 
generous  already ;  but  might  not  the  Pope  be  persuaded 
to  open  his  purse,  and  might  there  not  be  a  general  sub- 
scription among  the  French  clergy  ?  About  a  million  sterling 
more,  or  say  half  a  million,  and  up  would  go  the  Catholicity ! 
— Louis  was  only  amused  by  these  vacillations.  Having  con- 
ceded to  Charles  his  own  time  for  the  Catholicity  Declaration, 
and  never  having  cared  much  himself  for  that  fancy  part  of 
the  bargain,  he  was  resolved  to  invest  no  more  money  in  it 
than  the  ^154,000  already  paid,  and  for  which  he  had  duly 
taken  receipts,  and  was  content  with  the  loss  if  Charles  would 
keep  his  engagement  for  the  Dutch  War1. 

How  could  Charles  keep  that  engagement?  His  govern- 
ment was  bankrupt.  What  with  the  expenses  of  fitting  out 
a  fleet  and  fortifying  garrisons,  what  with  the  drain  by  interest 
on  previous  debts  and  reckless  current  lavishness  of  every 
kind,  all  the  regular  revenue,  all  the  extraordinary  supplies  of 
last  session  of  Parliament,  and  the  ^154,000  paid  by  Louis, 
were  exhausted  or  on  the  point  of  exhaustion,  while  credit,  or 
powTer  of  fresh   borrowing  anywhere,  was  also  gone.     How 

1  Dalrymple,  II.  83—84,  and  an  in-  was  not  only  that  Charles  should  profess 

structive  memoir  by  Colbert  to  Louis  Roman  Catholicism  himself,  but  that 
XIV,  translated  in  Appendix  to  Chris-  he  should  also  attempt  tin-  establish- 
es Shaftesbury,  Vol.  II.  This  memoir  inent  of  that  religion  among  his  sub- 
proves  distinctly  that  the  understanding  jects. 


582  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

could  such  a  government  go  to  war?  The  difficulty  was 
overcome  by  the  famous  Stop  of  the  Exchequer  on  the  2nd  of 
January  1671-2.  Formally,  this  was  the  suspension  for 
twelve  months  of  all  payments  to  public  creditors  of  whatever 
denomination  ;  and,  practically,  it  was  the  retention  of  about 
j^l, 300,000  owing  to  goldsmiths  and  bankers  who  had 
advanced  moneys  to  government  on  the  security  of  assign- 
ments upon  the  revenue.  The  shock  to  the  commercial  world 
was  terrible  and  the  distress  among  hundreds  of  families  in- 
calculable. The  immediate  purpose  of  Charles  and  the  Cabal, 
however,  was  served  ;  and,  with  some  ready  money  in  pos- 
session, and  an  advance  from  Louis,  they  were  able  to  face 
the  war.  On  the  2nd  of  February  1671-2  there  was  signed 
at  Whitehall,  by  the  five  chiefs  of  the  Cabal  and  Colbert,  a 
third  edition  of  the  Secret  Treaty,  renewing  the  articles  as 
they  had  been  expressed  in  the  second  edition,  or  Traite  Simule, 
but,  on  account  of  the  straitened  circumstances  of  Charles, 
relieving  him  for  a  year  from  his  obligation  to  furnish  a  land 
force  together  with  his  fleet.  On  the  18th  of  March  the 
English  and  French  declarations  of  war  against  the  Dutch 
appeared  simultaneously.  In  the  following  month,  as  if  to 
signalize  the  momentousness  of  the  enterprise  to  which 
England  was  thus  committed,  and  also  Charles's  continued 
trust  in  the  ministers  who  were  to  aid  him  in  it,  there  was  a 
remarkable  distribution  of  honours  among  the  members  of  the 
Cabal.  Buckingham,  being  a  duke,  and  having  also  the  pre- 
eminent honour  of  being  Master  of  the  Horse,  could  be  raised 
no  higher ;  but  Arlington,  from  being  a  baron  only,  became 
Earl  of  Arlington,  Lord  Ashley  became  Earl  of  Shaftesbury, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Clifford  became  Baron  Clifford  of  Chudleigh, 
while  the  Earl  of  Lauderdale,  for  his  various  merits,  was  made 
Duke  of  Lauderdale  and  a  Knight  of  the  Garter.  There  were 
some  new  admissions  to  the  privy  council  and  minor  ministerial 
rearrangements  about  the  same  time  1, 

Though  surprised  at  the  sudden  rupture   of  the  policy  of 

1  Burnet,  I.  532—533 ;  Lingard,  XII.       711 ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  512—515  ;  British 
238—247;    Christie's   Shaftesbury,  II.       Chronologist. 
56—71  and  83—84  ;  Mignet,  III.  699— 


ALLIANCE   WITH   LOUIS  XIV.    AGAINST   THE   DUTCH.     583 

the  Triple  Alliance,  the  English  public  do  not  seem  to  have 
objected  much  to  a  new  war  with  their  old  enemy.  At  all 
events,  when  news  was  received  of  the  first  great  naval  battle 
of  the  war,  the  patriotic  spirit  was  roused.  It  was  the  battle 
of  Southwold  Bay  on  the  Suffolk  coast,  fought,  on  the  28th  of 
May  1672,  between  the  combined  English  and  French  fleets 
under  the  Duke  of  York  and  the  Dutch  fleet  under  Ruyter. 
It  was  a  confused  and  desperate  fight,  with  heavy  slaughter 
on  both  sides,  but  ending  in  Ruyter's  retreat  and  so  in  a  kind 
of  victory  for  the  English,  though  the  victory  was  saddened 
for  them  by  the  loss  of  one  of  their  admirals,  the  brave,  wise, 
and  gentle  Earl  of  Sandwich.  His  body  was  recovered  and 
brought  to  Westminster  Abbey  for  public  funeral.  He  was 
forty-seven  years  of  age,  and  had  for  some  time  been  disgusted 
with  the  state  of  affairs  and  with  his  own  concern  in  them. 
He  had  lived  to  see  but  the  beginnings  of  a  war  which  was 
more  and  more  to  astound  all  Europe  l. 

The  battle  of  Southwold  Bay,  though  it  had  not  been  won 
by  the  Dutch,  had  at  least  so  crippled  the  English  and  French 
fleets  as  to  ward  off  for  the  time  the  threatened  descent  of 
those  fleets  on  the  Dutch  coasts,  to  co-operate  with  the  invad- 
ing French  army  of  110,000  men  led  by  Louis.  That  army 
had  to  act  independently,  but  with  what  shattering  effect  upon 
the  Dutch  !  On  the  31st  of  May,  or  three  days  after  the 
battle  of  Southwold  Bay,  the  whole  army,  having  approached 
the  Dutch  territories  by  the  circuit  of  the  Rhine,  had  crossed 
that  river ;  and  within  a  week  from  that  day  the  three 
provinces  of  Guelders,  Utrecht,  and  Overyssel  were  overrun, 
and  the  other  four  provinces  were  in  consternation.  Once 
more  the  Hollanders  were  driven  to  that  last  resource  of  theirs 
which  they  had  learnt  in  their  war  of  independence,  the  open- 
ing of  their  sluices  and  dams  so  as  to  flood  the  country  in 
front  of  the  invaders,  leaving  their  towns  as  mere  islands  on 
which  to  live  and  fight.  Especially  the  young  Prince  of 
Orange,  at  the  head  of  the  little  Dutch  army  of  25,000  men, 
was  moving  about  among  those  islands  and  their  canals  and 

l  Burnet,  I.  561—562  ;    Evelyn's  Diary,  May  31— July  3,  1072  ;    Mignet,  IV. 
16—19. 


584  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

dykes,  animating1  his  countrymen  and  doing  his  best  to  harass 
and  keep  back  the  French.  But  why  should  this  young"  hero, 
the  descendant  of  those  illustrious  ancestors  who  had  created 
Holland,  the  inheritor  of  their  great  wealth  and  of  their 
German  and  French  titles  of  Nassau  and  Orange,  be  fighting 
now  as  the  mere  general  of  a  Dutch  Republican  Government 
headed  by  the  grand  pensionary  John  De  Witt  and  his  brother 
Cornelius  ?  Who  but  those  De  Witts  and  the  bourgeois 
or  Republican  party  which  they  led,  and  which  had  been  in 
power  since  the  death  of  the  last  Stadtholder  in  November 
1650,  had  cultivated  the  French  alliance,  had  starved  the 
Dutch  land  army  to  its  present  dimensions,  had  persuaded  the 
Dutch  to  trust  to  their  naval  strength  only,  and  so  had  brought 
about  this  disaster  of  an  overwhelming  French  invasion  ? 
Why  not  revert  even  now  to  the  policy  of  the  old  military,  or 
Orange,  or  semi-monarchical  party,  which  had  been  suppressed 
for  more  than  twenty  years '?  True,  it  had  recently  been 
paralysed  beyond  recovery,  as  it  seemed,  by  the  so-called 
Perpetual  Edict  of  1667,  pledging  the  States- General  on  oath 
never  to  revive  the  Stadtholderate,  but  to  maintain  the  strictly 
Republican  constitution  of  the  Seven  United  Provinces  for  ever. 
The  present  Prince  of  Orange,  then  but  sixteen  years  of  age, 
had  been  sworn  to  the  observance  of  that  edict,  and  so  had 
resigned  all  claims  to  the  succession  to  his  father  in  the  Stadt- 
holderate. But,  now  that  he  was  in  his  twenty-second  year 
and  the  military  hope  of  his  country,  why  should  not  the  edict 
be  repealed  ?  Such  were  the  excited  questions  and  discussions 
in  Amsterdam,  Rotterdam,  Dordrecht,  Delft,  and  other  Dutch 
towns,  formulated  at  last  into  the  universal  popular  cry  Down 
with  the  Whites;  and,  the  States  of  the  various  provinces  having 
deliberated  with  what  formalities  were  possible  at  such  a  time, 
the  great  revolution  was  accomplished  with  electric  rapidity, 
and  on  the  30th  of  June  1672  William  Henry,  Prince  of 
Orange,  went  to  the  Hague  to  be  invested  with  the  dignity  of 
Stadtholder,  Captain  General,  and  Admiral  of  the  United 
Provinces.  Six  weeks  later,  in  the  same  city,  there  was  the 
brutal  murder  of  the  two  brothers,  John  and  Cornelius  De 
Witt,  by  an  insurgent  mob,  depriving  Holland  of  two  of  the 


THE   DUTCH  WAR  :    THE    PRINCE   OF   ORANGE.  585 

most  noble  and  virtuous  statesmen  that  ever  ruled  a  com- 
monwealth. The  Prince  of  Orange  was  absent  from  the 
Hague  at  the  time,  and  heard  of  the  act  with  horror ;  but  it 
may  have  facilitated  his  first  exertions  in  his  new  and  terribly 
difficult  position.  These  were  no  longer  against  Louis  in 
person,  who  had  set  out  on  his  return  to  Paris  on  the  16th  of 
July,  leaving  farther  operations  to  Turenne  as  his  generalissimo 
and  his  governor  of  Utrecht.  There  was  plenty  of  work 
for  Turenne ;  but  not  till  winter,  when  the  floods  should  be 
frozen  into  ice,  could  there  be  footing  for  his  cavalry  and 
infantry  into  the  stubborn  region  that  still  remained  Dutch. 
There,  with  the  eyes  of  all  Europe  upon  him,  the  young 
Stadtholder  was  standing  his  ground  marvellously.  He  was 
pretty  well  known  by  this  time  in  England,  having-  spent  four 
or  five  months  of  tbe  winter  of  1670-1  in  London  on  a  visit 
to  his  uncle.  Charles  had  then  studied  and  sounded  him, 
with  a  view  to  ascertain  whether  he  might  not  be  admitted 
to  some  knowledge  of  the  secret  treaty  between  himself  and 
Louis,  and  with  some  design  also  to  serve  him,  if  he  found 
him  tractable,  by  carving  out  for  him,  from  among  the  wrecks 
of  his  fatherland,  when  it  had  been  sufficiently  conquered,  a 
Batavian  princedom  in  vassalage  to  Louis.  But  he  had  found 
the  young  man  "  so  passionate  a  Dutchman  and  Protestant  " 
that  he  had  been  obliged  to  desist  from  the  attempt.  Now. 
therefore,  uncle  and  nephew  were  at  open  war  with  each  other, 
and  the  sole  apparent  chance  for  the  nephew  personally  was 
that  the  uncle  would,  in  some  kindly  way,  look  after  his 
interests  when  the  Dutch  were  beaten  and  there  should  be 
negotiations  for  the  terms  of  their  surrender.  Such  negotia- 
tions there  had  been  already,  Buckingham,  Arlington,  and 
Viscount  Halifax  having  been  sent  to  Holland  as  English 
plenipotentiaries  for  the  purpose,  to  join  the  Erench  agents 
in  treating  with  the  Stadtholder  and  the  States-General;  but 
the  terms  offered  had  been  so  insulting  and  ignominious  thai 
they  had  been,  by  the  Stadtholder's  advice,  not  only  rejected, 
but  posted  up  in  all  public  places,  that  all  relics  of  a  peace- 
party  among  the  Dutch  might  be  abashed  by  reading  them, 
and  the  entire  people  might  be  inspired  by  his  own  resolution, 


586  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

communicated  by  his  own  lips  to  Bucking-ham,  to  "  die  in  the 
last  ditch  "  that  remained  of  a  once  free  Republic.  And  so, 
through  the  autumn  of  1672,  the  dykes  having  been  broken 
down  everywhere,  to  flood  what  of  the  level  country  had  not 
been  already  submerged,  the  unconquerable  little  population 
lived  on  somehow  in  their  archipelago  of  habitable  islands, 
abiding  the  worst.  Emissaries  were  out  among  all  powers 
likely  to  be  friendly,  and  Spain,  the  Emperor,  and  some  of  the 
German  states,  dreading  the  vast  aggressiveness  of  Louis, 
were  astir  for  the  rescue.  Might  not  English  feeling  itself 
yet  turn  in  favour  of  the  Dutch  and  express  itself  in  the  next 
session  of  the  English  Parliament1? 

Not  the  war  with  the  Dutch  so  much  as  a  certain  Declara- 
tion of  Home  Policy,  which  Charles  had  put  forth  simultaneously 
with  the  declaration  of  the  war,  had  been  agitating  the  public 
mind  of  England  during  the  unusually  long  abeyance  of 
Parliament.  It  was  a  declaration,  dated  March  15,  1671-2, 
suspending  by  royal  prerogative  all  coercive  laws  in  matters 
of  religion  and  granting  indulgence  of  separate  worship  to 
Nonconformists. 

It  was  high  time  surely  that  there  should  be  such  a  sus- 
pension and  indulgence.  Maddening  as  had  been  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Nonconformists  before,  it  had  become  more  and 
more  maddening  since  the  passing  of  the  New  Conventicles 
Act  of  April  1670.  There  had  been  a  general  conspiracy  of 
the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authorities,  encouraged  by  Arch- 
bishop Sheldon  and  other  eminent  persons,  to  enforce  that 
Act  and  all  the  kindred  statutes  to  the  uttermost,  so  as  to 
stamp  out  Nonconformity  of  every  variety,  if  possible,  by  a 
tremendous  pressure  continued  through  two  or  three  years. 
The  business  of  detecting  and  suppressing  conventicles  had 
been  organized  into  a  system  ;  hundreds  of  blackguards  were 
making  a  lucrative  living  by  it,  at  the  rate  of  £1  or  ^8 
for  a  single  successful  information,  or  sometimes  even  ^15  ; 
county  justices,  as  well  as  magistrates  in  towns,  were  perpetually 

1  Mignet,  IV.  1—75 ;  Dalryrnple,  II.       the  Dutch  Republic  in   1672  and  its 
79.    Nothing  can  exceed  the  lucidity  of      immediate  consequences. 
Mignet's  narrative   of  the  invasion  of 


DECLARATION   OF   RELIGIOUS    INDULGENCE.  587 

occupied  in  receiving-  informations  and  trying  offenders ;  the 
jails  were  full  of  convicted  Nonconformists  and  Sectaries  who 
could  not  or  would  not  pay  their  fines.  Most  of  the  Presby- 
terian ministers  and  many  of  the  Independent  and  Baptist 
preachers  tried  to  avoid  conflict  with  the  law  by  arrange- 
ments for  preaching  among  their  adherents  from  house  to 
house  with  never  more  than  four  persons  present  in  addition 
to  the  family;  but  even  these  might  blunder  or  be  trepanned. 
Others  broke  bounds  defiantly  and  took  the  consequences. 
Such  offenders  were  numerous  among  the  Baptists ;  but  no 
denomination  so  amazed  and  perplexed  the  authorities  by 
their  obstinacy  as  the  Quakers.  It  was  their  boast  that  their 
worship,  from  its  very  nature,  could  not  be  stopped  "  by  men 
or  devils."  From  a  meeting  of  Roman  Catholics,  they  said, 
you  have  but  to  take  away  the  mass-book,  or  the  chalice,  or 
the  priest's  garments,  or  even  but  to  spill  the  water  and  blow 
out  the  candles,  and  the  meeting  is  over.  So,  in  a  meeting 
of  Lutherans  or  Episcopalians,  or  in  a  meeting  of  Presby- 
terians, or  Independents,  or  Baptists,  or  Socinians,  there  is 
always  some  implement  or  set  of  implements  upon  which  all 
depends,  be  it  the  liturgy,  the  gown  or  surplice,  the  Bible,  or 
the  hour-glass :  remove  these  and  make  noise  enough  and 
there  can  be  no  service.  Not  so  with  a  Quaker  meeting. 
There  men  and  women  worship  with  their  hearts  and  without 
implements,  in  silence  as  well  as  by  speech.  You  may  break 
in  upon  them,  hoot  at  them,  roar  at  them,  drag  them  about : 
the  meeting,  if  it  is  of  any  size,  essentially  still  goes  on  till 
all  the  component  individuals  are  murdered.  Throw  them  out 
at  the  door  in  twos  and  threes,  and  they  but  re-enter  at  the 
window  and  quietly  resume  their  places.  Pull  their  meeting- 
house down,  and  they  reassemble  next  day  most  punctually 
amid  the  broken  walls  and  rafters.  Shovel  sand  or  earth 
down  upon  them,  and  there  they  still  sit,  a  sight  to  see, 
musing  immovably  among  the  rubbish.  This  is  no  description 
from  fancy ;  it  was  the  actual  practice  of  the  Quakers  all  over 
the  country.  They  held  their  meetings  regularly,  persever- 
ingly,  and  without  the  least  concealment,  keeping  the  doors 
of  their  meeting-houses  purposely  open  that  all  might  enter, 


588  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

informers,  constables,  or  soldiers,  and  do  whatever  they  chose. 
In  fact,  the  Quakers  behaved  magnificently.  By  their  peculiar 
method  of  open  violation  of  the  law  and  passive  resistance 
only,  they  rendered  a  service  to  the  common  cause  of  all 
the  Nonconformist  sects  which  has  never  been  sufficiently 
acknowledged.  The  authorities  had  begun  to  fear  them  as  a 
kind  of  supernatural  folk,  and  knew  not  what  to  do  with 
them  but  cram  them  into  jails  and  let  them  lie  there.  Indeed 
the  jails  in  those  days  were  less  places  of  punishment  for 
criminals  than  receptacles  for  a  great  proportion  of  what  was 
bravest  and  most  excellent  in  the  manhood  and  womanhood 
of  England  1. 

How  welcome  then  the  Royal  Declaration  of  March  1672 ! 
Proclaiming  the  King's  attachment  to  the  Established  Church 
of  England,  and  his  resolution  to  preserve  all  her  rights,  it 
confessed  the  utter  failure  of  the  persecuting  policy  against 
Nonconformists;  it  ordered  that  "the  execution  of  all  and  all 
"  manner  of  penal  laws  in  matters  ecclesiastical,  against  what- 
"  soever  sort  of  Nonconformists  or  Recusants,  be  immediately 
"  suspended ;  "  and,  while  it  distinctly  intimated  that  public 
places  of  worship  could  not  be  granted  to  "  Recusants  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  religion,"  and  that  they  must  be  content  with 
"  exemption  from  the  penal  laws  "  and  with  "  worship  in  their 
private  houses  only,"  it  promised  the  licensing  by  his  Majesty 
himself  of  a  sufficient  number  of  meeting-houses  for  the  use 
of  Protestant  Nonconformists.  Could  anything  be  more 
ample  or  opportune  ?  Yet,  strange  to  say,  no  sooner  had  the 
Declaration  appeared  than  there  had  been  a  division  of  opinion 
respecting  it  even  among  those  who  had  been  expected  to 
welcome  it  with  enthusiasm.  To  the  Cavaliers  and  High 
Churchmen  generally  it  was,  of  course,  odious  beyond  ex- 
pression. It  was  treason  to  the  Church  ;  it  was  the  recognition 
of  sects  and  heresies  by  the  Sovereign  himself;  where  would 
the  Church  of  England  be  in  three  years  if  the  Declaration 
should  take  full  effect  ?    The  wonder  is  that  the  Declaration 


1  Baxter,  Part  III.  74,  et  seq. ;  Neal,       and  445 — 446  ;  Jewel's  History  of  the 
IV.  444—454  ;   Barclay's   Apology   for       Quakers  (edit.  1834),  II.  191,  et  seq. 
the    Quakers    (edit.    1765),    321—324 


DECLARATION   OF    RELIGIOUS   INDULGENCE  589 

seemed  to  be  hardly  more  pleasing-  to  those  politicians  of 
comparatively  liberal  views  who  had  begun  to  be  called  "  The 
Country  Party/'  or  even  to  the  Presbyterians  and  the  mass  of 
other  Nonconformists  themselves.  What  were  the  reasons  ? 
One  was  that  the  Declaration  assumed  and  asserted  a  right  of 
the  crown  by  prerogative  to  suspend,  and  therefore  to  defeat 
and  annul,  Acts  of  Parliament.  However  desirable  might  be  a 
relaxation  of  the  penal  statutes  against  Nonconformists,  was  the 
boon  to  be  accepted  by  an  admission  of  a  principle  of  regal 
absolutism  which  might  extend  to  all  laws  whatsoever  ?  But, 
further,  though  the  boon  professed  to  be  only  or  chiefly  for 
Protestant  Nonconformists,  who  could  mistake  the  real  and 
ultimate  intention  ?  How  could  a  genuine  Protestant  Non- 
conformist rejoice  in  an  edict  which,  while  giving  liberty  to 
himself  indeed,  would  let  loose  at  the  same  time  the  Papal 
Antichrist?  These  reasonings  of  the  popular  instinct,  aided 
perhaps  by  some  information  that  had  meanwhile  leaked  out 
as  to  the  Secret  Treaty  of  Dover,  did  cause  alarms  among  the 
Nonconformists  almost  as  vivid  as  if  they  had  divined  the  real 
fact.  This  undoubtedly  was  that,  while  the  declaration  for 
the  suspension  of  the  penal  laws  against  Nonconformists 
recommended  itself  to  the  King  and  the  whole  Cabal  on 
general  grounds,  the  King  and  the  crypto-Catholic  section  of 
the  Cabal  designed  it  as  a  harbinger  of  the  forthcoming 
Declaration  of  Catholicity ,  Almost  as  if  this  had  been  divined, 
the  attitude  of  the  Nonconformists  to  the  declaration  of  sus- 
pension was  hesitating  and  suspicious.  Only  the  Quakers 
were  thoroughly  thankful,  regarding  the  refusal  of  the  boon 
because  it  came  from  prerogative  as  an  excess  of  constitutional 
scruple,  and  seeing  no  reason,  in  their  simple  theory,  why 
toleration  should  not  include  the  Roman  Catholics.  This 
exceptional  willingness  of  the  Quakers  to  see  the  Roman 
Catholics  admitted  to  equal  toleration  with  themselves  and  all 
other  classes  of  Nonconformists  did  not  pass  unobserved  ;  and 
the  very  fact  that  the  Quakers  and  the  Roman  Catholics 
were  drawn  tog-ether  bv  a  common  interest  in  the  declaration 
of  indulgence  increased  the  general  distrust  in  the  declaration, 
while  it  brought  the  Quakers  into  new  odium.     Nevertheless, 


590  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOEY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

the  good  practical  effects  of  the  Declaration  had  been  already 
undeniable.  It  had  occasioned,  directly  or  indirectly,  the 
release  of  many  Nonconformists  from  prisons.  John  Bunyan, 
for  example,  who  had  been  in  Bedford  jail  since  1660, 
was  again  at  large  as  a  Baptist  preacher  outside  the  jail  in 
September  1672.  Even  before  that  date  Congregational  and 
Presbyterian  ministers  in  considerable  numbers  had  applied 
for  the  King's  licences  for  their  tabernacles  and  had  received 
them.  There  is  even  evidence  that  some  of  the  more  eminent 
Nonconformist  ministers  were  offered  and  accepted  temporary 
government  allowances  of  from  j£'50  to  ^100  a  year  for  the 
exercise  of  their  pastoral  services  among  their  flocks.  This 
curious  fact  can  bear  no  other  construction  than  that  it  had 
occurred  to  Charles  and  some  of  his  advisers  that  they  might 
go  beyond  the  mere  offer  of  future  toleration  or  indulgence  for 
dissent,  and  might  venture  cautiously  on  some  attempt  to 
reopen  the  greater  question  of  the  constitution  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church  itself  by  an  experiment  in  the  direction  of  con- 
current endowment  of  sects. 

Willingly  would  Charles  and  the  Cabal  have  persevered  in 
the  Dutch  war  and  the  domestic  administration  together 
without  the  troublesome  interference  of  Parliament.  By  the 
device  of  prolonging  the  Stop  of  the  Exchequer  they  had  been 
able  to  manage  current  expenses  somehow,  and  so  defer  the 
re-assembling  of  Parliament.  But,  as  farther  supplies  had 
become  absolutely  necessary,  renewed  prorogation  was  im- 
possible, and  Parliament  must  be  again  faced  on  the  4th  of 
February,  1672-3.  In  preparation  for  that  date  there  were 
various  ministerial  changes  both  within  and  out  of  the 
Cabal.  Sir  John  Trevor  having  died  in  July  1672,  Sir 
Henry  Coventry,  a  younger  brother  of  the  retired  Sir  Wil- 
liam, had  been  then  brought  into  the  Privy  Council,  and 
appointed  to  the  subordinate  Secretaryship  of  State  that  had 
been  held  by  Trevor.  But  the  changes  in  November  1672 
were  more  remarkable.  Sir  Orlando  Bridgman,  uncomfort- 
able or  too  punctilious  in  his  Keepership  of  the  Great  Seal, 
resigned  or  was  discharged  ;  and  the  Great  Seal,  with  the 
supreme  title  of  Lord  Chancellor,  which  had  been  in  abeyance 


TENTH   SESSION    OF   THE   CAVALIEK    PARLIAMENT.      591 

since  Clarendon  held  it,  was  conferred  on  the  Earl  of  Shaftes- 
bury, to  the  great  surprise  of  those  who  regarded  the  office 
of  Lord  Chancellor  as  tenable  only  by  a  professional  lawyer. 
At  the  same  time  the  high  office  of  Lord  Treasurer,  which 
had  been  distributed  among  Commissioners  since  the  death  of 
the  Earl  of  Southampton  in  1667,  was  revived  and  bestowed 
on  Lord  Clifford,  while  Sir  John  Duncombe  succeeded  Clifford 
in  the  Treasurers// ip  of  the  Household,  and  became  also  his 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Notwithstanding  these  and  some 
minor  re-arrangements,  the  Cabal  proper  remained  visibly  the 
same,  with  Buckingham,  Shaftesbury,  Clifford,  Arlington, 
and  Lauderdale  as  the  five  chiefs  still.  Evidently,  however, 
it  was  on  Shaftesbury  and  Clifford  that  the  King  now  de- 
pended most,  on  Shaftesbury  for  his  general  inventiveness 
and  powers  of  parliamentary  management,  on  Clifford  for  his 
daring  resoluteness  of  character.  Arlington,  if  not  the  others, 
felt  this  ascendancy  of  the  favoured  two.  As  he  had  expected 
the  High  Treasurership,  he  was  chagrined  by  the  appointment 
of  Clifford  to  that  post ;  and,  though  they  had  been  fast 
friends  hitherto,  they  were  henceforth  divided  1. 

The  Tenth  Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament  extended  over 
less  than  two  months,  or  from  Feb.  4,  1672-3  to  March  29, 
1673.  But,  though  short,  it  was  to  be  a  most  memorable 
session.  The  topics  of  the  King's  opening  speech  to  the  two 
Houses,  and  of  Shaftesbury's  oratorical  amplification  of  the 
same,  were  the  Dutch  war,  the  French  alliance,  and  the 
Ro}ral  Declaration  of  Religious  Indulgence ;  and  both  the 
King  and  the  Chancellor  protested  in  the  strongest  manner 
the  utter  groundlessness  of  the  suspicions,  in  any  of  these 
connexions,  of  his  Majesty's  ardent  Protestantism  and  af- 
fection for  the  Church  of  England,  or  of  his  fidelity  to  English 
and  constitutional  principles.  Delenda  est  Carthago  was 
Shaftesbury's  summary  of  what  he  considered  the  duty  of 
Parliament  against  the  detestable  Dutch.  About  that  matter, 
and  about  various  other  matters  of  importance,  the  two 
Houses  exhibited  a  singular  indifference.     They  let  alone  the 

1  Beatson's  Political  Index  ;  Christie's  ShafUsbury,  II.  93—99. 


592  LIFE   OF    MILTON    A.ND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

subject  of  the  Stop  of  the  Exchequer;  they  signified  no  general 
opposition  to  the  Dutch  war  ;  they  even  astonished  the  King" 
and  Court  by  at  once  declaring-  their  willingness  that  one  of 
the  results  of  their  session  should  be  a  grant  of  ^1,238,750 
for  the   King's  [use  in  the  conduct  of  that  war.     But  this 
graut  they  held  in  suspense  till  there  should  be  fully  accom- 
plished what  they  had  resolved  should  be  the  main  business 
of  the    session.     Whether   by    deliberate    agreement,    or    by 
general  instinctive    sagacity,   they   concentrated  their  entire 
energies  on  an  attack  on  the  Royal  Declaration  of  Indulgence 
to  Nonconformists.     By  some  means  or  other  they  had  con- 
verted   vague    suspicions    of  the    secret    drift  of  affairs  into 
tolerable  certainty,  and  had  come  to  regard  the  Declaration  of 
Indulgence  as  not  only  unconstitutional  in    itself,   but  also 
a  furtive  symbol  of  a  conspiracy,  in  which  Charles,  the  Duke 
of  York,  Louis  XIV.,  and  others  were  engaged,  for  the  sub- 
version of  Parliamentary  government  and  Protestantism  in 
England.     Nothing  else  can   account  for  the  vehemence  of 
their  debates  on  the  Declaration,  or  for  the  engineer-like  craft 
of  their  approaches  for   sapping  and  blowing  up  the  whole 
crypto-Catholic  design.     "  I  shall  take  it  very  ill  to  receive 
"  contradiction  in  what  I  have  done,  and,  I  will  deal  plainly 
<l  with  you,  I  am  resolved  to  stick  to  my  Declaration/'  Charles 
had  said  in  his  opening  speech.     In  answer  it  was  resolved  by 
the  Commons,  Feb.  10,  by  a  majority  of  168  to  116,  "That 
"  penal  Statutes  in  matters  ecclesiastical  cannot  be  suspended  but 
"  by  Act  of  Parliament"  and,  four  days  later,  that  there  should 
be   an  address   to  his  Majesty  conveying  that   information. 
Then,  as  if  to  show  that  it  was  to  the  unconstitutional  form 
of  the    King's    Indulgence    that   there    was   now   objection, 
and  that  something  equivalent  might  be  yielded  by  Parlia- 
ment itself  in   proper  constitutional  shape,   it  was  resolved 
unanimously   "  That  a  Bill  be   brought  in  for  the  ease  of  his 
"  Majesty's  Protestant  subjects  that  are  Dissenters  in  matters  of 
"  Religion  front  the  Church  of  England."     For  a  whole  fort- 
night there  was  a  struggle  between  the  King  and  the  House 
on  the  constitutional  question,  the  King  maintaining  that  the 
right  of  suspending-  ecclesiastical  laws  was  a  prerogative  of 


TENTH   SESSION    OF   THE   CAVALIER   PARLIAMENT.      593 

the  Crown,  and  the  House  maintaining-  the  opposite.  No  farther 
would  the  King-  yield  than  that  he  would  take  the  matter  "  into 
consideration."  To  hasten  his  decision,  it  was  unanimously 
resolved,  Feb.  28,  (1)  "That  an  Address  be  prepared  to  be  pre- 
"  sented  to  Jus  Majesty,  for  suppressing  the  growth  of  Pope? y" 
and  (2)  "That  a  Bill  be  brought  in  for  the  incapacitating  <f 
"  all  persons  who  shall  refuse  to  take  the  oaths  of  allegiance 
"and  supremacy,  and  the  Sacrament  according  to  the  rites  of  the 
"  Church  of  England,  for  holding  any  public  employments, 
"  military  or  civil."  Here  at  length  was  flung  before  the 
King  the  real  gage  of  battle.  Whatever  should  be  done 
eventually  for  the  Protestant  Nonconformists  of  England,  the 
Roman  Catholics  of  England  were  to  be  found  out  and  in- 
capacitated. Charles  was  furious.  What  should  he  do  ? 
He  could  dissolve  this  Parliament,  now  nearly  twelve  years 
old,  and  call  another  ;  he  could  dissolve  the  present  Parlia- 
ment without  calling  another ;  he  could  prorogue  the  Par- 
liament ;  or  he  could  leave  the  Parliament  sitting  and  try  to 
defy  it.  All  these  methods  had  their  peculiarities  of  peril, 
while  all  alike  would  leave  Charles  moneyless  for  an  inde- 
finite time.  Dissolution  was  recommended  by  Shaftesbury, 
Clifford,  Lauderdale,  Buckingham,  and  the  Duke  of  York, 
though  not  by  Arlington.  An  attempt  was  made  to  bring 
over  the  Lords  to  the  King's  views,  with  no  other  effect  than 
an  intimation  that  their  Lordships  would  be  glad  to  see  him 
agree  with  the  Commons.  To  the  night  of  the  6th  of  March 
there  seemed  no  chance  of  such  an  agreement,  or  of  anything- 
else  than  an  angry  dissolution,  to  be  followed  by  a  national 
commotion.  Next  day,  however,  all  was  changed.  The  miracle 
was  wrought  by  a  message  from  Louis  through  his  ambas- 
sador Colbert.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  Louis  sympathized 
with  his  Britannic  Majesty  in  his  dilemma,  but  that,  as 
money  was  indispensable  for  the  Dutch  war,  and  as  Charles 
could  have  ^1,238,750  at  once  by  pleasing  Parliament  and 
giving  up  his  Declaration,  he  had  better  do  so,  reserving 
revenge  for  some  future  opportunity.  That  day,  accordingly, 
Friday  March  7,  when  the  two  Houses  waited  upon  the 
King  at  Whitehall  to  present  the  No  Popery  address  which 
VOL.  VI.  q  q 


594         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

they  had  agreed  on,  and  which  prayed  his  Majesty  to  banish 
all  Jesuits  and  Roman  Catholic  priests  not  in  attendance  on 
the  Queen,  and  also  to  take  means  for  ejecting-  all  Roman 
Catholics  from  the  public  service  or  the  household,  his  Majesty 
signified  his  heartiest  concurrence.  Next  day,  Saturday, 
March  8,  he  twice  met  the  two  Houses  more  formally  to  com- 
plete his  concessions,  and  caused  it  to  be  intimated  that  he 
had  on  the  previous  evening,  in  the  presence  of  some  of  his 
Council,  cancelled  the  original  of  the  Declaration  which  had 
given  so  much  trouble.  "  My  Lords  and  Gentlemen,'-'  he 
said  at  the  second  meeting,  in  reply  to  the  profuse  thanks 
of  both  Houses,  "  I  hope  there  will  be  never  any  more  dif- 
u  ference  amongst  us,  and  I  assure  you  there  shall  never  be 
"  any  occasion  on  my  part."  There  had  not  been  such  bon- 
fires of  joy  for  a  long  while  as  blazed  in  London  that  Satur- 
day night 1. 

In  accordance  with  the  resolution  of  the  Commons,  a  Bill 
for  the  relief  of  Protestant  Dissenters  did  pass  through  that 
House.  It  was  a  very  moderate  substitute  for  the  cancelled 
Declaration,  but  might  have  been  of  some  use.  The  Lords, 
however,  were  so  dilatory  over  it,  or  so  uncertain  about  it, 
that  the  session  came  to  an  end  by  adjournment  before  the 
bill  could  be  matured.  Both  Houses  had  been  much  more  in 
earnest  with  the  incapacitating  bill  which  they  had  threat- 
ened; and,  on  the  29th  of  March  1673,  when  the  King  had 
the  pleasure  of  assenting  to  the  bill  securing  him  at  last 
the  promised  j^1,280.750  for  his  "  extraordinary  occasions," 
one  of  the  bills  he  had  to  pass  along  with  it  was  the  i(  Act  for 
preventing  dangers  which  may  happen  from  Popish  Recusants" 
known  more  familiarly  as  The  Test  Act.  In  substance,  it  was 
as  follows : — 

The  Test  Act  (March  29,  1673): — "All  and  every  person  or 
persons,  as  well  peers  as  commoners,"  bearing  "  any  office  or  offices, 
civil  or  military,"  or  receiving  "  any  pay,  salary,  fee,  or  wages  "  from 
the  Crown,  or  in  the  household  of  the  King,  or  that  of  the  Duke  of 
York,  were  to  be  disabled  from  continuing  in  their  places  or  draw- 

1  Lords   and    Commons  Journals  of       rymple,  II.  93—96;  Mignet,  IV.  155 — 
dates  ;  Pari.  Hist.  IV.  518—561  ;  Chris-       156. 
tie's   Shaftesbunj,   II.   128—135;   Dal- 


THE   TEST    ACT.  595 

ing  their  emoluments,  unless  they  should,  on  or  hefore  the  1st  of 
August  1673,  (1)  publicly,  in  the  Court  of  Chancery  or  in  the  Court 
of  King's  Bench,  or  at  quarter  sessions,  take  the  oaths  of  allegiance 
and  supremacy,  (2)  produce  evidence  of  their  having  received  "  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  according  to  the  usage  of  the 
Church  of  England  "  in  some  parish  church  on  some  Lord's  day, 
and  (3)  subscribe  this  declaration  :  "  I,  A.  B.,  do  declare  that  I  do 
"  believe  that  there  is  no  transubstantiation  in  the  Sacrament  of  the 
"  Lord's  Supper,  or  in  the  elements  of  bread  and  wine  at  or  after 
"  the  consecration  thereof  by  any  person  whatsoever."  In  addition 
to  loss  of  office,  there  was  to  be  a  fine  of  £500  on  every  person  not 
complying,  with  disqualification  for  suing  in  any  court  of  law,  or 
being  guardian  of  any  child,  or  executor  or  legatee  under  any  will. 
There  were  one  or  two  exceptions  or  saving  clauses,  e.  g.  for  the 
Earl  of  Bristol  and  his  countess,  and  for  Roman  Catholics  who  had 
assisted  in  preserving  his  Majesty  after  the  battle  of  Worcester  ;  and 
it  was  also  provided  that  there  might  be  re-qualification  for  office 
by  subsequent  compliance  l. 

Thus,  on  the  29th  of  March  1673,  ended  the  famous  Tenth 
Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament.  Burnet,  who  characterizes 
it  as  "  much  the  best  session  of  that  long-  Parliament,"  sums 
up  its  merits  by  saying*  that  "  the  Church  party  showed  a 
"  noble  zeal  for  their  religion,  and  the  Dissenters  got  great 
"  reputation  by  their  silent  deportment."  It  was,  in  fact,  the 
first  of  a  series  of  what  may  be  called  the  No  Popery  sessions 
of  this  Parliament,  giving"  voice  to  that  national  determination 
to  save  England  at  all  hazards  from  any  relapse  towards  Rome 
in  which  the  Protestant  Nonconformists  were  at  one  with  the 
English  Churchmen  and  Cavaliers,  and  in  the  interest  of  which 
they  were  content  to  postpone  their  own  claims  to  tolera- 
tion ;  and  its  distinction  in  English  history  is  that  it  had 
effectually  and  for  ever  quashed,  as  far  as  Charles  himself  wa< 
concerned,  his  cherished  scheme  of  a  Declaration  of  Catholicif//. 
to  be  followed  by  an  attempt  to  re-establish  Roman  Catholicism 
in  the  British  islands.  It  was  the  more  honest  Duke  of  York 
that  was  henceforth  to  trudge  on  as  the  Roman  Catholic 
brother,  sustaining*  all  the  inconveniences  of  that  unpopular 
profession,  while  the  elder  brother  on  the  throne  was  to  re- 
lapse   into    his    comfortable    crypto-Catholicism,    professing 

1  Lords  and   Commons  Journals  from  March  8,  1672-3  to  March  29,  1673 ; 
Statutes,  25  Car.  II.  c.  2. 

Qq2 


596  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

Church  of  England  Protestantism  as  hitherto,  and  persecuting1 
Roman  Catholics  professedly  to  any  required  amount1. 

Charles  still  clung  tenaciously  to  his  partnership  with  Louis 
in  the  Dutch  war.  He  was  to  assist  now  not  only  with  a  re- 
fitted and  increased  fleet,  but  also  with  the  land  force  which 
he  had  promised  in  the  secret  treaty.  The  Duke  of  York 
having  resigned  his  office  of  high  admiral  and  all  his  other 
commissions  rather  than  comply  with  the  Test  Act,  the  com- 
mand of  the  fleet  was  given  to  Prince  Rupert.  After  two 
indecisive  actions  at  sea  with  the  combined  English  and 
French  fleets  against  the  Dutch  fleet  under  the  skilful  Ruyter, 
one  on  the  28th  of  May  and  the  other  on  the  4th  of  June,  the 
Prince  returned  to  England  to  take  on  board  the  auxiliary 
land  force  of  8000  men,  which  had  meanwhile  been  collected 
at  Yarmouth  for  a  descent  on  the  Dutch  coasts.  The  com- 
mand of  this  army,  though  Buckingham  had  desired  it,  had 
been  entrusted  to  Count  Schomberg,  a  foreign  Protestant  who 
had  been  in  the  service  of  Louis.  On  the  11th  of  August 
Rupert,  with  the  English  and  French  fleets,  fought  Ruyter  in 
a  third  battle  close  to  the  Dutch  coasts,  for  the  purpose  of 
landing  Schomberg's  army.  After  fighting  from  daybreak  to 
evening,  he  was  baffled  by  Ruyter,  and  had  to  retreat,  carrying 
the  army  back  to  England.  This  in  itself  was  a  great  relief 
for  the  Dutch ;  and  on  the  20th  of  the  same  month  their  pros- 
pects were  still  further  brightened  by  the  conclusion  of  an 
alliance  at  the  Hague,  by  which  the  Emperor  Leopold,  the 
King  of  Spain,  and  the  Duke  of  Lorraine  became  bound  to 
support  their  cause  offensively  and  defensively  against  Louis. 
For  two  months  before  this  coalition  a  congress  of  French, 
English,  and  Dutch  plenipotentiaries  had  been  sitting  at 
Cologne,  discussing  the  terms  of  a  possible  peace,  but  with  no 
success  2. 

The  Cabal  of  the  five  was  by  this  time  broken  up.  The 
Test  Act  of  March  1673  had  accomplished  that  effect  among 
others.  The  example  of  the  Duke  of  York  in  demitting  all 
his  offices  rather  than  take  the  test,  and  so  exchanging  crypto- 

i  Burnet,  II.  14;  Mignet,  IV.  136—157. 
2  Migiiet,  IV.  138  et  seq. 


BREAK-UP  OF  THE  CABAL.  597 

Catholicism  for  open  and  avowed  Catholicism,  had  been  fol- 
lowed by  many  persons  of  various  ranks  in  the  public  service. 
Of  these  the  most  conspicuous  by  far  was  the  Lord  Treasurer 
Clifford.     A  man  of  high  courage  and  temper,  he  had  resisted 
the  Test  Act  in  the  Lords  with  a  resolute  eloquence  which 
surprised  his  colleagues  ;  and,  though  every  argument  was 
used  by  Charles,  after  the  session  was  over,  to  induce  him  to 
submit  to  the  test,  he  disdained  farther  concealment  of  his 
religion  by  so  flagrant  a  hypocrisy.     He  resigned  his  High 
Treasurership  on  the  19th  of  June,  quitting  also  his  place  in 
the  Council  and   his  connexion   with  Court,  and  retired  in 
disgust  to   his  estate   in   Devonshire ;   whence,   four  months 
afterwards,  came  the  news  of  his  death  :  "  hanged  himself  in 
a  silk  sash/'  as  the  report  ran.     His  former  friend  and  recent 
rival,  Arlington,  was  of  more  yielding  metal.      Taking  the 
test,  and  remaining  in  the  Cabal,  he  had  made  sure  now  of  the 
treasurership  in  succession  to  Clifford,  but  only  to  be  again 
disappointed.     That  great  office  was  conferred  on  a  politician 
who  had  not  hitherto  been  of  the  Cabal,  though  he  had  been 
of  the  Council  for  some  time,  and  had  there,  as  well  as  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  in   the  treasurership  of  the  navy, 
proved  himself  an  able  man  of  business  and  won  the  reputation 
of  being  an  especially  sound  Protestant  of  the  Clarendonian  or 
strict  Church  of  England  type.     This  was  Sir  Thomas  Osborne, 
M.P.  for  York,  now  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Viscount  Latimer 
of  Dan  by  and  Baron  Osborne  of  Kiverton,  both  in  Yorkshire. 
It  was  symptomatic  that  about  the  same  time  the  Duke  of 
Ormond,  who  had  been  in  eclipse  since  the  fall  of  Clarendon, 
and  had  been  long  out  of  that  Lord  Lieutenancy  of  Ireland 
which  was  naturally  and  properly  his  post,  was  re-admitted  to 
the  Cabal.     His  re-admission  was  intended  as  an  additional 
guarantee  that  the  King  had  learnt  the  "  No  Popery  "  lesson 
read  to  him  with  such  emphasis  in  the  late  session.     In  the 
summer  of  1673,  accordingly,  the  reformed  Cabal  consisted  of 
these  seven  : — the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  still  Lord  Chancellor  ; 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  still  Master  of  the  Horse  ;  the  Duke 
of  Ormond,  in  his  old  office  of  Lord  Steward ;  the  Duke  of 
Lauderdale,  without  definite  English  office ;  Viscount  Latimer 


598  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

of  Danby,  as  Lord  High  Treasurer ;  the  Earl  of  Arlington,  as 
Principal  Secretary  of  State ;  and  Sir  Henry  Coventry,  as 
Second  Secretary  of  State.  It  was  a  very  unstable  body,  com- 
prising- irreconcileable  elements  ;  and  farther  changes  might 
be  expected.  Nor  were  men  wanting  in  the  general  council 
and  ministry  round  the  Cabal  that  might  be  available  for  such 
reconstruction.  The  Earl  of  Anglesey,  a  councillor  since  the 
Restoration,  but  never  yet  in  such  high  office  as  seemed  his 
due,  had  recently  been  made  Lord  Privy  Seal ;  eminent  and 
experienced  councillors,  more  or  less  of  the  "  country  party, " 
were  the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  Viscount  Falconbridge,  Viscount 
Halifax,  and  Lord  Holies ;  and  a  new  councillor,  of  uncertain 
principles,  was  Mr.  Edward  Seymour,  Speaker  of  the  House 
of  Commons  *. 

FROM  JUNE  1673  TO  NOVEMBER  1674. 

The  Tenth  Session  of  Parliament,  at  its  rising  on  the  29th 
of  March,  had  adjourned  itself  to  the  20th  of  October.  When 
Parliament  did  reassemble  on  that  day,  however,  it  was  im- 
mediately prorogued  to  the  27th  of  the  same  month.  The 
session  which  met  on  the  27th  of  October  1673,  though  only 
to  be  prorogued  again  on  the  4th  of  November,  is  to  be 
remembered,  therefore,  as  the  Eleventh  Session  of  the  Cavalier 
Parliament. 

It  owed  its  brevity  to  its  own  behaviour.  Still  in  the 
vehement  "  No  Popery  "  temper  of  the  former  session,  it  had 
been  provided  with  a  special  aggravation  of  its  rage  against 
the  Roman  Catholics  by  the  fact  that  the  Duke  of  York  had 
chosen  for  his  second  wife  the  young  Roman  Catholic  prin- 
cess Maria  d'Este,  sister  of  the  Duke  of  Modena.  He  had 
already  been  married  to  her  in  Italy  by  proxy,  and  was  now 
expecting  her  in  England.  Paying  no  attention,  therefore, 
to  the  requests  of  the  King  and  of  Chancellor  Shaftesbury,  in 
their  opening  speeches,  for  continued  support  in  the  war 
against  the  obstinate  Dutch,  the  Commons  fell  on  the  subject 
of  the  Duke  of  York's  re-marriage.     They  had  already,  at 

1  Beatson's  Political  Index;  Wood's       Christie's  Shaftesbury,  II.  144,  et  seq. ; 
Fasti,  II.    161  ;    Burnet,  II.    10—12 ;       Lingard,  XII.  277. 


SHAFTESBURY   IN   THE   OPPOSITION.  599 

their  meeting-  of  the  20th  as  an  adjourned  House,  agreed  on 
an  address  to  Charles  praying  him  to  disallow  the  marriage 
with  the  Duchess  of  Modena  and  to  refuse  his  assent  to  the 
Duke's  marriage  with  any  other  person  not  a  Protestant ; 
and  this  address  they  renewed  with  the  utmost  determination, 
the  King's  arguments  to  the  contrary  only  rousing  them  the 
more.  They  also  threatened  a  Disabling  Bill  against  the 
Roman  Catholics  more  sweeping  and  severe  than  the  Test 
Act  itself,  and  they  voted  a  standing  army  to  be  a  grievance. 
Thus  utterly  unmanageable,  the  two  Houses  were  suddenly 
prorogued  on  the  4th  of  November  to  the  7th  of  January 
1673-4,  but  not  till  the  Commons,  keeping  their  doors  shut, 
and  detaining  the  Speaker  in  the  chair  by  force  while  the 
Black  Rod  was  knocking  outside,  had  hurriedly  passed  three 
significant  parting  resolutions.  The  first  declared  that  the 
alliance  with  France  was  a  grievance ;  the  second  declared 
that  the  evil  councillors  about  the  King  were  a  grievance ; 
and  the  third  declared  that  the  red -headed  Duke  of  Lauderdale 
was  a  grievance  by  himself1. 

On  the  9th  of  November  1673,  five  days  after  the  pro- 
rogation, Shaftesbury  was  dismissed  from  the  Chancellorship, 
and  ceased  to  be  any  longer  a  member  of  the  Cabal.  Hardly 
had  he  been  dismissed,  indeed,  when  efforts  were  made  to 
bring  him  back  again.  But  he  had  resolved  on  a  different 
employment  of  his  abilities  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  had 
become  aware  by  this  time  of  the  real  purport  of  that  Secret 
Treaty  of  Dover  of  which  he  and  others  had  been  so  long  the 
unconscious  dupes  ;  he  had  been  studying  the  present  feelings 
of  his  countrymen,  and  their  future  needs  ;  and  his  conclusion 
had  been  that  he  would  extricate  himself  from  his  connexions 
with  Charles,  and  be  the  independent  chief  of  a  popular 
English  policy.  Henceforward,  accordingly,  Shaftesbury 
assumes  that  final  character  by  which  he  is  best  remembered, 
the  "  wise  Achitophel "  of  the  infant  English  Whigs,  their 
"daring  pilot  in  extremity,"  the  " fiery  soul"  in  a  "pigmy 
body"   that   could    scheme    for   them  and  lead  them.     The 

1  Pad.  Hist,  aud  Eapin  ;  Christie's  Shaftesbury,  II.  151—155. 


600  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Cabal,  as  he  had  left  it,  consisted  of  the  Duke  of  York, 
Ormond,  Buckingham,  Lauderdale,  Latimer  of  Danby,  Ar- 
lington, and  Sir  Henry  Coventry,  together  with  Sir  Heneage 
Finch,  who  had  been  Attorney- General  since  1670,  and  had 
now  been  selected  as  Shaftesbury's  successor  in  the  Great 
Seal,  though  only  with  the  title  of  Lord  Keeper.  They  were 
still  an  ill-assorted  body,  and  it  could  not  be  foreseen  which 
of  them,  or  whether  any  of  them,  would  predominate.  Mean- 
while they  had  to  do  their  best  for  the  King  in  the  coming 
session  of  Parliament.  One  difficulty  had  been  removed  out 
of  their  way  b}r  the  actual  arrival  of  the  young  Duchess  of 
Modena  and  the  completion  of  her  marriage  with  the  Duke 
of  York  on  the  21st  of  November  1. 

The  Twelfth  Session  of  the  Parliament  (Jan.  7— Feb.  1673-4) 
was  another  short  "  No  Popery  "  session.  At  once,  both  in 
the  Lords,  where  Shaftesbury  led  the  Opposition,  and  also  in 
the  Commons,  the  accumulated  passion  of  the  last  few  months 
broke  forth  irrepressibly  and  at  all  points.  The  alliance  with 
France  was  denounced  ;  the  war  with  the  Dutch  was  de- 
nounced; the  Duke  of  York's  marriage  was  again  attacked; 
a  standing  army  in  England  was  again  declared  to  be  a 
grievance;  even  the  institution  and  retention  of  the  regi- 
ments of  the  Guards  were  declared  unconstitutional  and  dan- 
gerous. Addresses  were  carried  for  removing  Lauderdale  and 
Buckingham  from  the  King's  presence  and  counsels  for  ever  ; 
and  there  was  modified  procedure  to  the  same  effect  against 
Arlington,  as  the  only  remaining  member  of  the  old  Cabal. 
Nothing  of  a  questionable  kind  that  had  been  done  of  late 
years,  or  even  through  the  whole  reign  of  Charles,  escaped 
mention  and  criticism.  Through  all,  and  giving  unity  to  all, 
there  ran,  however,  the  "No  Popery"  enthusiasm.  There 
was  a  prayer  to  the  King  for  a  proclamation  ordering  all 
Papists,  not  householders  or  otherwise  privileged,  to  withdraw 
from  London  ;  there  was  a  prayer  for  a  fast-day  for  imploring 
the  protection  of  the  nation  against  Popery  ;  there  was  an 
address  for  holding  the  militia  of  the  counties  in  readiness 

i  Christie,  II.  155  and  179— 1S7. 


PEACE  WITH  THE  DUTCH.  601 

against  designs  or  risings  of  the  Papists  ;  there  were  debates 
as  to  securities  to  be  taken  for  the  Protestant  education  of  the 
children  of  Roman  Catholics  in  the  royal  family,  or  of  Roman 
Catholic  noblemen ;  even  the  subject  of  the  exclusion  of 
Roman  Catholics  from  the  succession  to  the  throne  was 
daringly  broached.  A  new  and  more  universal  and  searching 
Test  Act  was  also  in  preparation  in  the  Commons. — One 
result  of  this  many-sided  pressure  upon  Charles  was  a  sudden 
conviction  on  his  part  that  he  must  abandon  his  alliance  with 
Louis  against  the  Dutch.  Accordingly,  the  Dutch  having 
again  made  overtures  for  a  separate  peace  with  England,  and 
Charles  having  consulted  the  two  Houses  on  the  24th  of 
January,  and  Sir  William  Temple  having  speedily  adjusted 
the  terms  with  the  Spanish  ambassador  in  London,  the  Houses 
were  informed  on  the  11th  of  February  that  a  peace  had  been 
signed.  It  was  with  infinite  regret  and  some  shame  that 
Charles  communicated  to  Louis  the  humiliating  conclusion 
to  which  he  had  been  thus  driven  ;  but  Louis  received  the 
news  more  good  humouredly  than  could  have  been  expected. 
He  acknowledged  that  Charles  could  hardly  have  done  other- 
wise in  his  hard  circumstances ;  and,  though  his  advances  to 
Charles  on  the  ground  of  their  partnership  against  the  Dutch 
amounted  now  to  a  vast  sum,  lost  irrecoverably,  he  did  not 
see  that  their  relations  should  not  continue  on  some  such 
footing  that  Charles  might  still  be  of  use  to  him  and  entitled 
to  draw  ^100,000  yearly  in  present  pension,  with  more  on 
specific  occasion. — Having  made  peace  with  the  Dutch,  and 
having  also  yielded  to  the  Parliament  in  such  matters  as  the 
proclamation  against  the  Roman  Catholics,  the  appointment 
of  a  fast-day  for  "  No  Popery"  prayers  and  sermons,  consent 
to  disband  his  forces,  &c,  Charles  hoped  that  the  two  Houses 
would  be  satisfied  and  that  a  handsome  subsidy  would  be  at  last 
forthcoming.  But  the  Houses  had  not  yet  worked  out  their 
"No  Popery"  resolutions  to  the  full.  They  occupied  them- 
selves still  with  the  new  Test  Act  for  disabling  Roman 
Catholics  universally,  and  with  discussions  as  to  the  treatment 
and  cure  of  Roman  Catholicism  in  the  royal  family ;  and, 
in  their  search  after  miscellaneous  matters  of  suspicion  and 


602  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

grievance,  they  ranged  even  to  Ireland  and  Scotland,  pro- 
posing a  rigid  inquiry  in  particular  into  certain  recent  mea- 
sures of  Lauderdale  and  the  Scottish  government  for  levying 
forces  for  unknown  purposes.  At  length,  finding  the  Par- 
liament in  a  mood  from  which  nothing  could  be  hoped, 
Charles  again  prorogued  it  on  the  24th  of  February  1673-4, 
before  it  had  sent  up  to  him  a  single  completed  bill.  The 
prorogation  was  to  the  10th  of  the  following  November  ; 
but,  by  subsequent  postponement,  there  was  not  to  be  another 
meeting  of  Parliament  till  April  1675  3. 

The  state  of  affairs  in  England  in  the  abeyance  of  Parlia- 
ment through  the  rest  of  the  year  1674  may  be  described 
generally  by  saying  that  the  country  was  then  in  the  begin- 
nings of  The  Danby  Administration.  For,  though  Arling- 
ton, Lauderdale,  and  Buckingham  had  survived  the  attacks 
made  upon  them  in  the  late  session  of  Parliament,  and  were 
still  of  the  Cabal,  and  though  Ormond,  Lord  Keeper  Finch, 
Sir  Henry  Coventry,  and  even  the  Duke  of  York,  remained 
also  members  of  the  body,  the  Englishman  who  was  proving 
himself  all  in  all  the  most  efficient  for  the  King's  purposes  in 
the  new  condition  of  affairs  was  the  Lord  Treasurer  Osborne, 
Viscount  Latimer  of  Danby.  He  was  "  a  positive  and  under- 
taking man,'''  says  Burnet ;  "  a  plausible,  well-spoken  man, 
of  good  address,  and  cut  out  naturally  for  a  courtier," 
Shaftesbury  himself  admits;  but,  as  these  and  other  authori- 
ties agree,  monstrously  unscrupulous.  He  had  gained  so  much 
on  Charles  that  on  the  27th  of  June  1674,  he  was  raised  from 
his  Viscountcy  to  an  Earldom  by  the  title  of  Earl  of  Danby  ; 
and  from  that  date,  Ormond's  reappointment  to  the  Irish  Vice- 
royalty  taking  him  again  to  Ireland,  the  formal  premiership  in 
England  was  more  distinctly  and  continuously  in  the  hands  of 
Lord  Danby  than  it  had  been  in  those  of  any  other  minister 
since  the  fall  of  Clarendon.  It  seemed  also  as  if  Clarendon's 
general  policy  had  come  back  in  the  person  of  this  astute 
successor.  Mutatis  mutandis  after  the  lapse  of  seven  years, 
Danby  was  to  be  a  kind  of  second  Clarendon  in  his  ecclesias- 

i  Pari.  Hist,  and  Rapin  ;  Christie,  II.  185—200. 


BEGINNINGS    OF   THE   DANBY   ADMINISTRATION.         603 

tical  notions  and  in  his  notions  of  government  generally, 
though  with  a  faith  all  his  own  in  the  power  of  bribery  and 
corruption  for  managing-  persons  and  Parliaments.  It  was  to 
be  chiefly  in  consequence  of  Danby's  manipulation  of  the  future 
sessions  of  the  long  Cavalier  Parliament  that  the  name  of 
"  The  Pensionary  Parliament "  was  to  be  affixed  to  that  body. 
His  opportunities  of  this  kind  were  yet  to  come,  and  through 
1674  the  limit  of  his  powers  was  in  conducting  the  King's 
private  English  counsels  and  managing  his  colleagues.  In 
September  in  that  year  there  was  a  modification  of  the 
Cabinet  to  suit  his  views  and  those  of  Charles.  Buckingham, 
out  of  favour  for  some  time,  was  sent  adrift  almost  with 
insult,  to  join  his  forces  to  those  of  Shaftesbury  in  the 
opposition,  or  do  otherwise  as  he  might  think  fit ;  Arlington, 
retained  in  the  Cabinet,  was  promoted  to  the  office  of  Lord 
Chamberlain  in  succession  to  the  Earl  of  St.  Alban's,  but  with 
an  understanding  that  his  star  was  to  set  finally  in  that  dig- 
nity ;  and  in  succession  to  Arlington  in  the  vacant  Secretary- 
ship of State ',  and  with  a  payment  to  him  of  j£J6000,  there 
was  brought  in  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  M.P.  for  Thetford, 
formerly  Arlington's  under-secretary  and  clerk  of  the  Council, 
and  more  recently  one  of  the  English  plenipotentiaries  at 
Cologne.  The  King  still  placed  immense  trust  in  the  Duke 
of  Lauderdale,  whom  he  had  created  an  English  peer,  with 
the  title  of  Earl  of  Guildford  and  Baron  Petersham,  two  days 
before  he  raised  Danby  to  his  earldom.  But,  though  it 
might  thus  seem  that  Danby  and  Lauderdale  were  co-equals, 
and  though  Lauderdale  had  the  higher  rank,  there  had  come 
to  be  something  like  an  understood  partition  of  powers  be- 
tween the  two  favourites,  Lauderdale  content  thenceforward  in 
the  main  with  the  Scottish  supremacy,  and  leaving  to  Danby 
the  credit  of  the  English x. 

All  that  seems  farther  necessary,  before  we  take  leave  of  the 
politics  of  England  in  1674,  is  a  view  of  the  state  of  the 
royal  family  in  that  year.     It  was  as  follows : — 

i  Rapin  for  1674 ;  Christie,  II.  197—       nologist,   Anthony  Wood,   ami  Carte's 
199  ami  312—313  ;  with  gleanings  from        Ornwnd. 
Peerage  Books,  Beatson,  British  Chro- 


604        LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

His  Majesty,  Charles  the  Second  :  cetat.  45. 

His  Queen,  Catharine  of  Braganza  :  childless. 

The  King's  acknowledged  Concubines  still  living: — (1) 
Barbara  Villiers,  known  as  Lady  Castleniaine  for  some  time,  but 
since  1670  as  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  Countess  of  Southampton,  and 
Baroness  Nonsuch  ;  (2)  Mary  Davis,  the  actress ;  (3)  Nell  Gwynn, 
the  actress  ;  (4)  The  Frenchwoman  Louise  de  Querouaille,  called 
by  the  Londoners  for  some  time  Madam  Kerwell  or  Carwell,  or 
anything  else  that  would  pass,  but  ennobled  since  1673,  as  Duchess 
of  Portsmouth,  Countess  of  Fareham,  and  Baroness  Peter^field. 
She  had  an  estate  and  title  in  France  by  gift  from  Louis  XIV.,  and 
was  the  chief  political  medium  between  Louis  and  Charles.  Though 
the  principal  mistress,  she  had  not  dispossessed  others  in  the  King's 
regards ;  and  the  fascinating  Nelly,  who  had  no  title,  was  still  liked 
by  him  and  was  indubitably  the  popular  favourite. 

The  King's  acknowledged  natural  children  : — These  are 
enumerated  as  twelve  in  all :  to  wit : — (1)  James  Crofts,  or  Fitzroy, 
or  Fitzroy-Scott,  Duke  of  Monmouth  and  Buccleuch  since  1663, 
and  now  cetat.  25.  He  had  been  of  the  Privy  Council  since  coming 
of  age  ;  held  other  honours,  and  was  still  very  popular ;  had  recently 
seen  military  service  in  the  French  army  against  the  Dutch  and 
received  from  Louis  the  compliment  of  being  made  a  lieutenant- 
general,  and  had  just  been  elected  to  the  Chancellorship  of  the 
University  of  Cambridge,  in  succession  to  Buckingham,  displaced 
from  that  office  by  the  King's  desire.  There  had  been  born  to  the 
Duke  and  his  young  Scottish  Duchess  a  son,  called  the  Earl  of 
Dalkeith,  from  whom  the  present  Buccleuch  family  are  descended. 
(2)  A  daughter  Mary,  by  the  same  mother,  Lucy  Waters.  Though 
the  sister  of  Monmouth,  she  attained  no  other  distinction  than 
becoming  the  wife  of  an  Irish  gentleman,  and  afterwards  of  an 
English.  (3)  A  daughter  called  Charlotte-Jemima-HenriettarMaria 
Boyle  or  Fitzroy,  born  of  Elizabeth,  Viscountess  Shandon,  whose 
husband  was  a  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Orrery,  Robert  Boyle,  and 
Lady  Ranelagh.  This  natural  daughter  married  first  a  Howard 
of  the  Suffolk  family,  and  afterwards  Sir  William  Paston,  bart., 
created  Viscount  Yarmouth  in  1673,  and  Earl  of  Yarmouth  in 
1679.  (4)  Charles  Fitzcharles,  born  of  a  Mrs.  Catherine  Peg.  He 
died  in  Tangier.  (5)  A  daughter  by  the  same  Mrs.  Peg,  who  died 
in  infancy.  (6)  Charles  Fitzroy,  the  King's  eldest  child  by  the 
Duchess  of  Cleveland,  and  her  heir-designate  in  that  Duchy,  but 
created  also  Duke  of  Southampton,  Earl  of  Chichester,  and  Baron 
Newbery  in  1675.  (7)  Henry  Fitzroy,  another  son  by  the  Duchess 
of  Cleveland,  created  Earl  of  Euston  in  1672,  and  Duke  of  Grafton 
in  1675,  still  in  his  boyhood.  (8)  George  Fitzroy,  also  by  the 
Duchess  of  Cleveland,  created  Earl  of  Northumberland  in  his  infancy 
in  1674,  and  Duke  of  Northumberland  in  1683.  (9)  Charlotte 
Fitzroy,  a  daughter  by  the  same  Duchess  of  Cleveland.  She*  was 
to  marry  Sir  Edward  Henry  Lee  of  Ditchley,  co.  Oxon,  who  became 


THE   KOYAL   FAMILY   IN    1674.  605 

Earl  of  Lichfield.  (10)  A  daughter  by  Mary  Davis,  called  Mary 
Tudor,  who  was  to  marry  Francis,  Lord  Ratcliffe,  afterwards  Earl 
of  Derwentwater.  (11)  Charles  Beauclerk,  son  of  Nell  Gwynn,  and 
ancestor  of  the  St.  Alban's  family.  He  was  born  1670,  created 
Earl  of  Burford  in  1676,  and  Duke  of  St.  Alban's  in  1684.  (12) 
Charles  Lennox,  son  of  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  and  ancestor  of 
the  house  of  Richmond.  He  was  born  July  29,  1672,  and  created 
Duke  of  Richmond  in  1675. — Older  than  all  these,  some  recent 
authorities  say,  was  a  certain  mysterious  James  La  Cloche,  born  to 
Charles  by  a  Jersey  girl  so  long  ago  as  1646  or  1647,  when  Charles 
was  but  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  age.  The  story  is  that  this 
boy  had  been  brought  up  as  a  Protestant  in  Holland,  had  come  to 
England  by  his  father's  desire  in  1665,  had  lived  there  for  about 
two  years  in  some  secret  way  about  the  Court,  but  returned  to 
the  continent,  became  a  Roman  Catholic  at  Hamburg,  "  entered  the 
novitiate  of  the  Jesuit  society  in  Rome"  in  the  end  of  1667,  and 
afterwards  came  and  went  between  Rome  and  London,  under  the 
name  of  Henri  de  Rohan,  as  a  confidential  agent  in  his  father's 
Catholicity  scheme.  If  this  vague  personage  was  the  son  of  Charles, 
and  carried  with  him,  as  it  is  said  he  did,  Charles's  own  written 
acknowledgment  of  the  fact,  he  had  rights  of  priority  over  even 
the  Duke  of  Monmouth. 

The  next  in  succession  to  the  throne  : — These  were  the 
Roman  Catholic  Duke  of  York,  now  cetat.  41,  and,  after  him,  his 
two  only  surviving  children  by  his  first  wife :  viz.  the  Princess 
Mary,  cetat.  1 3,  and  the  Princess  Anne,  cetat.  9.  Measures  had  been 
taken  for  bringing  up  these  two  girls  as  Protestants  ;  and,  since  the 
peace  with  the  Dutch,  there  had  been  speculation  by  Danby, 
Arlington,  and  others,  whether  it  might  not  be  arranged  that  Mary 
should  become  the  wife  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  the  heroic  young 
Stadtholder  of  the  Dutch  Provinces.  There  was  just  a  chance,  how- 
ever, that  the  Duke  of  York's  second  wife,  Mary  of  Modena,  might 
bring  him  a  son  and  heir ;  in  which  case  Clarendon's  grand-daughters 
would  be  set  aside  by  an  interloping  half- Italian  \ 

What  of  novelty  in  English  Literature  daring-  those  seven 
years,  from  1667  to  1674,  the  political  history  of  which  has 
been  thus  sketched  ?  The  question  brings  us  back  to 
Dryden. 

In  November  1667,  just  after  Dryden  had  so  successfully 
divided  himself  between  the  two  London  theatres,  giving  his 
Maiden  Queen  to  the  King's  or  Killigrew's  and  his  Sir  Martin 

1  Peerage  Books,  &c;  and,  fnrtlie  story  the  authenticity  of  all  the    documents 

of  James  La  Cloche,  Father  Boero's  Is-  there  mentioned  in  connexion  with  the 

toria  deUa  Conversione,  &c.  (see  ante,  La  Cloche  story  ;  but  there  are  traces  of 

pp.  240 — 241).     I  am  not  satisfied  as  to  La  Cloche  or  Henri  de  Rohan  elsewhere. 


606         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Mar-all  to  the  Duke's  or  Davenant's,  there  was  produced  at 
this  latter  theatre  an  extraordinary  adaptation  from  Shake- 
speare by  Dryden  and  Davenant  jointly,  under  the  title  of 
The  Tempest,  or  the  Enchanted  Island.  The  thing  has  been 
universally  condemned  since  as  a  desecration  of  Shakespeare's 
great  play  ;  but,  with  the  aid  of  music  and  scenery,  it  made 
a  fine  show  at  the  time 1. 

The  play  was  still  new  to  the  boards,  and  had  not  been 
published,  when,  on  the  7th  of  April  1668,  Davenant  died. 
Who  was  to  succeed  him  in  the  Laureateship?  Had  the 
vacancy  occurred  three  or  four  years  sooner,  when  Hudibras 
was  new  to  the  public,  the  claims  of  Butler  might  perhaps 
have  been  discussed.  Not  onlv  had  the  morose  Butler, 
however,  made  himself  ineligible  by  retiring  into  his  cave, 
but  it  had  become  almost  a  necessity  that  the  Laureateship 
should  be  retained  among  the  dramatists.  Among  these 
certainly  Dryden  was  the  chief.  Author  of  five  plays  and 
in  part  of  two  more,  author  also  of  the  Annus  Mirabilis,  and 
of  some  masterly  pieces  of  criticism  in  the  form  of  prose 
essays  and  prefaces  reviewing  the  past  history  of  English 
literature  and  all  but  assuming  the  superintendence  and 
direction  of  the  English  literature  of  the  Restoration,  who  so 
fit  as  Dryden  to  be  Davenant's  successor 1  ?  The  surprise, 
indeed,  is  that  Dryden  was  not  appointed  to  the  office  at  once. 
That  there  was  some  such  intention  may  be  inferred  from 
the  fact  that  on  the  17th  of  June  1668  the  degree  of  Master 
of  Arts,  which  Dryden  had  neglected  to  take  in  the  regular 
way  at  Cambridge,  was  conferred  on  him  ex  gratia  by  Arch- 
bishop Sheldon  at  the  King's  special  request.  For  some 
reason  or  other,  however,  the  Laureateship  was  left  vacant 
for  more  than  two  years.  Possibly  the  Buckingham  Cabal, 
or  Buckingham  and  Arlington  Cabal,  in  power  from  1667  to 
1670,  did  not  care  to  promote  Dryden  2. 

His  dependence  for  more  than  two  years  was  still,  therefore, 
mainly  on  his  dramatic  industry.     In  this  respect  he  was  not 

1  Scott's  Life  of  Dryden  and  Dryden's  2  Scott's  Life  of  Dryden  and  Christie's 

Plays  and  Prefaces  in  Scott's  Edition  of       Memoir. 
Dryden's  Works  (1808). 


DRYDEN  FROM  1667  TO  1670  607 

badly  off.  While  Davenant  was  yet  alive,  an  arrangement 
had  been  made  by  the  King's  or  Killigrew's  company  for 
stopping  that  loan  of  Dryden's  talents  to  the  rival  house 
which  had  led  to  the  production  there  of  Sir  Martin  Mar-all 
and  the  adaptation  of  The  Tempest.  On  the  understanding 
that  he  was  to  write  no  more  for  the  Duke's  company,  but 
exclusively  for  the  King's,  and  at  the  rate  of  three  new  plays 
for  the  King's  every  year,  he  had  been  admitted  a  partner  in 
the  concern  to  the  extent  of  a  share  and  a  quarter  out  of 
a  total  of  twelve  shares  and  three  quarters,  i  e.  with  a  right 
to  about  a  tenth  of  the  entire  annual  profits  of  the  theatre. 
The  income  thus  secured  is  estimated  at  between  ^300  and 
^400  a  year  in  the  money  of  that  day.  With  such  an  in- 
ducement Dryden  seems  to  have  exerted  himself  at  first  to 
perform  his  part  of  the  contract  to  the  full.  The  following 
were  his  labours  for  the  King's  theatre  during  the  two  years 
of  the  abeyance  of  the  Laureateship  : — An  Evenings  Love,  or 
the  Mock  Astrologer,  a  comedy,  chiefly  in  prose,  produced  in 
June  1668,  and  published  immediately  afterwards,  with 
a  critical  preface,  and  an  epistle  dedicatory  to  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle ;  Ladies  a  la  mode,  a  comedy  from  the  French, 
produced  in  September  1668,  but  so  unsuccessfully  that  it 
was  withdrawn  after  one  performance  and  never  published ; 
Tyrannic  Love,  or  the  Royal  Martyr,  a  tragedy  in  rhyme, 
produced  in  February  1688-9,  and  published  the  following 
year,  with  a  dedication  to  the  Duke  of  Monmouth ;  and 
Ahnanzor  and  Almahide,  or  the  Conquest  of  Granada  by  the 
Spaniards,  a  rhyming  tragedy  in  two  parts,  produced  in 
1670,  and  afterwards  published,  with  a  dedication  to  the 
Duke  of  York,  an  essay  on  heroic  plays,  and  other  critical 
accompaniments.  In  the  two  comedies  Dryden  had  done 
himself  no  additional  credit ;  but  in  the  Tyrannic  Love  and 
the  two  parts  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada  he  was  thought 
to  have  reached  his  very  highest  in  heroic  rhyming  tragedy, 
and  to  have  established  that  form  of  play  in  the  possession  of 
the  English  stage.  The  chief  parts  in  them  were  acted 
magnificently  by  Mohun,  Hart,  Kynaston,  Ann  Marshall, 
Mrs   Boutel,  and  Nell  Gwynn  ;    there  were   crowded  houses 


608  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  continued  applauses ;  and  Nelly's  appearance  in  the 
epilogue  to  Tyrannic  Love  is  matter  of  history.  Having*  killed 
herself  in  the  last  scene  of  the  tragedy  in  the  paroxysm  of 
supernatural  virtue  required  by  the  part,  she  was  being  borne 
slowly  off  the  stage  as  a  corpse,  when,  resuming  her  natural 
character,  she  addressed  her  bearer, — 

"  Hold  !    are  you  mad  %   you  damned  confounded  dog  ! 
I  am  to  rise  and  speak  the  epilogue ; " 

and  then,  running  to  the  footlights,  began — 

"  I  come,  kind  gentlemen,  strange  news  to  tell  ye  : 
I  am  the  ghost  of  poor  departed  Nelly. 
Sweet  ladies,  be  not  frighted ;    I'll  be  civil : 
I  'm  what  I  was,  a  little  harmless  devil ; " 

and  ended :  — 

"  As  for  my  epitaph  when  I  am  gone, 
I'll  trust  no  poet,  but  will  write  my  own:  — 
'  Here  Nelly  lies,  who,  though  she  lived  a  slattern, 
Yet  died  a  princess,  acting  in  St.  Catharine.'  " 

It  was  too  ravishing-,  and  the  authorities  date  Nelly's  com- 
plete conquest  of  Charles  from  her  flushed  run  to  the  foot- 
lights that  evening,  Feb.  9,  1688-9  \ 

What  with  the  triumphant  success  of  Dryden's  last  rhyming 
heroic  plays,  what  with  the  effects  of  his  encomiastic  dedica- 
tions to  the  Duke  of  Monmouth  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
and  his  acquisition  of  new  patrons  in  the  Duke  of  York  and 
Sir  Thomas  Clifford,  his  promotion  to  the  Laureateship  could 
no  longer  be  deferred.  On  the  18th  of  August  1670,  about 
four  months  after  the  formation  of  the  "  Cabal  Ministry " 
usually  so  called,  and  three  months  after  the  Secret  Treaty 
of  Dover,  Dryden  obtained  his  official  patent.  It  was  in  very 
handsome  terms,  appointing  "  John  Dryden,  Master  of  Arts," 
to  be  not  only  Poet  Laureate  in  succession  to  Davenant,  but 
also  Historiographer  Royal  in  succession  to  James  Howell, 
who  had  died  in  November  1666.  The  salary  for  the  conjoint 
offices  was  to  be  ^J200  a  year,  with  the  customary  annual 
butt  of  Canary  wine  from  the  King*'s  cellars.     To  compensate 

1  Scott's  Dryden,  the  Lite  and  the  Plays  ;  Christie  ;  Genest's  English  Stage. 


dryden's  laureateship.  609 

for  the  delay,  the  payment  was  to  be  retrospective  from  Mid- 
summer 1668,  or  the  first  quarter  day  after  Davenant 's  death. 
From  1668,  therefore,  if  we  add  to  Dryden's  j£j200  a  year 
from  the  Laureateship,  and  his  <j£J300  or  ^'400  from  his 
partnership  in  the  King's  theatre,  his  other  incidental  earn- 
ings by  publication  and  dedications,  and  his  patrimonial 
income  ofj^40  a  year  from  his  Northamptonshire  property 
(increased  to  ^J60  a  year  by  the  death  of  his  mother  in  1 670), 
his  total  yearly  income  can  hardly  have  been  less  than  between 
^700  and  ^800  ;  which  was  then  worth  for  all  purposes  about 
^2500  a  year  now.  In  1670  he  was  in  his  fortieth  year, 
and  thenceforward,  to  all  appearance,  bis  prosperity  was  as- 
sured. If  he  was  not  yet  quite  the  "  glorious  John  "  of  whom 
Claud  Halcro  was  to  carry  away  such  delightful  reminiscences 
to  the  far  Shetlands,  he  was  growing  into  that  character,  and 
was  indubitably  the  most  observed  man  in  the  daily  gather- 
ing's of  the  wits  of  London  in  Will's  coffee-house  in  Bow 
Street,  or  among  the  more  select  visitors  to  Herringman's 
shop  on  the  other  side  of  the  Strand  K 

Dryden's  Laureateship  was  to  extend  to  1688,  and  we  are 
concerned  here  only  with  the  state  of  English  literature  from 
August  1667  to  November  1674.  That  period  includes  the 
last  eight  months  of  Davenant's  Laureateship,  and  only  the 
beginnings  of  Dryden's,  whether  we  measure  those  beginnings 
by  the  four  years  and  three  months  from  Dryden's  formal 
laureation  or  by  the  six  years  and  eight  months  from  Dave- 
nant's decease.  Altogether  there  is  not  much  of  novelty  to 
report  concerning  the  second  seven  years  of  the  literature 
of  the  Restoration. 

The  Drama  was  still  paramount.  Thomas  Killigrew  and 
others  of  the  Killigrew  family,  with  Mohun,  Hart,  and  several 
more  of  the  actors,  stiil  managed  the  King's  theatre ;  and,  at 
or  shortly  after  Davenant's  death,  the  management  of  the 
Duke's  came  into  the  hands  of  Betterton,  Harris,  and  Mr. 
Charles  Davenant,  the  last  representing  the  very  considerable 
proprietary  interests  of  his  mother,  Lady  Davenant,  the  poet's 

1  Scott's   Life   of  Dryden,  pp.    113—117 ;   Christie's  Memoir ;   Cunningham's 
London,  Art.  "  Will's  Coti'ee-house." 

VOL.  VI.  It  r 


610  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

widow.  On  the  9th  of  November  1671  the  latter  company 
removed  from  their  theatre  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  to  a  much 
larger  one,  called  the  Dorset  Gardens  Theatre,  which  they  had 
built  by  subscription  in  Salisbury  Court,  Fleet  Street ;  and  in 
February  1671-2,  the  King's  Theatre  in  Drury  Lane  having 
been  burnt  down,  the  King's  company  were  glad  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  premises  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  which  had 
thus  been  conveniently  left  vacant  by  their  rivals.  They 
continued  their  performances  there  till  March  26,  1674,  when 
they  were  able  to  return  to  a  new  theatre  in  Drury  Lane, 
designed  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren.  On  the  whole,  by  these 
changes,  though  the  King's  company  had  a  serious  loss  in  the 
burning  of  their  theatre,  and  Dryden's  share  of  the  loss  was 
about  ^400,  there  was  no  interruption  of  the  business  of  the 
London  stage.  A  list  of  about  a  hundred  plays  could  be  made 
out  that  are  known  to  have  been  produced  successively  at  one 
or  other  of  the  theatres,  and  to  have  had  their  runs  of  so  many 
nights  each,  from  the  middle  of  1667  to  the  end  of  1674. 
Plays  by  Shakespeare,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Ben  Jonson, 
and  others  of  the  older  writers  were  still  in  occasional  demand  ; 
successiul  Restoration  plays  of  the  previous  seven  years,  in- 
cluding some  of  Davenant's,  Dryden's,  Sir  Robert  Howard's, 
and  Lord  Orrery's,  were  duly  revived  from  time  to  time ;  but 
there  was  a  larger  draft  than  before  on  fresh  industry.  To  the 
new  plays  by  Dryden  himself  already  mentioned  as  having 
been  performed  between  1667  and  his  accession  to  the 
Laureateship  in  1670  there  were  added  Mariage  a  la  3fode,  a 
comedy  in  mixed  prose,  blank  verse,  and  rhyme,  acted  in  1672 
and  published  with  a  nattering  dedication  to  the  blackguard 
young  Earl  of  Rochester,  The  Assignation,  or  Love  in  a  Nunnery, 
a  comedy  of  similar  construction,  acted  in  the  same  year, 
and  published  with  a  dedication  to  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  and 
Amboyna,  or  the  Cruelties  of  the  Butch  to  the  'English  Merchants, 
a  tragedy  in  prose  and  blank  verse,  hastily  concocted  in  1673 
to  stimulate  the  nagging  animosity  against  the  Dutch.  This 
last  was  published  in  June  of  that  year,  with  a  dedication  to 
Lord  Clifford,  just  after  the  retirement  of  that  Roman  Catholic 
statesman  from  the  Cabal  in   consequence  of  the  Test  Act. 


DRYDEN  FROM  1670  TO  1674.  611 

Evidently  Dryden  had  become  lazier  since  his  appointment  to 
the  Laureateship ;  for,  though  he  was  drawing  his  profits 
of  over  j£300  a  year  from  the  King's  Theatre  as  before,  he 
had  not  from  that  date  given  the  theatre  one  third  of  his 
promised  number  of  plays  annually.  No  complaint  on  that 
score  had  yet  been  made  by  his  co-partners ;  nor  was  either 
theatre  in  want  of  playwrights  who  could  compete  for  the 
supply  of  its  full  requirements.  Sir  Robert  Howard  and  his 
brothers  Edward  and  James  were  not  exhausted  ;  the  Earl  of 
Orrery  deigned  to  attempt  at  least  one  comedy,  by  way  of 
variety  after  his  heroic  plays ;  Etherege  and  Sedley  were  not 
quite  idle  ;  Buckingham  flashed  out  brilliantly  in  one  farce ; 
the  actor  Lacy  wrote  another  comedy  ;  Betterton  tried  his 
greater  hand  in  two ;  and  one  heard  much  now  of  such  later 
candidates  for  dramatic  fame  as  Thomas  Shadwell,  William 
Wycherley,  John  Crowne,  Edward  Ravenscroft,  Elkanah 
Settle,  and  the  warm-blooded  Dutch-English  lady,  Mrs. 
Aphra  Behn.  Before  the  end  of  1674  Shadwell  had  pro- 
duced five  of  his  comedies  and  a  tragedy,  Wycherley  all  his 
four  classic  comedies,  Crowne  two  of  his  plays,  Ravenscroft 
two  of  his,  Settle  two  of  his  heroic  tragedies,  and  Mrs.  Behn 
at  least  three  of  her  naughty  comedies,  in  addition  to  some  of 
her  poems  and  naughty  novelettes.  Nat  Lee  and  Thomas 
Otway  were  but  just  on  the  horizon,  stripling  actors  who  had 
failed  on  the  boards  and  were  meditating  poetry  and  play- 
writing  as  easier  work 1. 

It  was  not  mere  laziness  that  made  Dryden  less  prolific  of 
dramas  between  1670  and  1674  than  he  had  previously  been. 
The  competition  of  some  of  the  younger  craftsmen  had  dis- 
turbed his  temper  and  drawn  him  into  personal  controversies. 
The  extraordinary  success,  more  especially,  of  Settle's  two 
heroic  tragedies,  Cambyses,  King  of  Persia  and  The  Empress  of 
Morocco,  the  first  acted  in  1671  and  the  second  in  1673,  had 
challenged  Dryden's  rights  in  the  very  walk  he  thought  his 
own.  It  is  now  a  marvel  how  this  wretched  Elkanah  Settle, 
remembered  only  as  a  ludicrous    object  in  English  literary 

1  Genest's  English  Stage ;  Dryden's  Works ;  Baker's  Biographia  Bratiuitica ; 
Notes  from  the  Stationers'  Registers. 

R  r  2 


612  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

history,  should  have  for  a  year  or  two  of  his  youth  disputed 
the  poetic  supremacy  with  Dryden.  But  so  it  was.  Rochester 
had  deserted  Dryden  and  taken  Settle  under  his  patronage  ; 
half  the  court  and  more  than  half  the  town  were  won  over  to 
Settle ;  passages  of  Settle's  Cambyses  and  Empress  of  Morocco 
were  quoted  against  the  best  in  Dryden's  Tyrannic  Love  and 
his  Conquest  of  Granada  ;  at  the  Universities,  where  it  was 
keenly  discussed  whether  Dryden  or  Settle  was  the  greater 
genius,  "  the  younger  fry,"  we  are  told,  "  inclined  to 
Elkanah."  Although  Dryden,  Crowne,  and  Shadwell  clubbed 
together  to  crush  the  young  upstart  by  an  abusive  pamphlet, 
entitled  Remarks  upon  the  Empress  of  Morocco,  he  was  not  to  be 
so  crushed,  but  retorted  vigorously  in  Notes  and  Observations 
of  self-defence  and  counter-attack. 

There  would  have  been  annoyance  enough  for  Dryden  in 
this,  controversy  with  Settle  and  in  a  similar  exchange  of  per- 
sonalities at  the  same  time  with  young  Ravenscroft.  But 
there  was  much  more  to  trouble  him.  His  cherished  doctrines 
of  dramatic  construction,  and  especially  his  doctrine  of  the 
superiority  of  rhyme  to  blank  verse  for  all  serious  dramatic 
purposes,  had  never  been  cordially  accepted  either  by  the 
public  or  by  the  critics ;  and  even  as  early  as  1668  there  had 
been  a  passage  at  arms  on  the  subject  between  him  and  his 
brother-in-law  Sir  Robert  Howard.  This  little  quarrel 
between  the  brothers-in-law,  however,  had  been  soon  made 
up  ;  and  it  was  not  till  Dryden  had  been  settled  in  the 
Laureateship  that  the  full  storm  of  criticism  burst  upon  him. 
Then  it  was,  just  when  he  could  congratulate  himself  on 
having  exhibited  the  capabilities  of  the  heroic  play  to  the 
utmost  in  his  Tyrannic  Love  and  Conquest  of  Granada,  and  his 
only  danger  seemed  to  be  from  the  competition  of  Elkanah 
Settle  and  others  in  that  form  of  the  drama,  that  there  broke 
forth  at  last  the  public  expression  of  disgust  with  heroic  plays 
themselves. 

It  broke  forth  at  many  points,  and  was  continued  till  1674 
in  pamphlets  and  squibs  against  Dryden  by  Matthew  Clifford, 
Richard  Leigh,  and  others.  Already,  however,  the  fatal  blow 
had  been  inflicted  in  the  famous  farce  of  The  Rehearsal,  first 


DRYDEN  AND  THE  REHEARSAL.  613 

produced  on  the  7th  of  December  1671  at  the  King's  Theatre 
by  Dryden's  own  company,  acted  with  increasing  effect  through 
that  winter,  and  published   in  1672.      This  farce,  the  work 
chiefly  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  but  with  help  from  his 
chaplain  Sprat,  and  also  from  Samuel  Butler  and  the  above- 
named  Matthew  Clifford,  had  been  in  preparation  while  Dave- 
nant  was  alive,  and  the  intention  is  said  to  have  originally 
been  to  make  Davenant  the  chief  character  and  satirize  heroic 
plays  in   his  person.     Now,  however,  all  had  been  reshaped 
to  fit  Dryden.     Under  the  name  of  the  poet  Bayes,  which  was 
but  an  obvious  metaphor  for  "  The  Laureate,"  he  was  made 
to  figure  through  the  farce  as  present  at  the  rehearsal  of  an 
imaginary  rlrvming  tragedy  of  his  own,  called  uThe  Two  Kings 
of  Brentford/'  directing  and  scolding  the  actors,  running  upon 
the  stage  now  and  then  to  show  them  what  to  do,  and  keeping 
up  all  the  while  a  chatty  conversation  with  two  friends,  Smith 
and  Johnson,  whom  he  has  posted  at  the  side  of  the  stage  to 
observe  the  success  of  the  performance,  and  to  whom  he  ex- 
pounds the  merits  of  the  play,  the  thread  of  the  story  where 
they  fail  to  catch  it,  and  his  intention  in  this  part  or  that 
where  the  meaning  is  obscure.     At  the  close  of  the  second  act 
Bayes  is  made  to  tumble  on  the  stage  and  break  his  nose  in 
trying  to  instruct  one  of  the  actors  how  to  fall  dead  properly, 
and  through  the  last  three  acts  he  goes  about  with  a  patch  of 
wet  brown  paper  over  the  bruised  organ.     In  the  fifth  act, 
having  gone  out  for  a  minute,  he  finds,  on  his  return,  that 
Smith  and  Johnson,  who  have  been  secretly  laughing  at  him  all 
along,  have  gone  off  to  dinner  without  bidding  him  good-bye, 
and  that  the  actors,  equally  sick  of  the  whole  business,  have 
gone  off  to  dinner  too.      Imagine  such  a  piece  acted  night 
after  night  before  crowded  houses  in  Dryden's  own  theatre, 
the  part  of  Bayes  by  the  popular  Lacy,  dressed  to  look  as 
like  Dryden  as  possible,  and  mimicking  his  voice,  gait,  and 
manner,  the  better  to  set  off  the  hesitations  and  confusions  of 
speech,  and  the  interjections  "  faith,"  "  i'  gad,"   "  i'  fackins," 
which  Buckingham  had  taken  care  to  transfer  from  the  real 
Dryden's  conversation  to  the  caricature  of  it  in  Bayes's  mouth. 
Imagine  also  the  studied  absurdity  of  the  burlesque  in  the 


614         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

imaginary  heroic  play,  the  ludicrously  impossible  situations, 
the  utterly  inexplicable  plot,  the  snatches  of  extravagant  simile 
and  bombastic  rhyme,  the  actual  parodies  of  passages  from 
the  latest  and  best  known  of  Dryden's  rhymed  dramas,  the 
conversion  of  his  ranting  hero  Almanzor  into  a  grotesque 
Drawcansir,  and  the  echoes  of  his  manner  of  rhyming,  even 
to  his  trick  or  device  of  the  occasional  sonorous  triplet.  The 
two  Kings  of  Brentford,  having  descended  in  a  cloud,  and 
seated  themselves  on  the  throne  together,  are  being  enter- 
tained by  a  grand  dance  in  front  of  them  before  they  proceed 
to  serious  counsel  on  state-affairs,  when  an  alarm  sounds,  and 
enter  two  heralds  : — 

"  1st  King.  What  saucy  groom  molests  our  privacies  1 
1st  Herald.  The  Army's  at  the  door,  and,  in  disguise, 
Desires  a  word  with  both  your  Majesties : 
2nd  Herald.  Having  from  Knightsbridge  hither  marched  by 

stealth. 
2nd  King.  Bid  'em  attend  a  while  and  drink  our  health. 
1st  King.  Here,  take  five  guineas  for  those  warlike  men. 
2nd  King.  And  here 's  five  more  :    that  makes  the  sum  just 

ten. 
1st  Herald.    We  have  not    seen   so  much  the   Lord  knows 

when." 

Buckingham's  farce  was  a  very  clever  and  opportune  piece 
of  satire.  It  was  caricature  throughout,  but  an  excellent 
specimen  of  that  style  of  art ;  and,  though  we  naturally 
condemn  it  now  as  irreverent  to  Dryden,  yet,  let  any  one  put 
himself  back  to  the  proper  moment  by  reading  one  of  those 
heroic  plays  of  Dryden  which  it  satirized,  and  it  will  be  a 
very  pompous  reverence  indeed  for  the  name  of  Dryden  that 
will  prevent  the  acknowledgment  that  Buckingham's  farce 
deserved  the  applauses  which  it  received,  and  was,  for  its  date, 
a  sound  and  successful  operation  in  literary  surgery.  He  and 
many  more  were  surfeited  with  the  rhyming  heroics  of  the 
Restoration  Drama,  and,  if  nothing  better  was  to  offer  itself 
in  the  guise  of  serious  or  ideal  poetry,  were  entitled  at  least 
to  the  moderate  wish  expressed  in  the  epilogue  to  The 
Rehearsal : — 


NON-DRAMATIC    LITERATURE    FROM    1667    TO    1674.     615 

"  Wherefore,  for  ours  and  for  the  kingdom's  peace, 
May  this  prodigious  way  of  writing  cease. 
Let's  have,  at  least  once  in  our  lives,  a  time 
When  we  may  hear  some  reason,  not  all  rhyme. 
We  have  this  ten  years  felt  its  influence : 
Pray  let  this  prove  a  year  of  prose  and  sense  V 

Dryden  could  not  yield  at  once.  In  his  essay  Of  Heroic 
Plays,  published  in  1672,  he  defended  that  species  of  drama 
and  his  own  exertions  in  it  as  well  as  he  could,  though 
without  a  single  word  of  reference  to  Buckingham's  attack. 
"  Whether  heroic  verse  ought  to  be  admitted  into  serious 
"  plays  is  not  now  to  be  disputed,"  he  said ;  "  it  is  already 
"  in  possession  of  the  stage,  and  I  dare  confidently  affirm  that 
"  very  few  tragedies  in  this  age  shall  be  received  without  it." 
This  opinion  was  never  formally  retracted.  One  can  see, 
however,  that  The  Rehearsal  and  the  other  attacks  of  the  first 
four  years  of  his  laureateship  had  shaken  his  confidence  in  his 
favourite  practice  ;  and  there  is  evidence,  moreover,  that  about 
the  year  1674  he  was  becoming  tired  of  the  Drama  altogether, 
and  thinking  of  some  new  employment  for  his  talents.  Such 
new  employment,  plenty  of  money  being  one  of  the  conditions, 
was  not  easily  to  be  found,  and  Dryden  was  to  go  on  writing 
plays  almost  to  his  life's  end,  though  only  one  more  was  to 
be  in  rhyme.  Not  till  seven  years  beyond  our  present  date 
did  he  strike  out  those  new  paths  in  rhyming  verse  his  suc- 
cesses in  which  were  to  count  for  so  much  more  with  posterity 
than  all  his  successes  as  a  dramatist.  We  are  dealing  with 
Dryden,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  at  a  time  when  the  extent 
and  variety  of  his  faculties  were  not  half  revealed  and  when 
it  was  still  unknown  to  Buckingham  and  his  other  critics  how 
terribly  he  could  revenge  himself. 

Apart  from  the  Drama,  what  was  the  condition  of  English 
literature  in  the  seven  years  from  1667  to  1674?  Here 
again,  as  for  the  preceding  seven  years  of  the  literature  of  the 
Restoration,  the  Stationers'  Registers  tell  but  a  sorry  tale.    In 

1  Scott's  Life  of  Dryden  ;  Preface  to  of  Dramatic  Poesy;    Arber's  excellent 

the  Duke  of  Lerma  in  the  Dramatic  Reprint   of  the   first    edition    ol    Tlw 

Works   of  Sir   Robert   Howard   (edit.  Rehearsal. 
1722)  ;  Dryden's  Defence  of  his  Essay 


616  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY    OF   HIS  TIME. 

no  year,  from  1668  to  1674  inclusively,  does  the  number  of 
registered  book-transactions  rise  higher  than  to  between  eighty 
and  ninety;  and,  when  it  is  remembered  that  a  proportion  of 
those  registrations  were  of  plays,  the  official  newspapers  in 
batches  every  three  months  or  so,  or  mere  transfers  of  old 
copyrights  from  one  bookseller  to  another,  it  will  be  inferred 
how  meagre  is  the  show  of  original  book-production  out  of  the 
department  of  the  acted  drama.  The  Censorship  and  the  Press 
Acts  of  Charles  being  still  strictly  in  force,  we  cannot  suppose 
any  very  great  amount  of  authorship  to  have  escaped  unlicensed 
and  unregistered.  Roger  L'Estrange  was  still  the  chief  licencer, 
and  almost  all  the  plays  and  other  books  of  light  literature 
through  the  seven  years  are  registered  under  his  permission. 
Lord  Arlington  or  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  officiated  sometimes, 
but  the  duty  of  licensing  heavier  books  was  distributed  among 
several  clergymen,  among  whom  the  Mr.  Thomas  Tomkyns 
who  had  licensed  Paradise  Lost  was  still  one,  and  Mr. 
Samuel  Parker  was  another.  They  had  very  little  to  do.  So 
far  as  the  registers  show,  we  should  know  little  more  than 
that  Baxter,  Owen,  Cudworth,  Stillingfleet,  Tillotson,  Henry 
Stubbe,  Robert  Boyle,  Izaak  Walton,  and  one  or  two  more  of 
the  prose-authors  of  our  previous  Restoration  list,  were  still  in 
the  land  of  the  living ;  and  in  the  whole  series  of  individual 
registrations  of  new  books  of  a  poetical  kind  through  the 
seven  years,  if  we  deduct  those  of  the  successive  plays  of 
Dryden,  Orrery,  the  Howards,  Shadwell,  and  the  rest,  there 
is  positively  only  one  of  real  interest  now  in  English  literary 
history.  It  is  the  registration  of  Milton's  Paradise  Regained 
and  Samson  Agonistes  together  by  John  Starkey  on  the  10th 
of  September  1670  \ 

The  registers,  of  course,  even  if  they  included  all  that  was 
actually  published  in  London  through  the  seven  years  (which 
they  certainly  do  not),  cannot  be  taken  as  fully  representing 
the  literary  activity  of  England  through  those  years.  Much 
was  in  preparation  that  was  to  be  published  afterwards. 
Bunyan,  for  example,  had  brought  his  Pilgrim 's  Progress  out  of 

1  My  notes  from  the  Kegisters  from  Aug.  1667  to  the  end  of  1674. 


BUTLER   IN   NEGLECT.  617 

prison  with  him,  finished,  or  all  hut  finished,  and  to  he  added 
in  due  time  to  his  Holy  City  and  other  writings  already 
in  print.  Hohbes,  advancing-  from  his  eightieth  year  to  his 
ninetieth,  and  with  bis  Opera  Phihsophica  Omnia  lying 
behind  him  safe  in  an  Amsterdam  edition,  was  writing  or 
recasting  his  Behemoth,  or  History  of  the  Civil  Wars,  and 
hammering  out  his  marvellous  translation  of  the  whole  of 
Homer.  Clarendon's  great  history  was  completing  itself  on 
paper  abroad ;  at  home  Barrow,  Cudworth,  Howe,  Henry 
More,  South,  Stillingfleet,  Tillotson,  and  others  of  the  specu- 
lative or  practical  theologians  known  before  the  Restoration 
or  immediately  afterwards,  had  by  no  means  ceased  their 
labours ;  and,  among  their  versifying  contemporaries  who 
were  versifying  still,  though  not  for  the  stage  or  for  open 
publication  at  the  moment,  one  is  bound  to  remember  Waller, 
Marvell,  and  Butler.  Of  Waller  we  have  seen  enough  ;  we 
shall  hear  of  Marvell  again ;  but  poor  Butler  cannot  be  dis- 
missed here  without  a  parting  glance. 

They  had  never  thought  of  making  Butler  poet-laureate  in 
succession  to  Davenant.  They  had  accepted  his  two  parts  of 
Hudibras  in  1662-4,  and  had  laughed  over  them  and  con- 
tinued to  carry  them  about  and  quote  them  ;  but  they  had 
done  nothing  for  the  author  whatever,  unless  it  could  be 
counted  something  that  Clarendon,  when  forming  his  great 
collection  of  national  portraits  for  the  decoration  of  his 
Piccadilly  mansion,  had  taken  care  to  include  Butler's,  and 
had  given  it  a  specially  conspicuous  place  among  those  in  his 
dining-room.  Through  the  interval,  though  there  are  traces 
now  and  then  of  Butler  at  dinner  tables  where  he  could  be 
seen  by  Pepys,  or  in  momentary  connexion  with  Buckingham 
and  other  aristocratic  patrons,  one  has  to  fancy  him  walking 
more  and  more  by  himself  in  the  old  streets  about  Covent 
Garden,  near  the  churchyard  where  one  can  now  see  his 
grave,  and  growing  more  and  more  crabbed  and  cynical  from 
increasing  age  and  poverty  and  the  sense  of  undeserved 
neglect.  He  had  still  his  unfinished  Hudibras  in  hand  to 
occupy  him  when  he  cared  to  take  up  the  pen,  and  a  third 
part  of  the  burlesque  was   to    appear   before  he  died  ;    but 


618  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

his  chief  pleasure  now  seems  to  have  been  in  scribbling1  those 
miscellaneous  scraps  in  prose  and  verse,  entitled  Thoughts, 
Satires,  Characters,  and  the  like,  in  which  he  vented  his  ill 
humour  on  persons  and  things  indiscriminately,  and  which 
he  was  to  leave  among  his  papers  to  be  printed  posthumously 
if  any  one  should  choose.     Here  is  one  of  them  : — 

"  Dame  Fortune,  some  men's  tutelar, 
Takes  charge  of  them  without  their  care ; 
Does  all  their  drudgery  and  work, 
Like  fairies,  for  them  in  the  dark  ; 
Conducts  them  blindfold,  and  advances 
The  naturals  by  blinder  chances  : 
While  others  by  desert  or  wit 
Could  never  make  the  matter  hit, 
But  still,  the  better  they  deserve, 
Are  but  the  abler  thought  to  starve." 

Among  the  special  objects  of  his  satire  in  those  witty  scraps 
are  the  Royal  Society,  Boyle  and  Dr.  Charlton  as  two  of  its 
Fellows,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  Dryden's  Rhyming  Heroics, 
and  one  of  the  poems  of  the  Honourable  Edward  Howard  ;  but 
other  celebrities  are  snarled  at,  and  there  is  hardly  a  good  word 
for  anybody.  What  one  principally  observes,  however,  is  the 
movement  of  Butler's  mind  in  his  later  days  out  of  his  former 
Hudibrastic  mood  of  mere  anti-Puritanism  into  a  mood  of 
general  pessimism,  brought  on  by  the  contemplation  of  all 
he  saw  around  him  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second.  He 
still  growls  at  the  Fanatics,  the  Anabaptists,  the  Quakers, 
Nonconformists  of  all  sorts  ;  but  he  despairs  of  human  nature 
under  all  forms  of  Church  alike,  and  he  would  lay  the  lash 
impartially  on  surviving  Puritan  hypocrites  and  on  Charles 
and  his  courtiers  : — 

"  Our  universal  inclination 
Tends  to  the  worst  of  our  creation, 
As  if  the  stars  conspired  to  imprint 
In  our  whole  species,  by  instinct, 
A  fatal  brand  and  signature 
Of  nothing  else  but  the  impure." 

So  in  a  piece  entitled  "  Satyr  upon  the  weakness  and  misery 
of  Man " ;  and  another,  entitled  "  Satyr  upon  the  licentious 
age  of  Charles  the  Second,"  begins  : — 


INFANT    WHIGGISM.  619 

"  'Tis  a  strange  age  we've  lived  in  and  a  lewd 
As  e'er  the  sun  in  all  his  travels  viewed  V 

Our  date  of  1674  is  but  half  way  through  that  lewd  age. 
Could  any  other  spirits  be  then  descried,  "  standing-  apart 
upon  the  forehead  of  the  age  to  come/'  as  Keats  expresses  it, 
and  could  "  any  hum  of  mighty  workings  "  be  heard  among- 
them  from  which  a  nobler  future  could  be  anticipated  ?  Isaac 
Newton,  now  in  his  thirty-second  year,  and  for  some  time 
Lucasian  professor  of  Mathematics  at  Cambridge,  had  re- 
cently been  elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  ;  but, 
unless  what  he  had  already  thought  out  or  was  carrying  as 
great  conjecture  in  his  mind  is  to  be  taken  into  the  account, 
it  would  be  difficult  to  detect  anything  in  the  English  in- 
tellect about  the  year  1674,  or  indeed  for  another  genera- 
tion or  two,  that  could  be  described  as  "  mighty  workings  " 
of  any  kind  or  in  any  direction.  Locke,  indeed,  now  forty- 
two  years  of  age,  and  the  client,  friend,  and  admirer  of 
Shaftesbury,  was  helping  that  displaced  statesman  in  the 
formation  of  the  Whig  theory  of  politics,  while  beginning 
his  own  more  general  investigations  towards  a  new  English 
Philosophy  that  should  be  different  from  that  of  Hobbes  ; 
and  among  other  persons,  older  and  younger,  who  were,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  grouping  themselves  into  what  was 
to  be  known  as  the  Whig  party,  one  cannot  but  mark  the 
liberal  Gilbert  Burnet.  He  had  just  resigned  his  Glasgow 
professorship  of  Divinity  to  settle  in  London  at  the  age  of 
thirty,  and  he  had  been  appointed  preacher  at  the  Rolls 
Chapel.  Though  the  names  Whig  and  Tory  did  not  come  into 
use  till  1679,  Whiggism,  or  the  Whig  philosophy  of  politics, 
was  a  pretty  definite  phenomenon  in  the  English  mind  before 
the  death  of  Milton.  But,  though  a  very  interesting  and 
important  phenomenon,  it  was  hardly  "a  hum  of  mighty 
workings  "  in  compai'ison  with  those  profounder  agitations 
of  the  English  body-politic  and  soul-politic  that  were  within 
recent  recollection.     English  Whiggism   was  little  else  than 

1  Letter  of  Evelyn  to  Pepys  printed  Butler,  with  Cunningham's  notes ;  But- 
in  Appendix  to  Evelyn's  Diary,  p.  695  ler's  Genuine  Remains  in  Verse  and 
of  edit,  of   1870  ;    Johnson's    Life    of       Prose,  edited  by  Thyer  in  1759. 


620  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

English  Puritanism  and  Republicanism  strained  and  perco- 
lated painfully  and  secretly  through  the  intervening  medium 
of  so  many  years  of  the  restored  Stuart  misgovernment. 
Whatever  were  to  be  its  virtues,  as  far  as  to  1688  or  beyond, 
it  was  but  the  reappearance  of  the  strong  original  article  in 
a  state  of  extremely  mild  dilution  and  refinement.  One 
migrht  call  it  Puritanism  and  water. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    LAST    SEVEN    YEAES    OF    MILTON'S    EIFE. 

No  English  book  has  had  a  more  curious  trade-history  than 
the  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost.  It  appeared,  as  we  saw,  in 
or  shortly  after  August  1667,  and  original  copies  with  the 
date  1667  exist  in  our  libraries,  and  fetch  high  prices  at 
book-sales1.  But  there  are  copies  also  bearing  the  date  1668 
on  the  title-page,  and  other  copies  bearing  the  date  1669  ; 
and  these,  no  less  than  the  copies  of  1667,  belong  indubitably 
to  the  first  edition,  and  are  valued  accordingly.  Nor  is  this 
all.  If  all  the  extant  copies  of  the  first  edition  were  collected 
and  compared  with  each  other,  they  would  be  found  to  differ 
not  only  in  the  dating  of  their  title-pages  as  above,  but  also 
in  the  .form  and  typography  of  their  title-pages  and  in  other 
particulars.  Perhaps  no  two  copies  are  precisely  alike  in  all 
respects.  There  are  minute  differences  in  the  text,  such  as  a 
with  in  some  copies  where  others  give  an  in,  a  misnumbering 
of  the  lines  on  the  margin  in  some  copies  where  others  give 
the  correct  numbering,  a  comma  in  some  copies  where  others 
have  no  comma.  In  this  respect,  however,  there  is  nothing 
peculiar.  Many  of  our  early  printed  books  present  such 
slight  variations  of  text  in  copies  of  one  and  the  same  edition, 
arising  from  the  fact  that,  in  the  days  of  leisurely  hand- 
printing, corrections  might  be  made  in  a  sheet  while  it  was  at 
press,  of  which   corrections  only  the  remaining  part  of  the 

1  Avery  exact  facsimile  reproduction       with  the  date  1667,  has  been  published 
of  the  First  Edition  of  Paradise  Lost,       by  Mr.  Elliot  Stock  of  Paternoster  Row. 


622  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HI8TOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

impression  of  that  sheet  would  have  the  benefit.  The  varia- 
tions of  this  kind  in  the  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  are  far 
less  numerous  than  in  some  other  old  books,  and  indeed  very 
few  and  altogether  insignificant.  Of  much  more  consequence 
are  the  variations  in  the  form  of  the  title-page  and  in  the 
leafing  of  the  book  before  the  text  of  the  poem.  At  least 
nine  different  forms  of  title-page  have  been  discovered  in 
original  copies  of  the  first  edition  ;  and  these  variations  of 
title-paging  are  complicated  by  the  fact  that  some  copies 
have  fourteen  pages  of  preliminary  prose-matter  between  the 
title-page  and  the  text  of  the  poem,  while  other  copies  have 
nothing  of  the  sort.  The  explanation  of  all  this  belongs  to 
Milton's  biography. 

The  explanation,  in  brief,  is  that,  though  the  1300  or  1500 
copies  constituting  the  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  were  all 
printed  off  in  or  about  August  1667,  they  were  not  all  then 
bound  and  issued  to  the  public,  but  were  issued  in  successive 
instalments  or  bindings,  to  meet  the  gradual  demand  at  the 
bookshops.  There  were  at  least  nine  successive  bindings  and 
issues  of  copies  before  the  edition  was  exhausted,  two  of  them 
in  1667,  four  of  them  in  1668,  and  three  of  them  in  1669. 
The  printer  and  publisher  Samuel  Simmons  had  the  manage- 
ment of  this  process  of  dealing  out  copies  of  the  book  gradually, 
but  Milton's  hand  was  also  in  it. 

We  may  repeat  here  the  title-page  of  the  first  binding  sent 
out : — "  Paradise  lost.  A  Poem  written  in  Ten  Books  By  John 
"  Milton.  Licensed  and  Entred  according  to  Order.  London 
"  Printed,  and  are  to  be  sold  by  Peter  Parker  under  Creed  Church 
"  neer  Aldgate ;  And  by  Robert  Boulter  at  the  Turks  Head  in 
"  Bishopsgate-street ;  And  Matthias  Walker  under  St.  Bunstons 
"  Church  in  Fleet-street,  1667."  The  moderate  number  of 
copies  sent  out  with  this  title-page  seem  to  have  been  sold 
before  the  end  of  1667 ;  for  there  was  a  second  binding  that 
year.  For  this  second  binding  Simmons  printed  a  new  title- 
page,  the  wording  exactly  the  same  as  before,  but  the  author's 
name  in  a  smaller  size  of  type.  Thus  before  the  end  of  1667 
there  were  copies  out  with  two  slightly  differing  forms  of 
title-page.     The  sale  so  far  seems  to  have  been  too  slow  to 


FIRST   EDITION  OF   PARADISE   LOST.  623 

satisfy  Simmons,  and  he  had  begun  to  fancy  that  it  was  checked 
.  to  some  extent  by  the  appearance  of  the  author's  name  in  all 
the  copies  yet  sent  out.  In  some  of  these  copies  it  was  in 
smaller  type  than  in  others ;  but,  whether  in  smaller  type  or 
in  larger,  what  was  to  be  expected  but  that  many  people, 
seeing  the  name  John  Milton  on  the  title-page,  would  throw 
down  the  book  with  an  exclamation  of  disgust  ?  To  suit 
such  weak-minded  brethren,  it  seems  to  have  occurred  to 
Simmons  to  issue  copies  without  the  author's  name  in  full, 
but  with  his  initials  only.  The  book  had  been  entered  in  the 
Stationers'  Registers  as  merely  "  by  J.  M.  "  ;  and  "  J.  M.  " 
might  be  any  respectable  person.  Accordingly,  early  in 
1668,  a  third  binding  of  copies  was  issued,  most  probably 
with  Milton's  sanction,  bearing  the  title,  "  Paradise  lost. 
"  A  Poem  in  Ten  Books.  The  Author  J.  M.  Licensed  and 
"  Entred  according  to  Order.  London  Printed,  and  are  to 
"be  sold  by  Peter  Parker  under  Creed  Church  neer  Aid  gate ; 
"  And  by  Robert  Boulter  at  the  Turks  Head  in  Bishopsgate- 
"  street ;  And  Matthias  Walker  under  St.  Bunstons  Church  in 
"  Fleet-street,  1668."  This  was  followed  in  the  same  year  by 
a  fourth  binding,  with  a  title-page  identical  in  the  wording, 
but  with  variations  in  the  size  of  the  type.  To  print  a  new 
title-page  for  every  new  binding  was  a  convenient  plan,  for 
it  enabled  the  book  to  be  dated  afresh  so  as  to  keep  it  always 
one  of  the  current  year.  And  so,  by  about  the  middle  of 
1668,  there  had  been  sent  out  four  bindings  of  Paradise  Lost, 
giving  customers  the  option  of  copies  with  the  author's  name 
in  full,  if  they  would  have  it,  or  only  his  initials,  if  these 
were  thought  more  innocent. 

Still  the  sale  seemed  to  lag,  and  to  need  what  is  now  known 
in  the  trade  as  a  "  push."  The  push  could  not  be  given,  of 
course,  in  the  modern  fashion  of  a  repeated  burst  of  ad- 
vertising. The  machinery  of  advertisement  was  then  scanty, 
and  was  less  used  for  books  than  for  missing  dogs,  while  the 
machinery  of  book-paragraphing  and  reviewing  had  not  been 
invented.  The  push  was  given  in  the  simpler  form  of  an 
adaptation  of  the  look  of  the  book  to  the  habits  of  purchasers 
and  readers. — Simmons  had  ascertained  by  this  time  that  it 


624  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

was  not  the  author's  name  that  impeded  the  sale  so  much 
as  the  want  of  such  introductory  matter  as  might  indicate 
the  nature  of  the  contents.  The  mere  title  Paradise  Lost 
conveyed  but  vague  ideas.  It  suggested  perhaps  the  story  of 
Adam  and  Eve,  and  so  corresponded  with  some  of  the  sweeter 
and  more  idyllic  parts  of  the  poem  ;  but  it  gave  no  intimation 
that  the  poem  contained  also  the  pre-mundane  history  of 
Satan,  the  angelic  wars  in  heaven,  the  expulsion  thence  of 
the  rebel  angels,  their  incarceration  in  the  abyss  of  hell,  the 
six  days'  creation  of  the  universe  of  man  between  the  fallen 
angels  and  their  lost  heaven,  their  debates  in  hell  for  revenge 
and  recovery,  and  Satan's  voyage  of  invasion  for  them 
upwards  into  the  new  universe,  all  inwrought  coherently  into 
one  epic  and  leading  to  its  particular  catastrophe  on  earth. 
Of  these  grandeurs  there  was  no  promise  in  the  title.  Besides, 
even  those  who  became  aware  of  the  grandeurs  by  actually 
reading  the  poem,  or  parts  of  it,  could  hardly  at  once  grasp 
its  plan,  and  had  no  clue  afterwards  but  that  of  memory  to 
the  succession  of  the  incidents.  So  much  having  been 
gathered  by  Simmons,  and  having  been  reported  by  him  to 
Milton,  the  remedy  was  easy.  Milton  prepared  what  he  called 
"  The  Argument"  consisting  of  ten  sections  of  prose-headings, 
giving  a  summary  of  the  contents  of  the  poem,  book  by  book, 
for  all  the  ten  books.  That  would  show  any  one  who  took 
up  the  poem  casually  what  it  was  about,  and  it  would  serve 
as  an  index  to  readers  who  wanted  means  of  reference1.  He 
was  the  more  willing"  to  take  this  trouble  because  he  had  the 


'& 


3  It  seems  to  me  possible  that  Milton  like  a  defence  of  his  departure  from  the 

took  advantage  of  the  Prose  Argument  ordinary  or  orthodox  conception  of  his 

to  furnish  explanations  of  the  plan  of  time    as   to    the    place    of   hell.      His 

the  poem  at  one  or  two  points  where  he  readers  may  have  expected  to  find  it 

had  already  heard  that  readers  had  been  in  "  the  centre,"  i.e.  within  the  earth's 

in  difficulty.     Thus,  in  the   Argument  bowels,  as  in  Dante's  poem,  whereas  he 

to  Book  I,  "  the  Poem,"  he  says,  having  has  made  it  wholly  extra-mundane.     If 

assumed  the  rebellion  of  the  Angels  in  reasons  are  wanted,  he  offers  two.     In 

heaven  and  their   expulsion   as  events  the  first  place,  did  not  the  expulsion  of 

already  passed, "  hastens  into  the  midst  the   rebel  angels  into  hell  precede  the 

"  of  things,  presenting  Satan,  with  his  existence  of  the  earth  and  the  material 

"Angels,   now   fallen    into    Hell, — de-  universe  to  which  it  belongs?    In  the 

"  scribed  here  not   in   the    centre  (for  second  place,  even  if  the  earth  had  been 

"  heaven  and  earth  may  be  supposed  as  in  existence,   it  was   not   accursed  till 

"  not  yet  made,   certainly  not  yet  ac-  after  the  fall  of  man,  and  how  could  the 

"  cursed),  but  in  a  place  of  utter  dark-  ball,  while  innocent,  have  contained  a 

"  ness,  fitliest  called  Chaos."    This  looks  hell  ? 


FIKST    EDITION   OF   PARADISE  LOST.  625 

opportunity  at  the  same  time  of  noticing'  another  objection  to 
the  poem,  which  had  interested  himself  more  than  Simmons. 
A  long  epic  in  blank  verse,  put  forth  at  the  very  time  when 
the  great  controversy  among-  the  critics  was  whether  blank 
verse  was  not  too  low  for  even  the  serious  drama,  and  when 
even  those  who  contended  for  the  sufficiency  of  blank  verse 
for  the  serious  drama  agreed  that  it  was  too  mean  for  any 
form    of  non-dramatic  poetry,   had  been   a  very  daring*  ex- 
periment indeed.     Accordingly,  so  far  as  there  had  been  talk 
about    the   poem    hitherto    in   the    critical   world,    the    chief 
stumbling-block    to    its   reception    had    been    the    question 
whether  it  could  be  called  strictly  a  poem  at  all,  inasmuch  as 
it  did  not  rhyme.     Though  the  objection  can  have  been  no 
surprise  to  Milton,  it  may  have  reached  him  so  annoyingl}r 
from  some  quarters  after  the  first  appearance  of  the  poem  as 
to  prompt  him  now  to  a  few  words  of  remark.     While  hand- 
ing" to  Simmons,  therefore,  the  prose  "  Argument "  to  be  in- 
serted in  future  issues  of  copies,   he   handed  him  also  that 
little  prefatory  paragraph,  entitled  "  The  Verse"  which  now 
appears  in  every  good  edition  of  the  poem.     When  set  up  in 
type,  the  Argument  and  this  little  paragraph  on  the  Verse, 
together  with  a  list  of  a  few  errata  that  had  been  discovered, 
made  fourteen  pages  of  absolutely  new  matter,  to  be  inserted 
in  future  issues  between  the  title-page  and  the  text.    Simmons 
did  not  grudge  the  expense  of  printing  as  man}r  copies  of  the 
new  fourteen  pages  as  were  needed  for  the  copies  of  the  poem 
still  on  hand  ;  and,  when  he  sent  out  his  fifth  binding  of  the 
poem   in  1668,  it  was  thicker   by  these   additional  fourteen 
pages  than   any  of  the  previous  bindings,   and  swelled  the 
small  quarto  volume  from  a  total  of  34.2  pages  to  a  total  of 
356.     The  title-page   of  this  fifth   binding  marks   it  as  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  book  in  yet  other  respects.     It 
runs    thus : — "  Paradise   lost.     A  Poem    in  Ten  Books.     The 
Author  John  Milton.     London,  Printed  by  S.  Simmons,  and  to 
be   sold   by  S.  Thomson   at    the   Bishops-Head  in  Buck-Lane, 
H.  Mortlock  at  the  While  Hart  in  Westminster  Hall,  M.  Walker 
under  St.  Bunstons   Church  in  Fleet- si  net,  and  R.  Boulter  at 
the  Turks-Head  in  Bishopsgate-street,  1668."     Here  we  have 
vol.  vi.  s  s 


626  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

several  novelties.  Not  only  is  Milton's  name  restored  in  full 
to  the  title-page,  as  if  there  were  no  longer  any  idea  that  it 
did  harm ;  but  Simmons  for  the  first  time  ventures  to  put  his 
own  name  in  the  title-page,  acknowledging  himself  to  the 
general  public  as  the  printer  and  publisher  of  the  book.  He 
had  already  done  so,  necessarily,  in  his  registration  of  the 
book  at  Stationers'  Hall,  but  had  kept  back  his  name  hitherto 
in  all  the  published  copies.  Moreover,  it  seems  to  have  been 
part  of  his  "  push  "  to  change  some  of  his  bookselling  agents 
and  to  increase  their  number.  One  of  the  three  former  agents, 
"  Peter  Parker  under  Creed  Church  near  Aldgate,"  is  employed 
no  longer,  and  with  the  remaining  two,  Walker  and  Boulter, 
there  are  conjoined  two  new  agents  in  Thomson  and  Mortlock. 
It  is  worth  observing  also  that  the  four  were  well  distributed 
through  the  town,  Boulter's  shop  being  as  far  east  as  Bishops- 
gate  Street,  Thomson's  near  Smithfield,  Walker's  as  far  west 
as  Fleet  Street,  and  Mortlock's  actually  in  Westminster  Hall 
itself,  one  of  the  book-stalls  allowed  there  for  the  convenience 
of  the  lawyers,  and  members  of  Parliament,  and  all  the  quality 
of  the  West  End.  But  there  is  yet  another  curious  circum- 
stance about  this  fifth  binding  of  Paradise  Lost.  To  introduce 
the  fourteen  pages  of  new  matter,  Simmons,  alone  in  his 
printing  office,  had  taken  up  his  pen  and  written  this  four- 
line  advertisement :  "  The  Printer  to  the  Reader :  Courteous 
"  Reader,  There  was  no  Argument  at  first  intended  to  the 
"  Book,  but  for  the  satisfaction  of  many  that  have  desired  it, 
"  is  procured.  S.  Simmons."  This  precious  effusion  he  had  caused 
to  be  set  up  on  his  own  responsibility,  stuffing  it  in,  rather 
clumsily,  in  the  smallest  type,  at  the  very  top  of  the  first  of 
the  fourteen  pages  of  new  matter,  just  above  the  beginning  of 
"  The  Argument"  as  it  had  been  supplied  by  Milton.  Provi- 
dentially, before  the  requisite  number  of  copies  of  the  fourteen 
pages  were  wholly  printed  off,  Milton  was  able  to  stop  the 
press,  and  tell  Simmons  to  correct  his  grammar.  "  The  Printer 
"  to  the  Reader.  Courteous  Reader,  There  was  no  Argument  at 
"  first  intended  to  the  Book,  but  for  the  satisfaction  of  many 
"  that  have  desired  it,  I  have  procur'd  it,  and  withall  a  reason 
"  of  that  which  stumbled  many  others,  why  the  Poem  Rimes 


FIRST    EDITION    OF   PARADISE  LOST.  627 

"  not.  S.  Simmons : "  such  is  the  amended  advertisement 
sent  or  taken  by  Milton  to  Simmons  to  be  substituted  for  the 
ungrammatical  one.  Simmons  met  Milton  half  way.  He 
would  not,  or  at  all  events  he  did  not,  cancel  the  ungram- 
matical  form  of  advertisement  in  the  copies  of  the  fourteen 
new  pages  already  printed  off;  but  he  substituted  the  correct 
form  in  the  copies  remaining-  to  be  printed.  The  consequence 
is  that  it  is  a  matter  of  chance  whether  in  any  copy  now 
extant  of  the  fifth  binding-  of  the  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost, 
or  in  any  copy  of  any  subsequent  binding,  there  shall  be  found 
Simmons 's  incorrect  form  of  the  advertisement  or  Milton's 
amended  form.  With  only  this  difference,  all  copies  of  the 
fifth  binding-  and  of  later  bindings  contain  the  fourteen  pages 
of  preliminary  prose-matter  that  had  been  wanting  in  the 
copies  previously  issued. 

Simmons  was  very  fickle  in  his  taste  in  title-pages.  When 
he  sent  out  a  sixth  binding,  still  in  1668,  he  equipped  it  also 
with  a  title-page  set  up  expressly  for  itself.  This  differed  from 
the  last,  however,  in  nothing  essential,  but  only  in  a  little 
detail  of  ornamentation.  But  more  was  needed  for  the  last 
three  bindings,  issued  in  the  year  1669.  Not  only  was  it 
desirable  to  put  that  year  in  the  title-page,  that  the  book 
might  appear  still  in  season  ;  but  Simmons  had  become  dis- 
satisfied with  his  four  bookselling  agents,  and  had  resolved  to 
entrust  the  sale  of  the  remaining  copies  to  one  bookseller,  con- 
veniently near  his  own  printing-premises  in  Aldersgate  Street. 
Accordingly,  this  is  the  title-page  in  all  copies  of  the  seventh 
binding  : — "  Paradise  lost.  A  Poem  in  Ten  Books.  The  Author 
John  Milton.  London,  Printed  by  S.  Simmons,  and  are  to  he  sold 
by  T.  Helder,  at  the  Angel,  in  Little  Brittain,  1669."  Helder, 
who  had  received  this  binding  early  in  1669,  must  have  dis- 
posed of  it  rapidly ;  for  the  last  two  bindings  of  the  book, 
the  eighth  and  the  ninth,  seem  to  have  been  in  his  hands  before 
the  end  of  April  in  that  year.  The  title-pages  of  these  were 
exactly  the  same  in  wording  as  the  last,  but  differed  from  it 
and  from  each  other  in  small  details  of  lettering  and  pointing1. 

1    I    have   previously  discussed  this       trade-history  of  the  First   Edition   of 
curious    and   intricate    subject   of    the       Paradise   Lost   in  the   Introduction  to 

S  S  2 


628 


LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 


Before  the  end  of  April  1669  the  first  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost  had  been  exhausted.  The  proof  exists  in  the  following- 
receipt,  the  signature  to  which  was  of  course  by  proxy  : — 

"April  26,  1669. 

"  Received  then  of  Samuel  Simmons  five  pounds,  being  the 
Second  five  pounds  to  be  paid  mentioned  in  the  Covenant.  I  say 
reed,  by  me, 

"  Witness,  Edmund  Upton." 


John  Milton 


Thus,  to  April  1669,  Milton  had  received  ^10  in  all  for  his 
poem.  The  sura  was  equal  to  about  ^35  now.  Simmons,  if 
one  may  venture  on  a  calculation  on  the  subject,  had  made 
about  five  or  six  times  as  much. 

The  sale  of  an  edition  of  1300  copies  in  little  more  than 
eighteen  months  was  no  bad  commercial  success  for  such  a 
book  as  Paradise  Lost,  and  would  be  proof  in  itself  that  the 
poem  had  at  once  made  a  very  strong  impression.  Have  we 
any  more  definite  information  as  to  its  first  reception  among 
the  critics  and  judges  of  literature  ?  The  statement  on  this 
subject  professing  to  be  most  authoritative  is  Richardson's. 
It  was  published  in  1734 ;  but  Richardson's  own  memory  of 
things  and  persons  went  as  far  back  as  1680  or  1685  : — "  Sir 
"  George  Hungerford,  an  ancient  member  of  Parliament,'''  says 
Richardson,  "  told  me,  many  years  ago,  that  Sir  John  Denham 
"  came  into  the  House  one  morniug  with  a  sheet,  wet  from  the 
"  press,  in  his  hand.  '  What  have  you  there,  Sir  John  ? ' 
"'Part  of  the  noblest  poem  that  ever  was  wrote  in  any 
"  '  language  or  in  any  age.'  This  was  Paradise  Lost.  How- 
"  ever,  'tis  certain  the  book  was  unknown  till  about  two  years 
"  after,  when  the  Earl  of  Dorset  [not  then  Earl  of  Dorset,  but 
"  only  Lord  Buckhurst]  produced  it.  Dr.  Tancred  Robinson 
"  has  given  permission  to  use  his  name  ;  and  what  I  am  going 


the  Poem  in  the  Cambridge  Edition  of 
Milton's  Poetical  Works,  and  also  in  an 
Introduction  to  Mr.  Elliot  Stock's  Fac- 
simile Reprint  of  the  First  Edition  ; 
and  I  have  here,  while  studying  the 
subject  afresh,  taken  a  phrase  or  two 
from  those  Introductions.  The  study 
has  been  from  my  own  inspection  of  all 
copies  of  the  First  Edition  within  my 
reach,  with  help  from  Bolin's  Lowndes 


(Art.  Milton)  and  Mr.  Leigh  Sotheby's 
Milton  "  Kamblings  "  (pp.  80—81). 

1  This  receipt  was  given,  in  facsimile, 
in  the  Gentleman  s  Magazine  for  July 
1822,  and  there  is  a  copy  of  the  fac- 
simile in  Mr.  Leigh  Sotheby's  "Eam- 
bliugs."  I  have  sketched  the  history 
of  the  document  in  a  note  to  the  Intro- 
duction to  Paradise  Lost  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Milton  (I.  pp.  12—13). 


r\ 


RECEPTION   OF   PABADISE  LOST.  629 

"  to  relate  he  had  from  Fleet  Shephard,  at  the  Grecian 
"  coffee-house,  and  who  often  told  the  story.  My  Lord  was  in 
"  Little  Britain,  beating-  about  for  books  to  his  taste.  There 
"  was  Paradise  Lost.  He  was  surprised  with  some  passages  he 
"  struck  upon  dipping  here  and  there,  and  bought  it.  The 
"  bookseller  begged  him  to  speak  in  its  favour  if  he  liked  it, 
"  for  that  it  lay  on  his  hands  as  waste  paper  (Jesus  !).  Shep- 
"  hard  was  present.  My  Lord  took  it  home,  read  it,  and  sent 
"  it  to  Dryden,  who  in  a  short  time  returned  it.  c  This  man,' 
"  says  Dryden,  '  cuts  us  all  out,  and  the  ancients  too  V  ' 

This  passage,  very  creditable  to  Richardson's  desire  to  be  au- 
thentic, breaks  down  at  several  points  on  investigation,  though 
perhaps  hardly  to  the  extent  of  Malone's  commentary  upon  it. 
Sir  John  Denham,  Malone  points  out,  never  was  a  member  of 
Parliament ;  and,  moreover,  "  during  a  great  part  of  the  year 
1667,"  when  Paradise  Lost  was  passing  through  the  press,  the 
unfortunate  knight  was  in  a  fit  of  insanity,  and  removed  from 
public  view.  In  this  last  observation  Malone  is  hypercritical ; 
for  Denham  had  recovered  so  far  as  to  be  back  in  society  before 
August  1667,  and  to  publish  in  that  month  his  lines  on  the 
death  of  Cowley.  He  was  therefore  quite  able  to  form  a 
judgment  on  Paradise  Lost  in  the  very  month  of  its  appear- 
ance, had  it  come  then  in  his  way.  But,  for  the  rest,  one 
must  agree  with  Malone,  and  suppose  that  there  was  some 
confusion  of  memory  on  the  part  of  the  old  Parliament  man, 
Sir  George  Hungerford,  when  he  told  the  story  of  Denham  to 
Richardson,  or  on  Richardson's  part  in  recollecting  what  Sir 
George  had  said.  Even  if  we  waive  the  question  of  the  place 
where  Denham  came  in  with  the  sheet  of  proof  in  his  hands 
and  made  his  enthusiastic  remark,  how  can  we  account  for  his 
being  before  all  the  rest  of  the  world  in  having  access  privately 
to  the  proof-sheets  of  a  forthcoming  book  by  such  a  political 
recluse  as  Milton  ?  And  how  was  his  remark  so  ineffective,  the 
celebrated  Sir  John  Denham  though  he  was,  that  the  book 
received  no  benefit  from  his  vast  admiration  and  its  merits 
had  to  be  re-discovered  and  re-proclaimed  two  years  afterwards  ? 

i  Richardson's  Life  of  Milton,  prefixed  to  Notes  on  Paradise  Lost  (1734),  pp. 
cxix — cxx. 


630  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

In  short,  the  first  part  of  the  tradition  given  by  Richardson 
will  not  cohere  with  the  second  part1. 

This  second  part  of  the  tradition  deserves  more  attention. 
Richardson's  authority  for  it,  he  says,  was  Dr.  Tancred  Ro- 
binson. In  or  about  1734,  this  gentleman,  an  old  London 
physician  of  eminence,  authorized  Richardson  to  use  his  name 
in  authentication  of  a  story  he  had  heard  "  Fleet  Shephard  " 
relate  more  than  once  at  the  Grecian  coffee-house,  i.  e.  at 
a  coffee-house  in  Devereux  Court,  Strand,  much  frequented 
by  wits  and  men  of  fashion  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  and  beginning  of  the  eighteenth,  and  deriv- 
ing its  name  from  its  first  proprietor,  who  had  been  a 
Greek.  We  are  thus  referred  to  "  Fleet  Shephard,"  and  the 
reference  is  very  interesting.  Fleet  Shephard,  known  in  the 
last  years  of  his  life  as  Sir  Fleetwood  Shepherd,  had  died  in 
September  1698,  and  had  been  about  thirty-two  years  of  age 
at  the  time  of  the  publication  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  then  one 
of  the  chief  wits  and  roues  at  the  court  of  Charles  the  Second. 
Anthony  Wood's  account  of  him  is  to  the  point.  Having 
come  to  London  after  the  Restoration  from  his  native  Oxford- 
shire, he  "  hanged  on  the  Court/'  says  Wood,  "  became  a 
"  debauchee  and  Atheist,  a  grand  companion  with  Charles, 
"  Lord  Buckhurst,  afterwards  Earl  of  Dorset  and  Middlesex, 
"  Henry  Savile,  and  others."  Wood  goes  on  to  relate  how  he 
became  steward  to  Nell  Gwynn,  and  one  of  Charles's  closest 
"  companions  in  private  to  make  him  merry "  through  the 
rest  of  his  reign  ;  but  our  concern  with  him  here  does  not  go 
farther  than  the  beginning  of  1669.  It  was  then,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  Simmons  the  printer  had  committed  the  sale  of  the 
last  remaining  copies  of  Paradise  Lost  to  a  single  bookseller, 
his  neighbour,  "T.  Helder,  at  the  Angel  in  Little  Brittain." 
That  shop,  therefore,  was  the  scene  of  Fleet  Shephard's  Little 
Britain  anecdote.  The  anecdote  itself  has  a  look  of  credi- 
bility. We  can  see  Lord  Buckhurst  and  his  friend  Fleet 
Shephard  together  in  Helder's  shop,  two  as  notorious  profli- 
gates as  could  have  strolled  thither  from  Westminster,  but 
Buckhurst,  as  we  know,  with  a  vein  of  genius  through  his 

1  Todd's  Life  of  Milton  (1852),  pp.  128 — 129;  where  there  is  a  quotation  from  Malone. 


EXCEPTION   OF   PABADISE  LOST.  631 

profligacy,  and  a  keen  delight  in  books.  We  can  see  Buck- 
hurst,  the  author  of  To  all  you  Ladles  now  on  land,  taking  up 
Paradise  Lost  from  Helder' s  counter  "  with  a  fa  la  la  la  la/' 
and  glancing  at  passages  here  and  there  till  his  mood  changed 
and  both  Shephard  and  Helder  were  startled  by  his  lordship's 
earnestness.  We  can  see  the  three  shillings  paid,  and  the  book 
pocketed,  and  Helder's  profound  bow  of  parting,  as  he  re- 
quested his  lordship  to  do  him  the  honour  of  mentioning  the 
book,  if  he  continued  to  like  it,  among  any  lords  and  gentle- 
men of  his  lordship's  most  noble  acquaintance.  And  to  whom 
should  Buckhurst,  the  "Eugenius"  of  Dryden's  essay,  send  the 
extraordinary  new  poem,  for  a  confirmation  of  his  own  opinion 
of  it,  but  to  the  "  Neander  "  of  that  essay,  the  master-critic  of 
the  day,  Dryden  himself?  And  what  more  like  Dryden's  ever 
ready  and  never  stinted  generosity  than  the  reply  attributed  to 
him,  "  This  man  cuts  us  all  out,  and  the  ancients  too  n? 

Difficulties  and  incongruities  do  appear  in  the  story.  How 
can  Helder  have  said  that  the  book  was  lying  on  his  hands  as 
waste  paper,  when  in  fact  a  large  part  of  the  total  impression 
of  1300  had  already  been  sold  by  other  booksellers  and  he 
had  only  the  remainder  in  his  hands  ?  This  difficulty  is  not 
insuperable.  Helder  may  have  exaggerated  a  little,  or  he  may 
have  sold  none  of  his  copies  till  Lord  Buckhurst  took  one. 
More  serious  is  the  difficulty  of  supposing  that  Dryden  had 
not  seen  the  poem  till  he  received  Lord  Buckhurst's  copy. 
This,  though  not  positively  asserted,  is  almost  necessarily  im- 
plied ;  for,  if  the  book  had  been  already  known  to  Dryden,  it 
would  not  have  remained  for  Buckhurst  to  become  acquainted 
with  it  accidentally. — On  the  whole,  we  have  to  allow  some- 
thing perhaps  for  Fleetwood  Shepherd's  habit  afterwards  of 
telling  his  story  so  as  to  make  it  out  beyond  a  doubt  that  it 
was  his  friend  Lord  Dorset,  and  no  other,  that  had  first  dis- 
covered the  greatness  of  Paradise  Lost,  he  himself  having 
chanced  to  be  with  his  lordship  at  the  very  moment  and 
remembering  all  the  particulars.  With  this  allowance,  the 
story,  I  believe,  does  admit  us  to  a  glimpse  of  the  real  facts. 
Whatever  circulation  of  copies,  by  sale  or  by  gift  from  Milton 
himself,  there  had  been  late  in  1667  and  through  1668,  it 


63.2  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HI8TOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

does  seem  to  have  been  about  the  beginning  of  1669  that  the 
extraordinary  merits  of  the  poem  began  to  be  a  matter  of  talk 
among  the  critics  and  court-wits,  and  then  chiefly  because  of 
the  boundless  praises  of  it  by  Dryden  and  Lord  Buckhurst. 
Nor  need  Sir  John  Denham  lose  altogether  the  credit  claimed 
for  him.     Though  we  must  give  up  the  myth  of  his  enthusi- 
astic  production    of  the    wet    proof-sheet    in  the    House    of 
Commons  in  1667,  we  can  suppose  that  he  too  had  seen  the 
poem  before  his  death  on  the  19th  of  March  1668-9,  and  had 
joined  in  the  praises.     When  a  book  appeared  near  the  end  of 
a  year,  it  was  quite  usual  to  date  it  by  the  coming  year  in  the 
title-page ;  and  the  seventh  binding  of  copies  of  Paradise  Lost, 
dated  1669,  may  have  been  in  Helder's  hands  as  early  as 
December  1668.     If  Buckhurst's  visit  to  Helder's  shop  was 
in  that  month  or  the  next,  Denham  may  have  seen  the  poem 
before  he  died.    Davenant  had  died  on  the  9th  of  April  1668, 
when  the  poem  had  been  out  about  seven  months  at  most ;  but 
it  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  even  he  had  gone  to  his  grave 
in  total  ignorance  of  the  addition  that  had  been  made  to  the 
Literature  of  his  Laureateship  by  his  old  friend  Milton.     We 
may   assume,  I   think,   that  Davenant  was  one  of  those  to 
whom  Milton  had  sent  presentation  copies.     There  would  be 
no  wonder  if  Dryden  was  another.     Dryden,  having  been  a 
literary  attache  to  Thurloe's  office  in  1657,  must  have  had 
some  slight  acquaintance  with   Milton  personally  from  that 
date ;   and    Milton   must  have   had    sufficient    cognisance    of 
Dry  den's  increasing  fame  since  then,  till  they  were  hailing 
him  in  1667  as  the  most  successful  of  the  Restoration  drama- 
tists and  the  author  of  Annus  Mirabilis.     Now,  as  Dryden's 
Essay  on  Dramatic  Poetry  and   Milton's    Paradise   Lost  were 
almost  simultaneous  publications  in  that  year,  it  would  be 
nothing  remarkable,  surely,  had  there  been  an  exchange  of 
presentation  copies 1. 

1  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  627—628  (FWt.-  been   notorious   since   the  year  of  the 

woodShephard) ;  and  ante,  pp.  389— 391.  Restoration.     Under  date  Oct.  23, 166S, 

Buckhurst  was  about  thirty-one  years  which  might  be  but  two  months  or  so 

of  age  at  the  date  of  his  alleged  dis-  before  his  visit  to  Little  Britain  to  "  beat 

covery  of  Paradise  Lost,  but  had  not  about  for   books   to  his  taste,"  Pepys 

then  given  up  those  courses  of  shameless  mentions  a  kind  of  repetition  by  him 

frolic  and  debauchery  for  which  he  had  and  Sedley  of  their  outrageous  indecency 


RECEPTION  OF  PARADISE   LOST.  633 


If  there  had  not  been  an  exchange  of  presentation  copies  at 
the  moment  of  publication,  most  certainly  there  had  been  an 
exchange  of  regards  by  the  two  authors  over  the  two  books 
since  they  had  been  published.     What  was  the  doctrine    of 
Dryden's   Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  ?     That  blank  verse  was 
unsuitable  for  all  high  or  serious  poetry,  even  for  the  tragic 
or  poetical  drama  for  which,  and  for  which  only,  it  had  been 
brought  into  use  by  the  Elizabethans.     What  was  the  most 
obvious  peculiarity  of  Paradise  Lost  on  the  first  glance  at  its 
pages  ?     That,  though  an  epic,  it  was  written  wholly  in  blank 
verse,  thus  not  only  asserting  by  implication  the  very  oppo- 
site of  Dryden's  doctrine  for  the  drama,  but  vindicating  the 
rights  and  powers  of  blank  verse,  nay,  its  sole  legitimate  sove- 
reignty, in  domains  from  which  Dryden  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  had  agreed  in  assuming  it  to  be  necessarily  excluded. 
Paradise  Lost,  therefore,  when    Dryden  first  read  it  or  any 
part  of  it,  must  have  come  upon  him  like  a  revelation  or  a 
thunderbolt. — It  rather  favours  Fleetwood  Shepherd's  story  of 
Dryden's  comparatively  late  introduction  to  the  poem  that  he 
makes  no  mention  of  it  in  the  course  of  his  memorable  con- 
troversy in  1668  with  his  brother-in-law  Sir  Robert  Howard 
on  the   subject  of  blank  verse  versus  rhyme.       Sir  Robert, 
though  he  had  written  rhymed  tragedy  himself,  was  not  a 
bigot  for  the  practice,  and  had  resented  some  parts  of  Dryden's 
essay  in  which  he  had  himself  been  made  to  figure  under  the 
name  of  "  Crites."     Accordingly,   in  an  introduction   to  his 
blank  verse  tragedy  of  The  Duke  of  Lerma,  published  about 
the  middle  of  1668,  he  had  made  some  rather  tart  observa- 
tions   on    Dryden's   essay    and    its    doctrine.     Dryden    had 
immediately  retorted  by  publishing  a  second  edition  of  his 
Indian  Emperor  and  prefixing  to  it  "  A  Defence  of  an  Essay 
of  Dramatic  Poesy."     This  was  in  fact  a  sequel  to  his  essay, 
reasserting  his  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of  rhyme,  though 
now  only  in  the  mild  form  of  a  personal  preference  and  belief, 

of  June  1663.  "  They  had  been  running  It  was  thought  that,  in  one  respect  at 

up  and  down  all  the  night, almost  naked,  least,  they  were  corrupting  even  Charles, 

through  the  streets,  ana  al  last  fighting  their  senior  though  he  was  by  seven  years, 

and  being  beat  by  the  watch  and  clapped  Drinking  was  not  his  royal  vice;  but 

up."    There  were  other  stories  about  he  had  been  drunk  and  incapable  several 

Buckhnrst  and  ISeclley  at  the  same  time.  times  recently  in  their  company. 


634         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

and  at  the  same  time  teaching-  his  knightly  brother-in-law, 
by  a  mixture  of  the  severest  irony  with  the  most  courteous 
compliment,  that  even  he  had  better  not  persist  in  a  quarrel 
with  John  Dryden.  A  reference  to  Paradise  Lost  would  have 
been  natural  in  this  reply  to  Howard  if  Dryden  had  then 
known  and  admired  the  poem. — Milton,  on  his  side,  all  the 
while,  was  no  stranger  to  Dryden's  essay  and  its  doctrine, 
or  to  the  controversy  between  Dryden  and  Howard.  The 
little  paragraph  entitled  "  The  Verse "  which  he  gave  to 
Simmons  to  be  prefixed,  together  with  "  The  Argument"  to 
the  fifth  issue  of  copies  in  1668,  and  to  all  subsequent  issues, 
in  order  that  the  public  might  have  not  only  the  desired 
index  of  contents,  but  "  withal  a  reason  of  that  which 
stumbled  many  others,  why  the  Poem  rimes  not,"  was  nothing 
else  than  Milton's  contribution  to  the  controversy  in  his  own 
intei-est.     It  comes  in  here  biographically  : — 

"The  Verse. 

The  measure  is  English  heroic  verse  without  rime,  as  that  of 
Homer  in  Greek  and  of  Virgil  in  Latin,  rime  being  no  necessary 
adjunct  or  true  ornament  of  poem  or  good  verse,  in  longer  works 
especially,  but  the  invention  of  a  barbarous  age  to  set  off  wretched 
matter  and  lame  metre  ;  graced  indeed  since  by  the  use  of  some 
famous  modern  poets,  carried  away  by  custom,  but  much  to  their 
own  vexation,  hindrance,  and  constraint  to  express  many  things 
otherwise,  and  for  the  most  part  worse,  than  else  they  would  have 
expressed  them.  JSot  without  cause  therefore  some  both  Italian 
and  Spanish  poets  of  prime  note  have  rejected  rime  both  in  longer 
and  shorter  works,  as  have  also  long  since  our  best  English  trage- 
dies, as  a  thing  of  itself,  to  all  judicious  ears,  trivial  and  of  no  true 
musical  delight ;  which  consists  only  in  apt  numbers,  fit  quantity 
of  syllables,  and  the  sense  variously  drawn  out  from  one  verse  into 
another,  not  in  the  jingling  sound  of  like  endings, — a  fault  avoided 
by  the  learned  ancients  both  in  poetry  and  all  good  oratory.  This 
neglect  then  of  rime  so  little  is  to  be  taken  for  a  defect,  though  it 
may  seem  so  perhaps  to  vulgar  readers,  that  it  rather  is  to  be 
esteemed  an  example  set,  the  first  in  English,  of  ancient  liberty 
recovered  to  heroic  poem  from  the  troublesome  and  modern  bond- 
age of  riming." 


FIRST    PRAISES   OF   PARADISE  LOST.  635 

If  Dryden  did  not  see  Paradise  Lost  till  1669,  he  saw  it 
then  with  this  emphatic  condemnation  of  his  own  doctrine  of 
Verse,  this  all  but  contemptuous  reference  to  himself,  printed 
in  its  very  forefront.  At  all  events,  from  the  moment  the 
poem  was  in  his  hands,  whether  before  1669  or  not  till  that 
year,  he  must  have  always  thought  of  it  as  having*  come  into 
the  world  to  turn  the  tables  against  his  doctrine  at  the  very 
time  when  he  had  been  preaching  it  most  confidently  and 
successfully.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  Dryden's  candour  and 
placability  that  he  did  not  allow  this  feeling  to  interfere  in 
the  least  with  his  admiration  of  Milton.  Buckhurst,  Ros- 
common, and  others  of  the  Restoration  wits  and  critics,  may 
have  helped  in  the  first  appreciation  of  Paradise  Lost;  but 
Dryden  was  their  leader. 

It  is  not  unpleasing  to  find,  however,  that  the  first  person 
who  expressed  openly  in  print  the  opinion  that  was  thus 
steadily  forming  itself  in  private  among  the  critics  was 
Milton's  nephew,  Edward  Phillips. — In  his  tutorship  in  the 
Pembroke  family,  where  he  had  been  since  he  left  Evelyn's 
house  in  1665,  Phillips  had  not  ceased  authorship.  He  had 
been  employed  to  superintend  a  new  edition,  actually  the 
seventeenth,  of  the  once  popular  book  of  Joannes  Buch- 
lerus  entitled  Sacrarum  Profanarumque  Phrasium  Poeticarum 
Thesaurus,  i.  e.  "  Dictionary  of  sacred  and  profane  Poetical 
Phrases."  To  the  new  edition,  which  appeared  in  1669,  there 
were  subjoined  two  little  Latin  essays  of  Phillips's  own, 
entitled  respectively  "  A  Short  Treatise  on  the  Verse  of  the 
Dramatic  Poets,"  and  "  Compendious  Enumeration  of  the 
Poets,  Italian,  German,  English,  &c.  (the  most  famous  of  them 
at  least),  who  have  flourished  from  the  time  of  Dante  Alighieri 
to  the  present  age."  In  this  second  essay  Milton  is  mentioned 
in  these  words  : — "  John  Milton,  in  addition  to  other  most 
"  elegant  writings  of  his,  both  in  English  and  Latin,  has 
"  lately  published  Paradise  Lost,  a  poem  which,  whether  we 
"  regard  the  sublimity  of  the  subject,  or  the  combined  pleasant- 
"  ness  and  majesty  of  the  style,  or  the  sublimity  of  the  inven- 
"  tion,  or  the  beauty  of  its  images  and  descriptions  of  nature, 
"  will,   if  I  mistake  not,   receive  the  name  of  truly  Heroic, 


636 


LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF    HIS    TIME. 


"  inasmuch  as  by  the  suffrages  of  many  not  unqualified  to 
"judge  it  is  reputed  to  have  reached  the  perfection  of  this 
"  kind  of  poetry."  One  observes  here  Phillips's  fine  loyalty 
to  his  uncle,  but  also  his  feeling'  that  he  was  not  speaking 
without  warrant.  His  uncle  had  again,  at  the  age  of  sixty, 
become  a  mentionable  person.  The  blind  Republican  and 
Regicide  had  redeemed  himself,  so  far  as  his  redemption  was 
possible,  by  the  atonement  of  a  great  poem  *. 

One  consequence  was  that,  from  and  after  1669,  there  was 
an  increased  conflux  of  visitors  to  the  small  house  in  Bunhill. 


1  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  762,  and  Godwin's 
Lives  of  the  Phillipses,  141 — 145.  Wood 
gives  the  titles  of  Phillips's  two  Essays 
appended  to  the  17th  edition  of  Buchler. 
Godwin  disinterred  the  book ;  and  I 
take  the  account  of  it,  and  the  quota- 
tion, from  him. — Such  public  mentions 
as  there  had  been  of  Milton  in  his  re- 
tirement before  the  publication  of  Para- 
dise Lost  had  all  been  in  the  vein  of 
continued  execration  and  regret  that  he 
had  not  been  hanged.  "One  Milton, 
since  sti'icken  with  blindness,"  he  is 
called  in  Heath's  Chronicle,  published 
in  1663,  the  reference  being  to  his  '•im- 
pudent and  blasphemous  libel  called 
Iconoclastes  "  and  his  reply  to  Salrna- 
sius.  "  The  Latin  advocate,  Mr.  Milton, 
who,  like  a  blind  adder,  has  spit  so 
much  poison  upon  the  King's  person 
and  cause,"  South  had  said  in  one  of 
his  sermons,  quoting  a  Latin  sentence 
of  Milton  for  indignant  refutation ;  and, 
from  passages  in  other  sermons  of 
South,  it  appears  that  he  rather  liked 
an  opportunity  of  glancing  at  Milton 
from  the  pulpit.  In  Hacket's  Life  of 
Archbishop  Williams,  which,  though  not 
published  till  1692,  was  complete  in 
manuscript  while  Hacket  was  bishop  of 
Lichfield  (1661—1670),  Milton  figures 
as  "  that  serpent  Milton,"  "that  black- 
mouthed  Zoilus,"  "a  Shimei,"  "a  dead 
dog,"  a  "canker-worm,"  "the  same,  0 
horrid  !  that  defended  the  lawfulness  of 


the  greatest  crime  that  ever  was  com- 
mitted, to  put  our  thrice-excellent  King 
to  death  :  a  petty  school-boy  scribbler 
that  durst  grapple  in  such  a  cause  with 
the  prince  of  the  learned  men  of  his 
age,  Salmasius."  Perhaps  the  most  re- 
spectful references  to  Milton  in  the  time 
of  his  obscurity  before  his  reappearance 
in  Paradise  Lost  were  one  by  Hobbes, 
in  his  yet  unpublished  Behemoth,  and 
one  by  Butler,  in  the  private  scraps  of 
verse  with  which  he  was  amusing  him- 
self in  his  morose  idleness  after  the 
publication  of  the  first  two  parts  of  his 
Hudibras ;  and  in  both  these  references 
it  was  still  the  Milton  of  the  Salmasian 
controversy  that  was  in  view.  One  of 
the  two  colloquists  in  the  Behemoth 
having  said,  "About  this  time  came  out 
two  books,  one  written  by  Salmasius, 
a  Presbyterian,  against  the  murder  of 
the  King,  another  written  by  Milton, 
an  English  Independent,  in  answer  to 
it,"  Hobbes,  little  to  the  credit  of  his 
discrimination,  makes  the  other  reply, 
"  I  have  seen  them  both.  They  are  very 
good  Latin  both,  and  hardly  to  be  judged 
which  is  better ;  and  both  very  ill  rea- 
soning, hardly  to  be  judged  which  is 
worse ;  like  two  declamations,  pro  and 
con,  made  for  exercise  only  in  a  rhetoric 
school  by  one  and  the  same  man.  So  like 
is  a  Presbyterian  to  an  Independent." 
In  Butler's  lines  the  wit  proceeds  with 
equal  disregard  of  the  facts  : — 


'So  some  polemics  use  to  draw  their  swords 
Against  the  language  only  and  the  words  : 
As  he  who  fought  at  barriers  with  Salmasius 
Engaged  with  nothing  but  the  style  and  phrases  ; 
Waived  to  assert  the  murther  of  a  Prince 
The  author  of  false  Latin  to  convince, 
But  laid  the  merits  of  the  cause  aside, 
By  those  that  understood  them  to  be  tried, 
And  counted  breaking  Priscian's  head  a  tiring 
More  capital  than  to  behead  a  king : 
For  which,  he  has  been  admired  by  all  the  learn'd 
Of  knaves  concern'd  and  pedants  unconcern'd." 


CONFLUX   OF   VISITORS   TO    BUNHILL.  637 

In  addition  to  the  Marvells,  the  Pagets,  the  Cyriack  Skinners, 
the  Ellwoods,  and  the  others  of  different  ranks  and  sorts,  who 
had  remained  faithful  to  Milton  through  his  time  of  obscurity, 
there  were  now  to  be  seen  at  his  door,  more  or  less  frequently, 
many  "  persons  of  quality,"  glad  to  form  acquaintance  or  to 
renew    acquaintance    with    the     author    of    Paradise    Lost. 
Whether   Lord    Buckhurst    ventured    to    call    and    took    Sir 
Charles  Sedley  with  him  must  be  left  to  conjecture.     There 
is  no  impossibility  in  the  matter  ;  and,  though  it  would  have 
been    a   strange   meeting,    Milton    would    have    been    civil. 
Dryden,    we    know    for    certain,    did    henceforward   cultivate 
Milton's  acquaintance.     It  is   not   so  generally  known  that 
Dryden's  brother-in-law,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  did  the  same  ;  but 
Toland  had  the  fact  from  Howard  himself.     "  He  was  a  great 
"admirer  of  Milton  to  his  dying  day,"  says  Toland,  "and, 
"  being  his  particular  acquaintance,  would  tell  many  pleasant 
"stories  of  him."     Another  of  Milton's  most  frequent  visitors 
was  the  Earl  of  Anglesey,  the  same  who,  under  his  former 
name  of  Mr.  Arthur  Annesley,  had  been  the  chief  manager  of 
the  Restoration  along  with  Monk,  and  who  had  since  been  a 
member  of  Charles's  Privy  Council  and  one  of  the  most  active 
politicians  through   Clarendon's   Administration  and  that  of 
the  Cabal.     He  was  a  man  of  superior  tastes  and  abilities, 
"  very   subtil,   cunning,   and    reserved,"   says  Wood,   "  much 
conversant  in  books  and  a  great  Calvinist,"  though  the  free- 
dom of  his  sympathies  with  "  very  different  persuasions  "  had 
"  left  it  somewhat  difficult  peremptorily  to  determine  among 
what  sort  of  men,  as  to  point  of  religion,  he  himself  ought  in 
truth  to  have  been  ranked."     Some  interest  attaches  to  his 
special  intimacy  with  Milton  from  1669  onwards.     That  it 
was  a  special  intimacy  appears  from  the  fact  that  Phillips, 
in  his  memoir  of  Milton,  mentions  him  in  chief  among  the 
visitors  to  Bunhill,  leaving  the  rest  of  the  crowd  unnamed. 
"  The   said    Earl   of  Anglesey,"  says    Phillips,   "  came    often 
"  here  to  visit  him,  as  very  much  coveting  his  society  and 
"  converse  ;    as  likewise  others  of  the  nobility,  and  many  per- 
"  sons  of  eminent  quality  ;  nor  were  "  the  visits  of  foreigners 
"  ever  more  frequent  than  in  this  place,  almost  to  his  dying 


638  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  day."  One  wishes  that  Phillips  had  given  us  more  names 
at  this  date ;  but,  in  addition  to  Anglesey,  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  and  Dryden,  we  may  certainly  assume  Lady  Rane- 
lagh.  By  the  death  of  her  husband,  precisely  in  this  year 
1669,  she  had  become  the  Dowager  Lady  Ranelagh,  her  son, 
Mr.  Richard  Jones,  Milton's  former  pupil  and  correspondent, 
succeeding  his  father  as  Viscount  Ranelagh.  The  young 
Visccunt  himself,  when  not  in  Ireland,  and  his  former  tutor, 
Henry  Oldenburg,  now  of  the  Royal  Society,  may  have  been 
among  the  occasional  visitors  at  Bunhill.  John  Aubrey, 
also  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  was  certainly  another. 
As  he  assures  us,  with  some  emphasis,  that  Milton  was  visited 
iC much  by  the  learned,  more  than  he  did  desire"  would  it  be 
ill-natured  to  guess  that  he  had  found  out  the  fact  by  expe- 
rience ?  But  why  did  not  Toland  put  on  paper  some  of  those 
"  many  pleasant  stories  "  of  Milton  which  he  says  Sir  Robert 
Howard  used  to  tell  ?  He  has  given  us  but  one.  Howard, 
it  seems,  could  take  the  liberty  of  talking  with  Milton  on 
political  subjects ;  and,  "  having  demanded  of  him  once  what 
"  made  him  side  with  the  Republicans,  Milton  answered, 
"  Among  other  reasons,  because  theirs  was  the  most  frugal 
"government,  for  that  the  trappings  of  a  monarchy  might 
"  set  up  an  ordinary  Commonwealth  1." 

It  is  in  this  connexion,  if  anywhere,  that  one  may  refer 
to  the  story  of  the  offer  to  reinstate  Milton  in  his  old  place  of 
Latin  Secretary.  The  story  comes  to  us  through  Richardson, 
who  had  heard,  on  what  he  thought  good  authority,  that, 
"  soon  after  the  Restoration,"  such  an  offer  was  made  to 
Milton  on  the  King's  part.  "  Milton  withstood  the  offer," 
Richardson  had  been  informed  ;  and,  when  his  wife  "  pressed 
his  compliance,"  he  had  said  to  her,  "  Thou  art  in  the 
"  right :  you,  as  other  women,  would  ride  in  your  coach  ; 
"  for  me,  my  aim  is  to  live  and  die  an  honest  man."  Were 
the  story  true,  the  most  probable  date  for  it  would  be  early 
in  1664,  a  year  after  Milton's  marriage  with  Elizabeth 
Minshull,   when  Sir    Richard    Fanshawe,    the   King's  Latin 

1  Phillips's  Memoir ;    Aubrey's  Lives ;    Toland's   Life  of  Milton  (edit.  1761), 
p.  129  ;  Wood's  Ath.  IV.  182—183. 


MILTON    AND   THE   LORD    ROOS   DIVORCE   BILL.  639 

Secretary  to  that  time  and  also  one  of  the  Privy  Council, 
"was  sent  abroad  on  that  embassy  to  Spain  and  Portugal  in 
which  he  died  in  June  1666.  But  the  thing-  seems  incre- 
dible. Apart  from  the  insult  to  Milton,  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  such  combined  absurdity  and  indecorum  in  Charles  as 
would  have  been  implied  in  an  invitation  to  the  blind  author 
of  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates  and  JEikonoklastes 
to  a  place  at  Court  or  at  the  Council  Board.  From  and 
after  1669,  however,  when  the  Earl  of  Anglesey  and  other 
Courtiers  and  Privy  Councillors  had  begun  to  go  about 
Milton,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  name  of  the  blind  ex- 
Secretary  may  have  reached  Charles  now  and  then  in 
connexion  with  other  matters  than  those  defunct  Regicide 
and  Republican  pamphlets.  "After  his  Majesty's  Restora- 
"  turn/'  says  Anthony  Wood,  "  when  the  subject  of  Divorce 
"  was  under  consideration  with  the  Lords,  upon  the  account 
"  of  John  Lord  Ros  or  Roos  his  separation  from  his  wife 
"  Anne  Pierpont,  eldest  daughter  to  Henry,  Marquis  of 
"  Dorchester,  he  [Milton]  was  consulted  by  an  eminent 
"member  of  that  House,  as  he  was  about  that  time  by  a 
"  chief  officer  of  state,  as  being  the  prime  person  that  was 
"  knowing  in  that  affair."  The  Lord  Roos  Divorce  Bill, 
which  was  brought  into  the  Lords  by  Buckingham  on  the 
5  th  of  March  1669-70,  and  received  the  royal  assent  on 
the  11th  of  April  1670,  after  a  hurried  and  stormy  passage 
through  the  two  Houses,  was,  as  we  know  (ante,  pp.  572-573), 
a  bill  of  no  less  than  national  significance,  inasmuch  as  its 
real  object  was  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  King's  divorce 
from  his  barren  Queen  and  his  marriage  with  some  one  else. 
While  the  Duke  of  York,  in  the  interest  of  his  own  succes- 
sion to  the  crown,  and  all  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  almost 
all  the  English  bishops,  opposed  it  energetically,  the  King's 
lay  ministers  and  councillors  generally,  as  we  saw,  were 
as  zealous  on  its  behalf  as  he  was  himself.  Either  before 
the  Bill  was  brought  into  the  Lords,  or  while  it  was  in 
debate  there,  two  of  its  supporters,  it  now  appears,  had  con- 
sulted Milton,  as  the  most  learned  living  authority  on  the 
Divorce   subject.     The   eminent   peer   mentioned   by   Wood 


640  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

may  have  been  the  Earl  of  Anglesey,  and  the  chief  officer 
of  state  may  have  been  Lord  Keeper  Bridgrnan  ;  and  argu- 
ments and  references  supplied  to  them  by  Milton  may  have 
been  used  in  the  House  of  Lords.  The  affair,  however,  as 
we  saw,  came  to  nothing,  the  project  of  a  Royal  Divorce 
Bill  having  been  abandoned  by  the  King  himself  on  subse- 
quent reflection 1. 

The    first    edition    of  Paradise  Lost  having  re-introduced 
Milton  to  the  bookselling  world,  it  was  natural  that  more 
books   bearing   his  name  should  follow.     One  would  hardly 
have   expected,  however,  that  his  next  publication  after  his 
great  epic  should  be  a  shabby  little  Latin  Grammar.     Yet 
such  we   may  call  "  Accedence  Commenc't    Grammar,  Supply  d 
with,  sufficient  Rules,  For  the  use  of  such  [Younger  or  Elder) 
as  are  desirous,   without  more  trouble  than  needs  to  attain  the 
Latin  Tongue,  The  Elder  sort  especially,   with   little   Teaching 
and   their    own   Industry,  By  John    Milton.     London,  Printed 
for  S.  S.  and  are  to  be   sold  by  John   Starhey   at   the  Miter 
in    Fleet-street,    near    Temple-bar,    1669."       It     is    a    small 
duodecimo,    consisting  of  two  pages  of  preliminary  address 
"  To  the  Reader  "  and  65  pages  of  text,  with  a  list  of  some 
errata    at    the    end.      There    can    be    little    doubt    that   the 
substance    of   the   thing   had   been    lying    among    Milton's 
manuscripts  since  the  days  of  his  pedagogy  in  Aldersgate 
Street  and  Barbican,   when  the  possibility  of  a  far  swifter 
attainment  of  the  Latin  tongue  than  by  the  ordinary  school 
methods  was  one  of  his  favourite  ideas.     That  idea  is  pro- 
pounded in  the  preliminary  address  in  terms  reminding  us  of 
the  Letter  on  Education  to  Hartlib  twenty-five  years  before. 
"  It  hath  been  long,"  says  Milton,  "  a  general  complaint,  not 
"  without  cause,  in  the  bringing  up  of  youth,  and  still  is, 
"  that  the  tenth  part  of  a  man's  life,  ordinarily  extended,  is 
"  taken  up  in  learning,   and  that   very  scarcely,   the  Latin 
"Tongue.     Which  tardy   proficience    may    be    attributed  to 
"  several  causes :   in  particular,   the  making  two   labours  of 
"  one,  by  learning   first  the  Accidence,  then  the  Grammar, 
"  in   Latin,  ere   the  language  of  those  rules  be  understood. 

1  Richardson,  p.  c  ;  Wood's  Fasti,  I.  433. 


milton's  latin  grammar.  641 

"  The  only  remedy  of  this  was  to  join  both  books  into  one, 
"  and  in  the  English  tongue."  Accordingly,  the  little  book 
differs  from  most  Latin  Grammars  of  the  time  in  being  in 
English.  It  is  divided  into  two  parts,  the  first  on  Ety- 
mology, with  examples  and  rules  for  the  inflections  of  the 
Latin  noun,  pronoun,  verb,  and  participle,  and  the  second  on 
Syntax,  also  with  rules  and  examples.  On  the  whole,  though 
there  was  a  cast  of  novelty  and  simplicity  in  the  plan,  it  can 
have  been  in  no  great  demand  among  teachers,  and  there  have 
been  better  Latin  primers  in  English  since.  The  publisher 
"  S.  S."  was  probably  Samuel  Simmons ;  but,  as  the  book 
purports  to  be  u  printed  for  S.  S.,"  Milton  himself,  and  not 
Simmons,  may  have  paid  the  printing  expenses.  Dr.  Johnson 
could  find  nothing  remarkable  in  the  book  but  the  proof  it 
afforded  that  Milton  could  descend  to  drudgery. 

While  treating  of  Latin  grammar,  however,  it  presents 
us  with  one  interesting  peculiarity  of  Milton's  grammar  in 
his  own  English.  This  is  his  abstinence  from  the  pro- 
nominal neuter  possessive  form  its.  The  mongrel  word  had 
been  creeping  into  use  since  1598,  in  lieu  of  the  genuine 
old  neuter  possessive  his,  or  the  substitute  her,  and  it  had 
become  so  common  among  Milton's  contemporaries,  especially 
after  the  Restoration,  that  Dryden,  writing  in  1672,  could 
assume  ignorant ly  that  its  had  been  the  true  possessive  of  it 
since  the  beginning  of  the  English  language,  and  accuse  Ben 
Jonson  of  incorrectness  for  using  his  instead.  What  would 
Dryden  have  said  if  he  had  looked  into  Milton's  Accedence? 
In  all  Milton's  poetry  the  word  its  occurs  but  three  times, 
his  or  her  occurring  everywhere  else  in  places  in  which  its 
would  now  be  used  ;  he  is  likewise  very  sparing  of  the  form 
its  in  his  prose  ;  but  his  avoidance  of  the  word  in  his  Acce- 
dence Commenct  Grammar  has  all  the  force  of  a  grammatical 
protest  against  the  existence  of  the  upstart.  Discoursing  of 
the  comparison  of  the  Latin  Adjective,  he  says  : — "  The  super- 
"  lative  exceedeth  his  positive  in  the  highest  degree,  as  duris- 
" simus,  hardest;  and  it  is  formed  of  the  first  case  of  his 
:' positive  that  ends  in  is,  by  putting  thereto  simus."  Again, 
in   the  part  on    Syntax,  we  are  informed,  "  There  be  three 

VOL.  VI.  t  t 


642  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  concords  or  agreements :  The  first  is  of  the  Adjective  with 
"  his  Substantive  ;  The  second  is  of  the  Verb  with  his  Norni- 
"  native  Case ;  The  third  is  of  the  Relative  with  his  Antece- 
dent"; and,  further,  "An  Adjective  with  his  Substantive, 
"  and  a  Relative  with  his  Antecedent,  agree  in  Gender  and 
"  Case."  So  emphatic  a  preservation  of  the  old  neuter  English 
form  his  in  a  printed  book  to  as  late  as  1669  is  worthy  of 
remark1. 

A  far  more  important  publication  was  Milton's  next.  It 
was  a  rather  good-looking  small  quarto  of  308  pages,  with  an 
annexed  Index  of  52  unnumbered  pages  more,  and  bore  the 
title  "  The  History  of  Britain,  That  part  especially  now  calVd 
"  England.  From  the  first  Traditional  Beginning,  confirm' d  to 
"  the  Norman  Conquest.  Collected  out  of  the  antieutest  and 
"  best  Authours  thereof  hy  John  Milton.  London,  Printed 
"  by  J.  M.  for  James  Allestry,  at  the  Rose  and  Crown  in  St. 
"Paul's  Church-Yard,  31BCLXX.,>  This  too  must  have  been 
the  mere  publication  of  a  manuscript  which  Milton  had  long 
had  by  him.  A  History  of  Britain  had  been  one  of  the 
three  great  prose-tasks  he  had  prescribed  for  himself  in  the 
Aldersgate  Street  days,  the  other  two  being  a  Latin  Dic- 
tionary and  a  Compendium  of  Biblical  Theology;  and  we 
have  his  own  distinct  statement  that  in  1648,  when  he  was 
living  in  High  Holborn,  just  before  he  was  called  to  the 
Latin  Secretaryship  for  the  Commonwealth,  he  had  been 
busy  on  this  History,  having  already  written  four  books 
of  it,  but  meaning  to  persevere  till  he  had  brought  it  down 
to  his  own  time2.  The  idea  of  such  a  complete  History  of 
England  had  since  then    been   necessarily  abandoned ;    but 

1  Original  copy  of  A  ccedenee  Com-  of  date  1669  ;  the  Bodleian  copy,  I  learn 
menc't  Grammar  in  tlie  British  Museum ;  from  the  Catalogue,  is  of  the  same  date  ; 
Reprint  in  Pickering's  1851  Edition  of  I  have  heard  of  no  copy  anywhere  bear- 
Milton's  Works ;  Dryden's  Defence  of  his  ing  any  other  date ;  Lowndes's  Biblio- 
Epilogue  to  The  Conquest  of  Granada,  grapher's  Manual  distinctly  gives  1669 
as  published  in  1672  (Scott's  Edition  of  as  the  date,  while  noticing  Todd's  adop- 

Dryden,  IV.  218 — 219). In  Anthony  tion  of  1661  as  inexplicable.     Besides, 

Wood's  Article  on  Milton  (Fasti,  I.  485)  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  Milton, 

the  year  1661  is  given  as  the  date  of  just  after  his  escape  with   his  life  in 

the  publication  of  the  A  ccedenee  Com-  1660,    should    have     hastened    to    re- 

menc't  Grammar  ;   and  the  dating  has  mind  the  public  of  his  continued  exist- 

been  generally  followed.     But  the  ac-  ence  in  such   a  cool  trine  as  a   Latin 

curate  Wood  must   have  made  a  slip  Grammar, 

here.  The  copy  in  the  British  Museum  is  2  Ante,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  77—78. 


milton's  histoby  of  Britain.  643 

he  had  added,  probably  in  the  first  years  of  his  Secretaryship, 
two  more  books  to  the  four  already  written.  It  is  this 
narrative  in  six  books,  bringing-  the  History  of  Britain  on 
to  the  Conquest,  that  he  now  sends  forth. 

The  book,  as  the  title  indicates,  is  a  compilation  from 
Csesar,  Tacitus,  Beda,  Gildas,  Nennius,  the  Saxon  Annals, 
Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  William  of  Malmesbury,  Henry  of 
Huntingdon,  and  the  other  old  chroniclers,  with  help  from 
such  more  recent  authorities  as  Buchanan,  Holinshed,  Cam- 
den, and  Spelman.  It  has  no  claim  now  to  the  character  of 
a  reasoned  or  ascertained  History  of  Britain  before  the  Con- 
quest ;  nor  indeed  did  it  profess  to  be  such  at  the  time.  "  I 
"  intend  not  with  controversies  and  quotations  to  delay  or 
"  interrupt  the  smooth  course  of  history/'  the  author  says 
near  the  beginning;  "much  less  to  argue  and  debate  long 
"  who  were  the  first  inhabitants,  with  what  probabilities,  what 
'•'  authorities,  each  opinion  hath  been  upheld  ;  but  shall  en- 
"  deavour  that  which  hitherto  hath  been  needed  most,  with 
"  plain  and  lightsome  brevity  to  relate  well  and  orderly 
"  things  worth  the  noting,  so  as  may  best  instruct  and 
"  benefit  them  that  read."  Again,  in  another  place,  "  What 
"  would  it  be  to  have  inserted  the  long  bead-roll  of  arch- 
"  bishops,  bishops,  abbots,  abbesses,  and  their  doings,  neither 
"  to  religion  profitable  nor  to  morality,  swelling  my  authors 
"  each  to  a  voluminous  body? — by  me  studiously  omitted,  and 
"left  as  their  propriety  who  have  a  mind  to  write  the  ecclesi- 
"  astical  matters  of  those  ages ;  neither  do  I  care  to  wrinkle 
"  the  smoothness  of  history  with  rugged  names  of  places 
"  unknown,  better  harped  at  in  Camden  and  other  choro- 
"  graphers."  On  the  same  principle,  he  will  not  even  in- 
vestigate legends  and  fables  too  sceptically,  but  will  leave 
them  in  their  places  in  the  stream  of  tradition.  "  Ofttimes 
"relations  heretofore  accounted  fabulous  have  been  after 
"  found  to  contain  in  them  many  footsteps  and  reliques  of 
"  something  true "  ;  and,  besides,  there  is  a  fine  relish  in 
some  of  the  legends  themselves.  "  I  have  therefore  deter- 
"  mined  to  bestow  the  telling  over  even  of  these  reputed  tales, 
"be  it  for  nothing  else  but  in  favour  of  our  English  poets 

T  t  2 


644         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"and  rhetoricians,  who  by  their  art  will  know  how  to  use 
ie  them  judiciously."      Milton's  History  of  Britain  before  the 
Conquest  is,  therefore,  not  a  work   of  real  research  and  criti- 
cism, nor  even  of  patient  study  and  luminous  coherent  effect. 
It  is  a  mere   popular   compilation    of  such    matter  as  was 
easily  at  hand  about  those  old  times,  by  a  man  who  saw  in 
them,  for  the  most  part,  only  a  dismal  fog"  of  darkness  and 
barbarism,  and  who  wrote  all  the  while  with  a  kind  of  con- 
tempt of  the  work  on  which  he  was  engaged,  but  believed  at 
the  same  time  that  a  tolerable  digest  of  the  strange  old  stuff 
might  have  its  uses.     Such  as  it  was,   it  was  British  and 
English    stuff,    a   native   tradition   from    the   past    of  these 
Islands,  which  ought  to  be  interesting  on  that  account  to 
modern  Englishmen,  and  about  which  no  educated  English- 
man could  afford  to  be  quite  ignorant  ;  and,  though  it  was 
accessible  already  in  various  books,  a  readable  reduction  of 
it  within  moderate  compass  seemed  still  a  desideratum.     It 
was  such  a  performance  that  Milton  had  in  view,  and  he  has 
accomplished   it  very  successfully.     His  History  of  Britain, 
while  it  is  a  fair  and  careful   abstract  of  the  matter  of  the 
chronicles  for  Roman  Britain  and  Anglo-Saxon  Britain,  has 
the  peculiar  merit  of  containing  the  most  pleasant  short  com- 
pilation we  have  of  those  British  legends  of  the  mythical  or 
pre-Roman  period,  and  those  later  legends  and  semi-legends 
on  to  Arthur,  which  have  furnished  English  poets  with  their 
most  charming  themes,  and  some  acquaintance  with  which 
is  therefore  absolutely  necessary  for  the  student  of  English 
literature.     Without  ever  deceiving  in  the  matter  of  credi- 
bility, and  indeed  while  sometimes  sarcastic  in  the  expres- 
sion  of  his   scepticism,  he  can  always  give  the  due  poetic 
touch  to  a   striking  story.     The    same  faculty  accompanies 
him  into  the  later  portions  of  his  narrative,  though  one  feels 
throughout  that  his  impatience  hurries  him,  and  that,  even 
where  there  is  the  fullest  light  from  record,  neither  person- 
ages nor  transactions  are  featured  with  adequate  distinctness. 
Among  the  earlier  personages  Boadicea  is  sketched  with  the 
most  pains,  and  he  does  not  like  her  at  all, — "  a  distracted 
"  woman,  with  as  mad  a  crew  at  her  heels/'  a  woman  "  of 


milton's  history  of  Britain.  645 

"  stature  big"  and  tall,  of  visage  grim  and  stern,  harsh  of  voice, 
"  her  hair  of  bright  colour  flowing-  down  to  her  hips."  Of 
King-  Alfred  he  gives  the  usual  high  character,  adding-  that 
"  much  more  might  be  said  of  his  noble  mind,  which  rendered 
"  him  the  mirror  of  princes."  He  has  a  qualified  word  or  two 
of  liking  for  King*  Canute.  The  Norman  Conquest  is  de- 
scribed as  the  easy  and  necessary  result  of  the  worthlessness, 
ignorance,  and  viciousness  of  the  English  under  their  last  native 
kings  :  "  not  but  that  some  few  of  all  sorts  were  much  better 
"  among  them ;  but  such  was  the  generality  ;  and,  as  the 
"  long-suffering  of  God  permits  bad  men  to  enjoy  prosperous 
"  days  with  the  good,  so  His  severity  ofttimes  exempts  not 
"  good  men  from  their  share  in  evil  times  with  the  bad." 

The  last  quotation  illustrates  a  marked  peculiarity  of  the 
book.  In  his  letter  to  Henry  de  Brass  of  July  15,  1657, 
giving  his  opinion  of  Sallust  as  a  historian  and  his  notions 
of  the  mode  in  which  history  should  be  written,  Milton  dis- 
tinctly objects  to  the  habit  of  interspersing  history  with  "  fre- 
"  quent  maxims  or  criticisms  on  the  transactions  "  (ante,  Vol. 
V.  p.  364).  His  own  practice  in  the  History  of  Britain  is  all 
the  other  way.  He  is  perpetually  interjecting  ethical  and 
political  remarks,  sometimes  in  a  sarcastic  word  or  two, 
but  occasionally  in  the  form  of  deliberate  and  prolonged 
parenthesis.  A  collection  of  these  pungent  particles  and  longer 
passages  of  Miltonism  from  the  total  text  of  the  book,  as 
published  in  1670,  would  fill  a  good  many  pages.  Sometimes 
it  is  the  previous  writers  from  whom  he  is  compiling  that 
provoke  his  jibes  :  e.g.  "  William  of  Malmesbury  must  be  ac- 
"  knowledged,  both  for  style  and  judgment,  to  be  by  far  the 
"  best  writer  of  them  all ;  but  what  labour  is  to  be  endured 
"  in  turning  over  volumes  of  rubbish  in  the  rest,  Florence  of 
"  Worcester,  Huntingdon,  Simeon  of  Durham,  Hoveden, 
"  Matthew  of  Westminster,  and  many  others  of  obscurer 
"  note,  with  all  their  monachisms,  is  a  penance  to  think." 
But  for  monks  and  monkery  as  such,  everything  specially 
Romish  or  Popish,  in  old  English  life  as  well  as  in  literature, 
he  is  constantly  on  the  watch  ;  the  corruptions  of  the  old 
clergy  and  their  disastrous  influence  are  a  recurring  theme ; 


646  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS  TIME. 

and  he  is  as  fond  of  a  sneer  at  the  vows  of  chastity  and  re- 
ligious seclusion  by  women  in  the  chronicles  as  at  feminine 
government  and  the  appearance  of  women  in  public  affairs. 
Here  and  there  his  sarcasms  glance  off  into  studied  parallel- 
isms between  past  and  present.  Thus,  the  "gallantry"  of 
the  ancient  Britons,  "  painting  their  own  skins  with  several 
"  portraitures  of  beast,  bird,  or  flower,"  is  "  a  vanity  which 
"  hath  not  yet  left  us,  removed  only  from  the  skin  to  the 
"■  skirt,  behung  now  with  as  many  coloured  ribbands  and 
"  gewgaws."  Again,  in  connexion  with  the  story  of  the  offer 
to  the  British  bishops  of  payment  of  their  expenses  by  the 
Emperor  if  they  would  attend  a  general  council  of  bishops 
he  had  summoned  at  a  distant  place,  and  of  the  compliance 
of  only  three,  whom  poverty  constrained,  and  who  thought 
shame  to  let  their  richer  brethren  pay  for  them,  "  esteeming 
"  it  more  honourable  to  live  on  the  public  than  to  be  obnoxious 
"  to  any  private  purse,"  Milton  cannot  refrain  from  this  ap- 
plication of  the  moral  to  the  Westminster  Assembly : — 
"  Doubtless  an  ingenuous  mind,  and  far  above  the  Presbyters 
"  of  our  age,  who  like  well  to  sit  in  Assembly  on  the  public 
"  stipend,  but  liked  not  the  poverty  that  caused  these  to  do 
"  so."  Never  was  a  history  written,  professing  only  to  be  a 
compilation,  in  which  there  was  more  obtrusion  of  the  per- 
sonal sentiments  of  the  author. 

In  this  respect,  however,  a  certain  amount  of  mystery  sur- 
rounds the  book.  Did  Milton  in  1670  send  to  press  without 
change  the  matter  which  had  been  lying  by  him  since  about 
1648,  or  did  he  modify  it  ?  Farther,  in  whatever  shape  the 
book  stood  adjusted  for  publication  in  1670,  did  it  then  leave 
the  press  exactly  and  in  every  place  as  Milton  intended? 
The  words  on  the  title-page,  Printed  hy  J.  M.  for  James 
Allestry,  need  not  imply,  though  they  may  imply,  that 
Milton  printed  the  book  himself  and  employed  Allestree  to 
publish  it,  the  rather  because  there  was  a  London  printer  of 
that  day  whose  initials  were  "  J.  M."  But  that  Allestree 
should  have  been  the  publisher  is  remarkable  in  itself.  He 
had  been  notoriously  a  Royalist  publisher  before  the  Restora- 
tion, and  was  the  same  who,  in  conjunction  with  Martin  and 


THE   FAITHORNE   PORTRAIT.  647 

Dicas,  had  published  Salmasius's  posthumous  answer  to  Milton 
in  1660,  and  who,  in  conjunction  with  Martin  alone,  had  pub- 
lished the  second  part  of  Butler's  Hudibras  in  1663.  I  have 
not  found  his  registration  of  Milton's  History  of  Britain  in 
the  Stationers'  Books  at  the  moment  of  publication  ;  but  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  he  would  not  have  published  such  a 
book  unless  it  had  been  duly  licensed  by  L'Estrange  or  some 
one  else.  As  the  author  was  Milton,  and  the  book  a  historical 
one,  dealing'  with  kings,  queens,  and  old  revolutions  in  Church 
and  State,  the  licencer,  whoever  he  was,  must  have  been 
especially  strict  in  his  revision.  Accordingly,  the  distinct 
tradition  is  that  he  was  so,  and  that  the  book  underwent 
careful  official  manipulation,  and  was  mutilated  by  the  ex- 
cision of  passages  of  the  manuscript.  It  may  be  a  question 
whether  there  were  not  also  additions  here  and  there,  touches 
by  the  licencer,  which  Milton  was  compelled  to  accept.  There 
will  be  occasion  to  return  to  this  subject.  Meanwhile  it  will 
be  well  to  remember  that  Allestree  was  the  publisher  and 
that  the  work  was  tampered  with  to  some  unascertained 
extent 1. 

An  interesting  feature  of  this  volume  of  Milton's  has  yet 
to  be  mentioned.  With  the  exception  of  Moseley's  edition  of 
the  Collected  Poems  in  1645,  which  contained  Marshall's 
wretched  botch  professing  to  be  a  portrait  of  Milton,  no 
preceding  book  of  his  had  been  put  forth  with  such  an 
ornament.  Prefixed  to  the  History  of  Britain,  however,  is  a 
portrait  which  seems  to  have  been  expressly  made  for  the 
purpose.     It  is  a   faithfully  executed   engraving,   with    this 

1  The  non-registration  of  the  book  at  1672,  I  find  an  entry  certifying  that 
the  time  of  its  original  publication  may  Thomas  Davies  had  acquired,  "  by  virtue 
have  been  caused  by  Allestici-'s  death  of  an  assignment  under  the  hand  and 
about  that  time  and  the  transference  of  seal  of  John  Dunmore,  citizen  and  sta- 
his  business  into  other  hands.  I  have  tioner  of  London,  bearing  date  the  24th 
a  copy  of  the  book  now  before  me  with  of  August  1671,"  the  copyright  of 
a  new  title-page  substituted  for  that  twenty-three  separate  books  in  one  lot, 
of  1670  and  differing  in  the  imprint  "  Milton't  History  of  JSngland"  one  of 
thus: — "  Loiii/im,  Print,;!  hij  J,  M.  for  them,  while  among  the  others  were 
Spencer  Hickman,  at  the  Rose  in  St.  Sprat's  Bistory  of  the  Royal  Society, 
Paul's  Church-Yard,  1671."  linferthat  Efooke's  Micrography,  Barrow's  Optics, 
Hickman  was  Allestree's  successor,  and  and  the  Second  Part  of  Hudibras.  Thus, 
thai  his  "  Rose"  in  St.  Paul's  Church-  between  167"  and  1672,  we  have  appar- 
Yard  was  Allestree's  "Rose  ami  Crown  "  etitlv  four  proprietors  of  Milton's  book 
in  the  same  place.  Further,  in  the  in  succession— Allestree, Hickman, Dun- 
Stationers'  Registers,  under  date  Dec.  29,  more,  and  Davies. 


648  LIFE   OP   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

inscription  underneath,  "  Joannis  Milloni  Effigies  JEtat:  62. 
1670",  and  with  the  artist's  name  also  inscribed  thus:  "  Gul. 
Faithorne  ad  Vivum  Belin.  et  sculpsit"  ("Drawn  from  the  life 
and  engraved  by  William  Faithorne  "). — Faithorne,  who  had 
been  in  arms  on  the  King's  side  in  the  Civil  Wars,  and 
had  been  some  time  in  exile,  had  been  a  well-known  engraver 
and  print-seller  in  London  since  1650,  with  his  shop  in  the 
Strand.  He  had  taken  high  rank  in  his  profession,  and  had 
executed  many  engravings,  still  valued  by  collectors.  He 
excelled  in  portraits  ;  and  among  the  most  notable  of  his 
engravings  of  this  kind  Walpole  mentions  a  portrait*  of 
Henrietta  Maria,  done  in  Paris,  various  portraits  of  English 
Royalists  of  rank  after  Vandyke,  a  large  emblematical  print 
of  Cromwell  in  armour,  a  portrait  of  Fairfax  after  Walker, 
a  portrait  of  the  physician  Harvey,  one  of  Sanderson,  done 
in  1658,  one  of  Hobbes,  done  in  1664,  and  portraits  of  Queen 
Catharine,  Lady  Castlemaine,  and  Prince  Rupert.  Pepys  was 
a  not  unfrequent  visitor  at  Faithorne's  shop  and  mentions 
him  and  works  of  his  admiringly ;  and  the  poet  Flatman 
had  written  of  him  : — 

A  "  Faithorne  sculpsit "  is  a  charm  to  save 
From  dull  oblivion  and  a  gaping  grave  \ 

Generally,  Faithorne  worked  from  pictures  or  busts  by 
other  artists ;  but  sometimes  he  worked  from  drawings  or 
paintings  done  by  himself.  He  had  issued  in  1662  a  treatise 
on  engraving,  entitled  The  Art  of  Graveing  and  Etching,  Sfc. ; 
and,  as  this  treatise  had  been  published  by  Allestree,  in  part- 
nership with  Martin  and  Dicas,  the  proposal  to  prefix  to 
Milton's  History  of  Britain  a  portrait  of  the  author  by 
Faithorne  may  have  been  Allestree's  own2.  In  any  case,  it 
was  a  fortunate  proposal,  for  otherwise  posterity  would  have 
had  no  adequate  idea  of  the  visage  and  look  of  the  real 
Milton.     Faithorne  did  the  portrait  in  crayons,  in  Milton's 

1  Mr.  J.  F.  Marsh  On  the  Engraved  ningham's  London,  Art.  Strand  ;  Pepys, 

and    Pretended    Portraits    of   Milton  Nov.  7,  1666  and  April  9,  1669. 

(1860),  whence  I  take  Flatman's  lines  ;  2  Registration  of  Faithorne's  Treatise 

English  Encyclopaedia,  Art.  Faithorne,  under  date  March  1,  1661-2. 
where  the  facts  are  from  Walpole  ;  Cun- 


milton's  daughteks  in  1670.  649 

house  or  in  his  own  studio  in  the  Strand,  and  he  seems  also 
to  have  made  an  oil-painting-  of  it,  with  some  differences 
from  the  drawing-.  His  engraving-  for  the  History  of  Britain 
was  from  the  crayon-drawing,  in  which  style  of  art  he  was 
more  at  home  than  in  painting-.  No  one  can  desire  a  more 
impressive  and  authentic  portrait  of  Milton  in  his  later  life. 
The  face  is  such  as  has  been  given  to  no  other  human  being  ; 
it  was  and  is  uniquely  Milton's.  Underneath  the  broad  fore- 
head and  arched  temples  there  are  the  great  rings  of  eye- 
socket,  with  the  blind  unblemished  eyes  in  them,  drawn 
straight  upon  you  by  your  voice,  and  speculating  who  and 
what  you  are  ;  there  is  a  severe  composure  in  the  beautiful 
oval  of  the  whole  countenance,  disturbed  only  by  the  singular 
pouting  round  the  rich  mouth;  and  the  entire  expression  is 
that  of  English  intrepidity  mixed  with  unutterable  sorrow. 

As  nearly  as  can  be  ascertained,  it  was  in  or  about  1670 
that  Milton  parted  with  his  three  daughters.  The  eldest, 
Anne,  was  then  twenty-four  years  of  age  ;  the  second,  Mary, 
was  twenty-two ;  and  the  youngest,  Deborah,  was  eighteen. 
The  experiment  of  their  remaining  with  their  father  after  his 
third  marriage  had  been  persevered  in  for  about  seven  years, 
and  it  seems  to  have  been  given  up  at  last,  not  so  much  on 
account  of  any  direct  quarrel  of  the  girls  with  their  step- 
mother as  in  consequence  of  their  persistent  rebellion  against 
the  drudgery  required  from  them,  or  from  the  two  younger, 
in  constantly  reading  to  Milton  from  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew, 
French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  books.  "  All  which  sorts  of 
"  books  to  be  confined  to  read  without  understanding  one 
"  word,"  says  Phillips,  "  must  needs  be  a  trial  of  patience 
"  almost  beyond  endurance ;  yet  it  was  endured  by  both  for 
"  a  long  time :  yet  the  irksomeness  of  this  employment  could 
"  not  be  always  concealed,  but  broke  out  more  and  more  into 
"  expressions  of  uneasiness."  The  vigilance  of  the  third  wife 
had  probably  stopped  the  petty  purloinings  of  which  we 
heard  at  one  time,  but  the  alienation  of  the  three  girls  from 
their  father,  their  dissatisfaction  with  their  dull  lives  in 
the  same  house  with  him,   had    increased  with   their   years. 


650  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Nothing-  but  books  and  papers,  nothing"  but  papers  and 
books  !  "  At  length,"  says  Phillips,  "  they  were  all,  even  the 
"  eldest  also,  sent  out  to  learn  some  curious  and  ingenious 
"  sorts  of  manufacture  that  are  proper  for  women  to  learn, 
"  particularly  embroideries  in  gold  or  silver."  This  may  have 
been  the  stepmother's  suggestion.  The  step,  at  all  events,  was 
a  wise  one,  and  ought  to  have  been  taken  before.  Had  they 
been  the  most  dutiful  daughters  in  the  world,  nothing  better 
could  have  been  done  for  them,  by  a  father  who  knew  that  he 
could  not  leave  them  means  for  their  sufficient  support  after 
his  death,  than  to  put  them  in  the  way  of  earning  their  own 
livelihood  by  some  suitable  industry.  That  chosen  seems  to 
have  been  the  most  open  and  promising  in  those  days  for 
girls  calling  themselves  gentlewomen.  The  expense  to  Milton 
for  their  boaTding-out  and  apprenticeship  was,  we  are  in- 
formed, very  heavy  l. 

Whether  connected  with  this  change  of  arrangements  in 
the  house  in  Bunhill  or  not,  we  hear  about  the  same  time 
of  a  temporary  absence  of  Milton  himself  from  that  house. 
"  About  1670,"  says  Richardson,  "  I  have  been  told  by  one 
"  who  then  knew  him  that  he  lodged  some  time  at  the  house 
"•of  Millington,  the  famous  auctioneer  some  years  ago,  who 
"  then  sold  old  books  in  Little  Britain,  and  who  used  to  lead 
"  him  bv  the  hand  when  he  went  abroad."  Millington,  who 
may  have  been  a  relative  of  the  regicide  Gilbert  Millington, 
is  described  as  having  been  "  a  man  of  remarkable  elocution, 
wit,  sense,  and  modesty,"  and  Milton's  temporary  residence  in 
his  house  in  Little  Britain  over  the  stores  of  old  books  may 
have  been  agreeable  to  both.  The  picture  of  their  companion- 
ship in  the  streets,  the  cordial  and  scholarly  bookseller  leading 
the  blind,  and  now  gouty  and  stiff-limbed,  poet  gently  by  the 
hand,  while  they  talked  together,  is  one  of  the  pleasantest  in 
Richardson's  pages.  Painter-like,  he  completes  it  for  us  by 
telling  us  how  Milton  was  dressed.  "  He  then  wore  no  sword 
"  that  my  informant  remembers,  though  probably  he  did  ;  at 
"  least  'twas  his  custom  not  long  before  to  wear  one  with  a 

1  Phillips's  Memoir,  and  evidence  given  in  the  case  of  Milton's  Nuncupative  Will, 


PARADISE   REGAINED   AND   SA3TS0N  AGONISTES.         651 

"  small  silver  hilt,  and  in  cold  weather  a  grey  camblet  coat." 
The  residence  with  Millington  in  Little  Britain  can  have 
been  but  for  some  purpose  of  a  temporary  nature ;  and,  only 
adding*  Millington  at  this  point  to  the  number  of  Milton's 
friends,  we  must  return  to  Bunhill l. 

On  the  20th  of  September  1670  there  was  this  entry  in  the 
registers  of  the  Stationers'  Company  :  "  Mr.  John  Starkey 
"  entred  for  his  Copie,  under  the  hands  of  Mr.  Tho.  Tomkyns 
"  and  Mr.  Warden  Roper,  a  Copie  or  Booke  intituled  Paradise 
"  regayn'd,  A  Poem  in  4  Bookes.  The  Author  John  Milton. 
"  To  which  is  added  Samson  Agonistes,  A  drammadic  [sic] 
"  Poem,  by  the  same  Author."  The  volume  so  registered  did 
not  appear  till  some  little  time  afterwards,  and  then  with  this 
title,  "  Paradise  Begahid.  A  Poem.  In  IV Books.  To  winch  is 
added  Samson  Agonistes.  The  Author  John  Milton.  London, 
Printed  by  I.  M.  for  John  Starkey  at  the  Mitre  in  Fleetstreef, 
near  Temple  Par.  M B  CLXX1."  On  the  fly-leaf  at  the  be- 
ginning are  the  words,  "  Licensed,  July  2,  1670."  That  was 
the  date  on  which  the  licencer  Tomkyns,  the  same  who  had 
licensed  Paradise  Lost,  had  passed  the  two  new  poems  for  the 
press  ;  and  the  volume,  therefore,  though  dated  1671,  may 
have  appeared  late  in  1670.  The  publisher  Starkey  was  the 
same  who  had  published  the  Accedence  Commenct  Grammar 
in  1669  ;  and,  though  the  words  "  Printed  by  J.  M.  for  John 
Starkey,"  may  imply  that  Milton  had  printed  the  book  at 
his  own  cost,  such  a  conjecture  is  no  more  necessary  than 
in  the  case  of  the  History  of  Britain,  "  printed  by  J.  M.  for 
James  Allestry."  The  same  printer,  whose  initials  chanced 
to  be  Milton's,  may  have  been  employed  by  the  two  pub- 
lishers. His  work  in  the  two  Poems  is  hardly  so  satis- 
factory as  it  had  been  in  the  History.  The  new  volume, 
indeed,  was  handsome  enough  in  general  appearance,  a  small 
octavo  of  220  pages,  the  first  112  of  which,  after  the 
general  title-page,  contained  Paradise  Regained,  while  the 
remainder,  with  a  special  title-page  and  the  pages  separately 
numbered    thenceforth,    contained     Samson    Agonistes.      The 

1  Richardson,  pp.  iii — iv  and  p.  xciii. 


652  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

paper  is  thick  and  the  type  rather  large,  with  such  wide 
spacing*  between  the  lines  as  to  make  the  reading  easy.  But 
the  printing  is  slovenly,  and  the  pointing  careless  throughout, 
and  sometimes  very  bad.  Milton  can  have  had  no  such  excel- 
lent deputy  for  revising  the  proof-sheets  as  when  Paradise 
Lost  was  passing  through  Simmons's  press.  These,  however, 
were  but  mechanical  details.  The  author  of  Paradise  Lost 
had  added  two  new  poems  to  the  English  language  worthy 
even  of  that  companionship. 

Among  the  many  subjects  which  Milton  had  noted  in 
1640-1,  as  fit  for  poetic  treatment,  had  been  eight  from  New 
Testament  history.  One  of  these  was  the  death  of  John  the 
Baptist ;  the  other  seven  were  from  the  Life  of  Christ  at 
various  points,  from  his  Birth  to  the  Agony  in  the  Garden, 
the  Crucifixion,  and  the  Resurrection1.  Not  one  of  these 
subjects,  however,  corresponds  exactly  with  the  subject  of 
Paradise  Regained.  That  subject  had  been  suggested  to  Milton, 
as  we  know,  late  in  1665,  by  what  the  Quaker  Ellwood  had 
said  to  him,  in  the  cottage  in  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  while  re- 
turning the  manuscript  of  Paradise  Lost.  "  Thou  hast  said 
"  much  here  of  Paradise  lost,  but  what  hast  thou  to  say  of 
"  Paradise  found  ?  "  had  been  Ellwood's  remark ;  to  which 
remark,  as  Ellwood  told  us,  Milton  made  no  answer,  but  "  sat 
some  time  in  a  muse,"  and  then  changed  the  discourse. 

We  can  see  now  what  occurred  to  Milton  in  that  brief 
"  muse  "  at  Chalfont.  It  occurred  to  him  that  there  might 
very  well  be  a  sequel  to  Paradise  Lost,  such  as  Ellwood  had 
suggested.  There  could  be  no  narration,  indeed,  of  the  re- 
gaining of  Paradise  as  a  fact  fully  accomplished,  to  the  extent 
of  the  restoration  of  all  that  had  been  visibly  and  physically 
wrecked  in  the  first  poem,  and  the  bringing  back  of  Eden  upon 
earth.  There  was  no  restored  Eden  upon  earth  even  while 
Milton  lived  and  wrote,  but  sin,  war,  murder,  tyranny,  famine, 
pestilence,  as  plentiful  as  in  the  generations  by- gone,  and 
with  no    visible  prospect   of  their   cessation    or    diminution 

1  Ante,  Vol.  II.  pp.  111—112. 


PAEADISE  REGAINED.  653 

through  the  ages  yet  to  come.  But  there  had  been  wrought 
out  in  the  Life  of  Christ,  as  Milton  believed,  the  promise 
and  certainty,  at  least,  of  that  perfect  redemption  which  had 
been  predicted  to  Adam  by  the  Archangel  Michael  at  the  close 
of  the  former  poem.  By  that  single  life,  passed  in  Judaea 
seventeen  hundred  years  ago,  Paradise  had  been  regained  for 
all  mankind  in  the  sense  that  all  human  beings,  from  Adam 
himself  to  his  latest  posterity,  had  been  potentially  enabled  by 
it  to  possess  a  paradise  within  themselves  meanwhile,  and  to 
look  forward  to  the  final  restitution  at  that  second  comma- 
in  which  Christ  should  appear — 

"  In  glory  of  the  Father,  to  dissolve 
Satan  with  his  perverted  World  ;    then  raise 
From  the  conflagrant  mass,  purged  and  refined, 
New  Heavens,  new  Earth,  Ages  of  endless  date, 
Founded  in  righteousness  and  peace  and  love." 

There  might  therefore,  fitly  enough,  be  an  epic  from  the  life 
of  Christ  with  the  title  of  Paradise  Regained  and  artistically 
a  sequel  to  Paradise  Lost.  But,  that  it  might  be  artistically 
such  a  sequel,  care  must  be  taken  to  select  that  portion  of  the 
life  of  Christ  which  could  be  made  the  most  exact  counterpoise 
to  the  story  of  the  former  poem.  Now,  the  part  of  the 
narrative  in  the  Gospels  to  which  Milton  was  irresistibly 
drawn  by  his  especial  purpose  was  the  Temptation  in  the 
Wilderness.  It  was  there  that  Satan,  the  conqueror  of  the 
world  in  the  former  poem  by  his  temptation  of  Adam  and 
Eve,  reappeared  as  one  fully  habituated  to  the  rule  of  that 
world  by  his  possession  of  it  for  some  thousands  of  years,  but 
with  the  uneasy  sense  that  the  prophesied  "  greater  man  " 
was  now  alive  somewhere  that  was  to  wrest  it  from  him.  It 
was  for  Milton  to  resume  the  story  of  his  former  Satan  at  this 
point  of  his  existence,  when  he  was  no  longer  the  great  rebel 
archangel,  winging  at  will  through  all  infinitude,  mundane 
and  extra-mundane,  in  quest  of  an  empire,  but  only  the 
prince  of  the  powers  of  the  air,  content  with  the  one  bridge 
that  had  been  built  for  him  through  chaos  to  connect  his  hell 
with  the  mundane  world,  and  so  accustomed  to  his  self- 
selected  function  at  the  centre  of  that  mundane  world  as  to 


654         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

have  lost  every  lineament  of  the  archangel,  and  degenerated 
into  the  mere  devil  of  terrestrial  meteorology,  the  magician  of 
mists  and  marshes.  It  was  for  Milton  to  bring  this  changed 
Satan  by  the  side  of  that  Second  Adam  whose  advent  he 
feared,  to  narrate  the  temptation  by  which  he  sought  to  find 
whether  there  was  also  weakness  in  this  Second  Adam,  and  to 
exhibit  him  foiled,  exasperated,  and  put  to  flight.  After  the 
discomfiture  of  Satan  by  Christ  in  the  temptation  of  the 
three  days  all  the  rest  was  certain,  though  it  was  yet  to  come ; 
and  an  epic  on  that  single  portion  of  Christ's  life  might  there- 
fore justly  entitle  itself  Paradise  Regained.  The  authorities 
would  be  Matthew  iv.  1-11,  Mark  i.  12-13,  and  Luke  iv. 
1-13  ;  but,  while  adhering  strictly  to  these  authorities,  Milton 
could  use  his  own  imagination,  and  could  study  connexion 
with  Paradise  Lost. 

It  is  possible  that  the  poem  was  begun  in  1665  at  Chalfont. 
It  is  possible  also  that  it  was  finished  before  the  publication 
of  Paradise  Lost  in  1667,  and  that  the  wording  of  some  parts 
of  that  poem  may  have  been  altered  at  the  last  moment  to 
hint  the  coming  sequel.  Our  only  information  on  the  point 
is  from  Ellwood.  Having  mentioned  Milton's  return  to 
London  on  the  cessation  of  the  Plague  early  in  1666,  he  adds, 
"  And,  when  afterwards  I  went  to  wait  on  him  there  (which 
"  I  seldom  failed  of  doing,  whenever  my  occasions  drew  me  to 
"  London),  he  showed  me  his  second  poem,  called  Paradise 
"  Regained,  and  in  a  pleasant  tone  said  to  me,  '  This  is  owing 
"  to  you  ;  for  you  put  it  into  my  head  by  the  question  you 
"  put  to  me  at  Chalfont ;  which  before  I  had  not  thought 
"of1."'  This  only  certifies  that  Ellwood  saw  Paradise  Re- 
gained in  one  of  his  visits  to  Milton  in  London  after  the 
Great  Plague,  but  does  not  certify  that  it  was  on  the  first  of 
these  visits,  or  even  on  the  second  or  third.  Though  the 
possibility,  therefore,  is  that  the  poem  was  ready  in  1667  and 
might  have  then  been  published  with  Paradise  Lost,  the  time 
of  its  dictation  may  have  been  any  time  between  1665  and 
July  2,  1670,  when  Tomkyns  licensed  the  manuscript.   Phillips 

1  Ellwood's  Life,  edit.  1714,  p.  247. 


PARADISE  REGAINED.  655 

ventures  on  the  opinion  that  the  poem  was  "begun  and 
finished  and  printed  "  by  his  uncle  after  the  publication  of 
its  predecessor,  i.e.  between  August  1667  and  July  1670, — "a 
wonderful  short  space  considering  the  sublirneness  of  it,"  he 
adds  rather  oddly ;   but  this  opinion  was  only  from  guess. 

A  more  definite  piece  of  information  from  Phillips  is  that, 
though  Paradise  Regained  was  "generally  censured  to  be 
much  inferior  to  the  other,"  Milton  himself  "  could  not  hear 
"with  patience  any  such  thing  when  related  to  him."  As 
usual,  the  statement  has  been  exaggerated  in  the  repetition, 
so  that  we  commonly  hear  and  read  that  Milton  preferred  his 
Paradise  Regained  to  his  Paradise  Lost.  There  is  no  warrant 
whatever  for  that  idea,  but  only  for  the  fact  that  he  did  not 
like  his  shorter  epic  to  be  decried  in  comparison  with  his 
longer.  "Possibly  the  subject,"  says  Phillips,  "may  not 
"  afford  such  variety  of  invention,  but  it  is  thought  by  the 
"most  judicious  to  be  little  or  nothing  inferior  to  the  other 
"  for  style  and  decorum."  That  is  the  criticism  which  Milton 
would  probably  have  accepted,  and  with  which  we  may  now 
agree.  In  1641,  when  taking  the  public  for  the  first  time 
into  his  confidence  about  his  literary  plans  and  dream- 
ings,  Milton  had  recognised,  as  among  the  forms  of  poetry 
open  to  him,  "  that  epick  form  whereof  the  two  poems  of 
"  Homer,  and  those  other  two  of  Virgil  and  Tasso,  are  a 
"diffuse,  and  the  Book  of  Job  a  brief,  model."  As  his 
Paradise  Lost  had  been  a  Miltonic  specimen  of  the  epic  after 
the  more  diffuse  or  complex  model,  so  his  Paradise  Regained 
was  a  Miltonic  experiment  in  the  epic  after  the  briefer 
model.  So  understood,  the  smaller  poem,  in  four  succinct 
books,  was  no  less  a  success  than  the  larger  one  in  ten  books 
of  double  length  each.  The  theme  chosen  was  managed 
beautifully  to  its  utmost  capabilities ;  and,  if  Milton's  Paradise 
Regained  has  not  engraved  itself  into  the  imagination  of  the 
world  so  deeply  as  his  Paradise  Lost,  it  is  only  because  the 
story  of  the  three  days  of  Christ's  Temptation  attracts  less 
than  the  story  of  Satan's  Rebellion,  the  Creation  of  the 
Universe,  and  the  Fall  of  Man. 

The   smaller   epic    is   even    more   purely  objective  in   its 


656         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

character  throughout  than  the  larger.    Milton's  chief  aim  was 
simply  to    think    out    all    the    details  of  the    story  as  it  is 
suggested  by  the  evangelists,  and  especially  by  Luke,  and  to 
present  them  in    that  form  of  vivid  optical  phantasy  which 
constitutes  a  poem  proper  as  distinct  from  a  song  or  lyric. 
There  are  very  few  poems  indeed  that  possess  in  so  marked 
a  degree  this  quality  of  visuality,  or  pictorial  clearness  and 
coherence,  from  first  to  last : — We  see  the  baptism  of  Christ 
at  thirty  years  of  age  by  John  at  Bethabara  on  the  Jordan. 
We  see  Christ  for  the  few  next  days  in  bis  mother's  house 
in  Bethabara,  meditating  his  proclaimed  Messiahship,  with 
bis  first  disciples  already  around    him.      Then    we   see    him 
led  by  his  thoughts  into  the  wilderness,  and  his  forty  days 
of  solitary  wandering  and  fasting  amid  the  dreary  and  dusky 
horrors.       On  the  fortieth  day  we   see  Satan's   stealthy  ap- 
proach  to  him  in  the  guise  of  an  aged  man  in  rural  weeds 
that  had  come  to  gather  sticks  or  was  in  quest  of  a  stray  ewe. 
We  see  the  temptation  begun  in  its  first  form  of  an  appeal  to 
Christ's  hunger,  and  we  listen  to  the  dialogue  till  the  day 
ends,  Satan    withdraws,    "bowing   low    his    gray   dissimula- 
tion," and  the  shades  of  night  come    over   the  desert. — In 
the  second  book,  after  an  episodic  account  of  the  perplexity 
of  Mary  and  the  disciples  at  Bethabara  since  Christ's  mys- 
terious disappearance,  and  an  account  also  of  Satan's  consul- 
tation with  his  council  of  evil  spirits,  we  see  the  temptation 
renewed.     Through  all  the  rest  of  that  Book,  the  whole  of 
Book  III,  and  two-thirds  of  Book  IV,  we  are  reading  of  the 
second  day's  temptation.     It  consists  first  of  a  repetition  of 
the  hunger-temptation  of  the  preceding  day,  and  then  of  a 
protracted  appeal  to  Christ's  ambition.     This  includes  the  in- 
stantaneous  conveyance  of  Christ  out  of  the  wilderness,  by 
Satan's  magical  art,  to  the  top  of  the  specular  mount,  whence 
there  is  the  vision  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.     One  can 
hardly  admire  too  much  the  learning  and  the  artistic  manage- 
ment shown  in  this  kernel  of  the  poem.     In  the  vision  of  the 
kingdoms  we  have  a  splendid  and  yet  most  exact  account  of 
the  political  state  of  the  world  in  the  time  of  Tiberius  Caesar. 
The  world  was  then  bisected  into  the  two  great  empires  of  the 


PARADISE  REGAINED.  657 

Romans  and  the  Parthians,  the  one  mainly  western  or  Euro- 
pean, and  the  other  eastern  or  Asiatic,  with  Syria  as  the 
debateable  land  between  them.  There  is  an  air  of  Machiavel- 
lian ability  in  the  minute  explanation  of  this  by  Satan  and  in 
his  suggestion  to  Christ  of  the  various  ways  in  which,  as 
claimant  of  David's  throne  or  the  old  Hebrew  monarchy  from 
Egypt  to  the  Euphrates,  he  might  at  that  moment  strike  in 
between  the  Roman  and  the  Parthian  and  avail  himself  of 
their  rivalry.  The  interjected  sketch  of  Hebrew  history  from 
the  time  of  the  Maccabees  is  also  masterly.  But  our  wonder 
at  so  much  geographical  and  historical  knowledge,  all  so  poeti- 
cally compact  and  relevant,  passes  into  new  wonder  as  the 
temptation  changes  its  form.  The  trial  of  Christ's  supposed 
ambition  of  kingship  or  political  power  having  failed,  the 
appeal  is  next  to  his  supposed  passion  for  prophetship, 
teachership,  intellectual  activity  and  distinction.  Here,  still 
from  the  specular  mount,  our  eyes  are  turned  from  the  splen- 
dours of  Asia  and  from  the  Rome  of  Tiberius,  and  are  fastened 
on  Greece  and  Athens.  Nothing  could  be  more  brilliant  in 
its  rapidity  than  the  summary  of  the  historical  glories  of 
Greek  thought  and  literature.  But  even  that  fails  to  tempt ; 
and,  Satan's  whole  labour  of  the  second  day  having  been  in 
vain,  we  are  swiftly  back  by  his  magic  from  the  specular 
mount  into  the  wilderness  once  more.  No  passage  of  the 
poem  is  finer  than  the  description  of  the  ensuing  night  of 
stormy  rain  and  lightning,  with  fiendish  gibberings  and  other 
sounds  of  ghastliness,  around  the  sleeping  Christ. — Morning 
rises  fair  in  amice  grey  after  the  dreadful  night,  and  there 
comes  the  temptation  of  the  third  day,  or  rather  of  only  part 
of  that  day;  for  the  result  of  this  third  temptation,  the 
subtlest  of  all,  is  evident  in  short  space.  Satan,  professing 
that  he  has  found  Christ  unassailable  hitherto,  and  that  he 
waits  only  for  some  indubitable  proof  that  he  is  the  Son  of 
God  to  desist  from  all  farther  trial  of  his  firmness  and  confess 
himself  concmered,  conveys  him,  by  another  magical  journey 
through  the  air,  to  the  topmost  pinnacle  of  the  Temple  in 
Jerusalem.  Placing  him  there,  the  Tempter  solicits  his  pre- 
sumable vanity  in  its  highest  form,  requesting  the  single 
vol.  vi.  u  u 


658  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

miracle  of  his  descent  without  harm,  and  quoting-  the  scrip- 
tural prophecy  of  him  which  will  then  be  verified.  Christ 
replies  with  another  quotation  from  Scripture,  and  stands  un- 
moved. Not  so  the  Fiend.  Smitten  with  amazement,  he 
falls  ingloriously,  flying-  while  he  falls,  and  carrying-  the  news 
of  his  defeat  and  of  Christ's  victory  into  the  infernal  council. 
Round  Christ  meanwhile  there  gathers  a  g-lobe  of  angels,  who 
bear  him  softly  down  on  their  wings,  as  on  a  floating  couch, 
into  a  flowery  valley.  There  rested  and  refreshed,  he  returns 
home  unobserved  to  his  mother's  house,  after  all  the  angels 
have  sung  the  hymn  of  his  proved  Messiahship  : — 

"  Now  thou  hast  avenged 
Supplanted  Adam,  and,  by  vanquishing 
Temptation,  hast  regained  lost  Paradise, 
And  frustrated  the  conquest  fraudulent." 

While  the  poem  is  thus,  like  Paradise  Lost,  mainly  and 
distinctively  one  of  the  objective  order,  there  are,  of  course, 
as  in  everything  that  Milton  wrote,  those  peculiar  sub- 
jective characteristics  which  we  recognise  as  the  Miltonic. 
In  the  sentiments  of  the  dialogue  between  Satan  and  Christ, 
and  more  especially  in  those  put  in  the  mouth  of  Christ  and 
therefore  approved  as  the  best,  we  can  hear  Milton  himself 
speaking  and  moralizing.  Quotation  from  Paradise  Regained 
here  ought  to  be  for  biographical  reasons  only  ;  and  it  will 
be  enough  to  ask  the  reader  to  re-peruse  the  following  pas- 
sages, regarding  them  as  the  expression  of  Milton's  notions 
of  literature  in  his  sixty- second  year,  when  the  English 
Literature  immediately  around  him  was  that  of  the  Re- 
storation. He  distributes  his  opinions,  it  will  be  observed, 
between  Satan  and  Christ,  making  Satan  the  spokesman  for 
Greek  literature,  and  then  not  cancelling  what  Satan  has 
said,  but  only  correcting  and  modifying  it,  by  Christ's  as- 
sertion of  certain  diviner  grandeurs  in  the  literature  of  the 
Hebrews : — 

CLASSIC    LITEBATURE,    ESPECIALLY    THAT    OF    THE    GREEKS. 

(Satan  loquitur.) 
"  All  knowledge  is  not  couched  in  Moses'  law, 
The  Pentateuch,  or  what  the  Prophets  wrote; 


PARADISE  REGAINED.  659 

The  Gentiles  also  know,  and  write,  and  teach 
To  admiration,  led  by  Nature's  light ; 
And  with  the  Gentiles  much  thou  must  converse, 
Ruling  them  by  persuasion,  as  thou  mean'st. 
Without  their  learning,  how  wilt  thou  with  them, 
Or  they  with  thee,  hold  conversation  meet  1 
How  wilt  thou  reason  with  them,  how  refute 
Their  idolisms,  traditions,  paradoxes  1 
Error  by  his  own  arms  is  best  evinced. 
Look  once  more,  ere  we  leave  this  specular  mount, 
Westward  :    much  nearer  by  south-west,  behold 
Where  on  the  ^Egean  shore  a  city  stands, 
Built  nobly,  pure  the  air  and  light  the  soil, — 
Athens,  the  eye  of  Greece,  mother  of  arts 
And  eloquence,  native  to  famous  wits 
Or  hospitable,  in  her  sweet  recess, 
City  or  suburban,  studious  walks  and  shades. 
See  there  the  olive-grove  of  Academe, 
Plato's  retirement,  where  the  Attic  bird 
Trills  her  thick-warbled  notes  the  summer  long ; 
There,  flowery  hill,  Hymettus,  with  the  sound 
Of  bees'  industrious  murmur,  oft  invites 
To  studious  musing ;    thex^e  Ilissus  rolls 
His  whispering  stream.     Within  the  walls  then  view 
The  schools  of  ancient  sages  :  his  who  bred 
Great  Alexander  to  subdue  the  wor*ld, 
Lyceum  there ;    and  painted  Stoa  next. 
There  thou  shalt  hear  and  learn  the  secret  power 
Of  harmony,  in  tones  and  numbers  hit 
By  voice  or  hand,  and  various-measured  verse, 
^Eolian  charms  and  Dorian  lyric  odes, 
And  his  who  gave  them  breath,  but  higher  sung, 
Blind  Melesigenes,  thence  Homer  called, 
Whose  poem  Phcebus  challenged  for  his  own. 
Thence  what  the  lofty  grave  Tragedians  taught 
In  chorus  or  iambic,  teachers  best 
Of  moral  prudence,  with  delight  received 
In  brief  sententious  precepts,  while  they  treat 
Of  fate  and  chance,  and  change  in  human  life, 
High  actions  and  high  passions  best  describing. 

U112 


660         LIFE   OF  MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Thence  to  the  famous  Orators  repair, 
Those  ancient,  whose  resistless  eloquence 
Wielded  at  will  that  fierce  deinocraty, 
Shook  the  Arsenal,  and  fulmined  over  Greece 
To  Macedon  and  Artaxerxes'  throne. 
To  sage  Philosophy  next  lend  thine  ear, 
From  heaven  descended  to  the  low-roofed  house 
Of  Socrates, — see  there  his  tenement, — 
Whom,  well  inspired,  the  oracle  pronounced 
Wisest  of  men ;    from  whose  mouth  issued  forth 
Mellifluous  streams,  that  watered  all  the  schools 
Of  Academics  old  and  new,  with  those 
Surnamed  Peripatetics,  and  the  sect 
Epicurean,  and  the  Stoic  severe." 

HEBREW    LITERATURE    COMPARED   WITH    CLASSIC. 

{Christus  loquitur.) 

"  Alas  !    what  can  they  teach,  and  not  mislead, 
Ignorant  of  themselves,  of  God  much  more, 
And  how  the  World  began,  and  how  Man  fell, 
Degraded  by  himself,  on  grace  depending  1 
Much  of  the  soul  they  talk,  but  all  awry ; 
And  in  themselves  seek  virtue ;    and  to  themselves 
All  glory  arrogate,  to  God  give  none ; 
Rather  accuse  him  under  usual  names, 
Fortune  and  Fate,  as  one  regardless  quite 
Of  mortal  things.     Who,  therefore,  seeks  in  these 
True  wisdom  finds  her  not,  or,  by  delusion 
Far  worse,  her  false  appearance  only  meets, 
An  empty  cloud.     However,  many  books, 
Wise  men  have  said,  are  wearisome;  who  reads 
Incessantly,  and  to  his  reading  brings  not 
A  spirit  and  judgment  equal  or  superior 
(And  what  he  brings  what  needs  he  elsewhere  seek  1) 
Uncertain  and  unsettled  still  remains, 
Deep-versed  in  books  and  shallow  in  himself, 
Crude  or  intoxicate,  collecting  toys 
And  trifles  for  choice  matters,  worth  a  sponge, 
As  children  gathering  pebbles  on  the  shore. 
Or,  if  I  would  delight  my  private  hours 


PABADISE  BEGAI2TED.  661 

With  music  or  with  poem,  where  so  soon 

As  in  our  native  language  can  I  find 

That  solace?     All  our  Law  and  Story  strewed 

With  hymns,  our  Psalms  with  artful  terms  inscribed, 

Our  Hebrew  songs  and  harps,  in  Babylon 

That  pleased  so  well  our  victor's  ear,  declare 

That  rather  Greece  from  us  these  arts  derived, 

111  imitated  while  they  loudest  sing 

The  vices  of  their  deities,  and  their  own, 

In  fable,  hymn,  or  song,  so  personating 

Their  gods  ridiculous,  and  themselves  past  shame. 

Remove  then-  swelling  epithets,  thick-laid 

As  varnish  on  a  harlot's  cheek,  the  rest, 

Thin-sown  with  aught  of  profit  or  delight, 

Will  far  be  found  unworthy  to  compare 

With  Sion's  songs,  to  all  true  tastes  excelling, 

Where  God  is  praised  aright  and  godlike  men, 

The  Holiest  of  Holies  and  his  Saints 

(Such  are  from  God  inspired,  not  such  from  thee)  y 

Unless  where  moral  virtue  is  expressed 

By  light  of  Nature,  not  in  all  quite  lost. 

Their  orators  thou  then  extoll'st  as  those 

The  top  of  eloquence :    statists  indeed, 

And  lovers  of  their  country,  as  may  seem ; 

But  herein  to  our  Prophets  far  beneath, 

As  men  divinely  taught,  and  better  teaching. 

The  solid  rules  of  civil  government, 

In  their  majestic  unaffected  style, 

Than  all  the  oratory  of  Greece  and  Pome. 

In  them  is  plainest  taught,  and  easiest  learnt, 

What  makes  a  nation  happy  and  keeps  it  so, 

What  ruins  kingdoms  and  lays  cities  flat." 

Samson  Agonistes,  though  published  in  the  same  volume 
with  Paradise  Regained,  had  a  separate  title-page,  thus : — 
"  Samson  Agonistes,  A  Dramatic  Poem.  The  Author  John 
Milton.  —  Aristot.  Poet.  Cap.  6.  Tpayiobia  ^t/x?j<ns  it  parens 
<nrovbaias,  &c.  Tragcedia  est  imitatio  actionis  seriae,  Sfc.  Per 
misericordiam  et  metum  perficiens  talium  affectuum  lustrationem. — 
London,  Printed  by  J .  31.  for  John  Starkey   at  the  Mitre  in 


662         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Fleetstreet,  near  Temple-Bar.  MDCLXXI."  We  have  no 
information  as  to  the  date  of  the  composition,  except  what 
is  conveyed  in  the  poem  itself.  That  certifies  it  beyond  all 
doubt  as  a  post-Restoration  poem ;  and  the  most  probable 
date  is  between  1666  and  1670. 

The  first  thing"  to  be  remarked  about  this  latest  produc- 
tion of  Milton's  muse  is  that  it  was  in  the  dramatic  form. — 
Milton  had  used  that  form  in  his  youth,  in  his  fragment  of 
a  masque  called  Arcades,  and  in  his  perfect  and  elaborate 
masque  of  Comus.  Not  only  had  those  pieces  been  dramatic 
in  character;  they  had  been  actually  written  for  theatrical 
performance  by  the  young-  members  of  one  noble  family, 
the  latter  on  a  stage  in  the  great  hall  of  Ludlow  Castle 
on  a  semi-public  occasion.  That  Milton  had  not  then  shared 
the  antipathy  of  Prynne  and  the  other  straiter  Puritans 
to  the  Acted  Drama  is  proved  also  by  the  fact  that  he  had 
attended  theatres  freely  enough  in  his  college  days  and 
afterwards,  and  by  his  admiring  references  in  his  earlier 
poems  to  the  acted  plays  of  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson. 
Even  then,  it  is  true,  he  had  been  disgusted  with  the  moral 
degradation  of  the  theatres,  fed  as  they  were  for  the  most 
part  by  "  the  writings  and  interludes  of  libidinous  and 
ignorant  poetasters."  As  late  as  1641,  however,  when  he 
had  published  this  disgust,  his  faith  had  been  in  a  re- 
formation of  the  stage  by  State  authority  rather  than  in 
its  prohibition  or  suppression.  "  It  were  happy  for  the 
commonwealth/'  he  had  then  written,  "  if  our  magistrates, 
"  as  in  those  famous  governments  of  old,  would  take  into 
"  their  care  not  only  the  deciding  of  our  contentious  law- 
"  cases  and  brawls,  but  the  managing  of  our  public  sports 
"  and  festival  pastimes  " ;  and  he  had  explained  his  meaning 
farther  by  advising  "the  procurement  of  wise  and  artful 
"  recitations  "  and  other  "  eloquent  and  graceful  enticements  " 
for  the  instruction  and  improvement  of  the  nation,  "  not 
"  only  in  pulpits,  but,  after  another  persuasive  method,  at 
"  set  and  solemn  paneguries  in  theatres,  porches,  or  what 
"other  place1."  And,  if  not  then  a  foe  to  the  Acted 
1  Reason  of  Church-Government,  1641. 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  663 

Drama,  much  less  had  he  objected  to  the  Drama  as  a  form 
of  poetic  literature.  On  the  contrary,  he  had  himself  tended 
to  that  form  by  preference  in  his  meditations,  after  his 
return  from  Italy,  over  "  something-  "  in  English  to  be  "  so 
written  to  aftertimes  as  they  should  not  willingly  let  it 
die,"  and  in  his  collection  in  1640  and  1641  of  subjects  from 
Scripture  and  from  British  history  from  among  which  he 
might  select  the  "  something "  that  promised  best.  All  or 
most  of  those  subjects,  including  Paradise  Lost  itself,  had 
been  projected  in  the  form  of  tragedies  ;  and,  though  in 
announcing  his  literary  aspirations  to  the  public  he  had  di- 
lated on  the  competing  claims  of  the  Epic  and  the  Lyric,  his 
deliberate  affection  seemed  still  to  be  for  "  those  Dramatic 
constitutions  wherein  Sophocles  and  Euripides  reign,"  and 
of  which  he  found  Biblical  examples  in  the  Song  of  Solomon 
and  the  Apocalypse1. — So  to  Milton's  twenty-fourth  year 
and  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  Wars.  In  the  suppression  of 
the  Stage  then  by  the  Long  Parliament,  and  in  its  abeyance 
thenceforward  till  the  eve  of  the  Restoration,  he  had,  doubt- 
less, acquiesced  without  difficulty,  if  only  on  grounds  of 
political  or  social  necessity.  With  this  acquiescence,  however, 
there  had  come  necessarily  a  weakening  of  his  private  affec- 
tion for  the  dramatic  form  itself.  The  Acted  Drama  having 
vanished,  there  was  less  of  the  dramatic  taste  and  instinct 
in  poetry  than  there  had  been,  less  of  inducement  to  abide 
by  the  dramatic  form  in  writing.  Hence,  when  Paradise 
Lost  was  resumed,  it  was  not  as  a  tragedy  with  choruses, 
but  as  an  epic. — But  the  reinstitution  of  the  Stage  at  the 
Restoration,  and  the  prodigious  dramatic  bustle  of  Davenant's 
renewed  Laureateship,  had  not  been  without  effects  upon 
Milton.  No  more  could  he  witness  acted  plays,  good  or 
bad  ;  but  of  all  that  Davenant  had  been  doing  for  his 
theatre,  and  Killigrew  for  his,  and  of  the  plays  produced 
at  the  two  theatres,  and  especially  the  rhymed  tragedies 
of  Orrery,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  Dryden,  and  others,  he  had 
heard  and  tasted  enough  in  his  privacy.  Why  should  he 
not   revert  to   the  dramatic    form    himself,   in   at   least   one 

>  See  ante,  Vol.  II.  117—119. 


664  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

poetic  performance  of  his  later  years,  if  only  to  show  these 
rhymers  and  playwrights  what  a  drama  should  be  ?  The  story 
of  the  Hebrew  Samson  had  been  in  his  repertory  of  subjects 
for  possible  dramas  since  1641,  when  he  had  jotted  down 
"  Samson  Pursop/wrus  or  llyhristes  or  Samson  Marrying  or 
Ramath-Lechi"  as  a  likely  subject  from  Judges  xvi1.  He 
had  jotted  down  these  subjects  then  on  mere  poetic  specula- 
tion, little  knowing-  how  much  of  his  own  future  life  was 
to  correspond  with  the  fate  of  that  particular  hero  of  the 
Hebrews.  The  experience  had  come,  coincidence  after  coinci- 
dence, shock  after  shock,  till  there  was  not  one  of  all  the 
Hebrew  heroes  so  constantly  in  his  imagination  as  the  blind 
Samson  captive  among  the  Philistines.  If  he  were  to  write 
a  scriptural  tragedy  now,  not  Abraham,  nor  Lot,  nor  Joshua, 
nor  Gideon,  nor  Saul,  nor  David,  nor  Ahab,  nor  Hezekiah, 
nor  any  of  those  others  whose  lives  he  had  once  contemplated 
as  fit  for  dramatic  treatment,  could  compete  in  his  regards 
with  Samson  the  Wrestler.  A  tragedy  on  Samson  would  be 
in  effect  a  metaphor  of  the  tragedy  of  his  own  life.  That, 
therefore,  by  destiny  as  much  as  by  choice,  was  Milton's 
dramatic  subject  after  the  Restoration. 

In  his  preface  to  the  poem,  entitled  "  Of  that  sort  of 
Dramatic  Poem  called  Tragedy,"  Milton  asserts  his  con- 
tinued or  revived  belief  in  the  nobleness  of  Tragedy  as  a 
form  of  literature,  but  expounds  also  his  ideal  of  Tragedy, 
and  informs  his  readers  what  peculiarities  they  are  to  expect 
in  the  specimen  of  Tragedy  now  before  them.  "  Tragedy," 
he  says,  "  as  it  was  anciently  composed,  hath  been  ever  held 
"  the  gravest,  moralest,  and  most  profitable  of  all  other 
"  poems  ;  therefore  said  by  Aristotle  to  be  of  power,  by  rais- 
"  ing  pity  and  fear  or  terror,  to  purge  the  mind  of  those 
"  and  such-like  passions :  that  is,  to  temper  and  reduce 
"  them  to  just  measure  with  a  kind  of  delight,  stirred 
"  up  by  reading  or  seeing  those  passions  well  imitated." 
Philosophers  and  the  gravest  writers  in  all  ages,  he  goes  on 
to  say,  have  given  their  testimony  in  favour  of  Tragedy 
by  quoting  from  the  tragic  poets  ;    a  verse  from  Euripides, 

i  See  ante,  Vol.  II.  p.  110. 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  665 

quoted  by  St.  Paul,  is  actually  bedded  into  the  text  of  the 
New  Testament1;  according"  to  one  eminent  commentator 
the  whole  book  of  the  Apocalypse  was  a  tragedy  divided 
into  acts  and  choruses  ;  Emperors  and  Kings  had  been 
ambitious  to  write  a  tragedy  ;  and  one  had  been  written 
by  Gregory  Nazianzen,  a  Father  of  the  Church.  "  This  is 
"  mentioned/'  he  continues,  "  to  vindicate  Tragedy  from  the 
"  small  esteem,  or  rather  infamy,  which  in  the  account  of 
"  many  it  undergoes  at  this  day,  with  other  common  inter- 
"  ludes  ;  happening  through  the  poet's  error  of  intermixing 
"  comic  stuff  with  tragic  sadness  and  gravity,  or  introducing 
"  trivial  and  vulgar  persons  :  which  by  all  judicious  hath 
"  been  counted  absurd,  and  brought  in  without  discretion, 
"  corruptly  to  gratify  the  people."  It  is  impossible  not  to 
see  a  reflection  here  upon  the  practice  of  Shakespeare  and 
others  of  the  Elizabethans.  In  the  present  tragedy,  at  all 
events,  that  fault  is  avoided.  It  is  a  tragedy  after  the 
severe  Greek  model,  rather  than  after  the  recent  English  ; 
and  of  its  plot  and  other  merits  "  they  only  will  best  judge 
"  who  are  not  unacquainted  with  iEschylus,  Sophocles,  and 
"  Euripides,  the  three  tragic  poets  unequalled  yet  by  any." 
The  dialogue  is  interspersed  with  chorus,  after  the  Greek 
manner,  still  kept  up  by  the  Italians  ;  and  the  verse  in  the 
chorus  is  irregular  and  of  all  sorts.  One  of  the  so-called 
unities  at  least  has  been  studied  :  for  "  the  circumscription 
"  of  time  wherein  the  whole  drama  begins  and  ends  is, 
"  according  to  ancient  rule  and  best  example,  within  the 
"  space  of  twenty-four  hours."  Formal  or  numerical  divi- 
sion into  act  and  scene  is  omitted,  that  being  only  a 
custom  of  convenience  for  the  stag"e,  "  to  which  this  work 
never  was  intended." — The  last  words  are  significant.  They 
do  not  imply  that  Milton  would  not  willingly  have  con- 
sented to  the  production  of  his  Samson  on  the  stage  had  it 
been  possible.  My  belief  is  that  he  would  have  regarded 
such  a  production  as  an  example  towards  the  restoration  of 


1  1  Corinth,  xv.  33 :  "Evil  communi-  found  both  in  a  fragment  of  Euri- 
cations  corrupt  good  manners."  The  pides  and  in  one  of  the  comic  poet 
<  \vi  ek  so  translated  is  an  Iambic  verse,       Sfenander. 


666  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  stage  to  its  right  uses,  just  as  my  belief  is  that  now 
or  at  any  time  Samson  Agonistes,  in  proper  hands,  might 
make  a  grand  stage  performance.  But,  practically,  there 
was  no  question  on  the  subject.  Neither  Killigrew  of  the 
King's  theatre,  nor  Davenant's  successors  in  the  management 
of  the  Duke's,  wanted  any  such  thing  ;  nor  perhaps  would 
the  authorities  have  allowed  the  representation.  In  short, 
Milton  had  published  the  tragedy  merely  as  a  poem  to 
be  read. 

Published  at  a  time  when  the  tragedies  most  in  repute 
were  such  as  Orrery's  Mustapka,  Howard's  Indian  Queen,  and 
Dryden's  Indian  Emperor,  Tyrannic  Love,  and  Conquest  of 
Granada,  the  new  poem  was  a  lecture  in  literary  art.  Critics 
would  note  at  once  that  the  dialogue  was  in  blank  verse,  and 
yet  that  Milton  had  not  deigned  even  to  mention  that  fact  in 
his  preface,  but  had  treated  the  demand  for  rhyme  in  tragedy 
as  a  temporary  hallucination,  unworthy  of  notice.  The  poem 
was  therefore  Milton's  third  appearance  in  behalf  of  blank 
verse  in  the  controversy  then  raging.  In  his  Paradise  Lost 
and  his  Paradise  Regained,  indeed,  his  championship  of  blank 
verse  had  been  bolder  than  it  was  in  the  Samson,  inasmuch  as 
in  the  former  two  he  had  vindicated  its  supremacy  even  in 
the  epic,  where  no  one  had  dreamt  of  seeing  it,  while  in  the 
last  he  only  added  his  authority  to  that  of  many  others  in 
behalf  of  the  retention  of  the  old  English  practice  of  blank 
verse  for  the  drama.  Still  the  fact  that  he  had  thus  kept 
to  blank  verse  in  his  tragic  dialogue  could  not  escape  remark. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  had  introduced  some  puzzling  novelties 
of  versification  in  his  choruses  and  the  lyrical  soliloquies  of 
Samson.  His  consciousness  that  they  were  novelties  appears 
from  the  elaborate  sentence  on  the  subject  in  his  preface.  In 
the  verse  of  his  lyrical  passages,  he  there  explained,  he  held 
himself  free  from  any  law  of  metrical  uniformity ;  and,  on 
examination,  critics  would  see  this  to  be  the  fact.  The 
choruses  and  lyrical  pieces  are,  in  the  main,  in  iambic 
measure,  like  the  dialogue ;  but  the  lines  are  of  varying 
lengths,  from  short  lines  of  two  iambi  each  to  the  Alexan- 
drine of  six  iambi.     Being  also  for  the  most  part  unrhymed, 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  667 

they  differ  in  that  respect  from  the  so-called  Pindarics  of 
Cowley  and  others.  On  the  whole  the  verse  in  the  lyric 
parts  of  Samson  may  be  described  as  that  of  the  free  musical 
paragraph,  the  length  of  line  determined  by  the  amount  and 
kind  of  meaning-  and  feeling  from  moment  to  moment.  There 
are,  however,  two  complicating-  specialities.  In  the  first 
place,  though  the  verse  in  the  lyric  parts  is  prevailing-ly 
iambic,  yet  often  there  are  such  liberties  as  give  a  trochaic 
effect,  and  now  and  then  there  are  the  most  extraordinary 
dactylic  or  anapaestic  touches  in  singie  lines  or  in  passages. 
In  the  second  place,  the  free  musical  paragraph,  especially 
when  the  chorus  speaks,  tends  to  break  itself,  by  pauses, 
into  irregular  stanzas,  and  to  aid  in  this  there  is  sometimes 
the  subtle  introduction  of  a  rhyme,  and  even  of  a  rhyme 
quaint  in  itself,  into  the  flow  of  the  blank.  One  marks  with 
interest  this  curious  occasional  use  of  rhyme  by  Milton  in 
the  lyric  parts  of  his  Samson,  three  years  after  he  had  taken 
farewell  of  rhyme,  as  if  for  ever,  in  his  prefatory  note  to 
Paradise  Lost.  In  that  note,  indeed,  there  had  been  just  a 
shade  of  reserve  for  rhyme  in  smaller  pieces ;  but,  even  had 
there  been  no  reserve,  Milton  was  too  exquisite  a  metrical 
artist  to  feel  himself  bound  by  an  absolute  law.  While  all  his 
poems  may  be  studied  for  their  metrical  art,  the  Lycidas  of 
his  early  manhood  and  the  Samson  Agonistes  of  his  later  age 
are  perhaps  the  most  instructive  and  illustrative  in  the  matter 
of  his  theory  of  metrical  liberty  and  artifice.  The  later  poem 
is  the  sterner  and  more  daring  in  its  prosody,  as  in  its  sub- 
ject and  nature ;  but  both  are  consummate  specimens  of 
English  verse,  and  they  have  points  in  common  in  that 
character l. 

If  the  critic  passed  from  such  minutiae  of  form  and 
mechanism  to  the  substance  of  the  poem,  the  superiority  to 
all  that  was  contemporary  ought  to  have  been  equally 
apparent.  Here  was  a  classic  work,  simple  and  strong  in 
structure,  noble  and  beautiful  in  thought  and  language,  with 
not  a  languid  or  flaccid  passage  in  it,  but  every  paragraph 

1  The  chorus  from  line  293  to  line       for  some  of  the  peculiarities  of  verse 
329  of  the  Samson  may  be  referred  to       described  in  the  text. 


668  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

like  wrought  metal  for  weight  and  finish.     It  was  as  if  there 
were  an  English  Sophocles  or  Euripides  writing  on  a  Hebrew 
subject.      Here  again,  as  in  Paradise  Regained,  the  optical 
coherence  of  the  story  was  perfect.     Milton  had  studied  the 
entire  history  of  Samson  as   it  is  told  in   Judges    xiii-xvi, 
and  knew  it  in  its  every  detail ;  but  what  he  images  forth 
in  the  drama  is  the  last  day  of  the  hero's  life  in  his  captivity 
among  the  Philistines  : — It  was  a  holiday  among  the  Philis- 
tines in  honour  of  their  god  Dagon,  and  we  hear  and  see 
the  blind   Samson    soliloquizing  in    the    open   air   near   his 
prison  in  Gaza,  relieved  for  that  day  from  his  task-work,  but 
with  his  ankles  fettered.     The  chorus  of  his  countrymen  of 
Dan  comes  in,  condoling  with  him  and  comforting  him  ;  and 
his  aged  father,  Manoa,  comes  in,  condoling  and  comforting 
too,  and  intimating  his  hope   of  success  in  his  suit  to  the 
Philistine  lords  for  his  son's  ransom.     Dalila,  the  treacherous 
wife,  sails  in,   decked   like   a  ship  of  Tarsus  bound  for  the 
Isles,  and  there  is  the  scene  of  accusation  and  recrimination 
between  her  and    Samson.      The  Philistine  giant,   Harapha 
of  Gath,   next  strides  in,  taunts   Samson,  is  answered  with 
defiance    and    counter-taunts,    and    retires    crestfallen,    but 
threatening  revenge.      Soon,  accordingly,   there  arrives  the 
public  officer,  sent  to  bring  Samson  to  the  temple  of  Dagon, 
where  the  Philistine  lords,  and  a  vast  multitude  with  them, 
are  assembled  in  festival  to  the  god.     They  want  to  see  their 
great  enemy  in  his  slavery  and  blindness,  and  be  amused  by 
his  feats  of  strength.     He  refuses  to  do  wrong  to  his  religion 
by  attending  their  heathenish  rites.     No  sooner  is  the  officer 
gone  with  this  refusal  than  a   thought   occurs  to   Samson, 
which  he  does  not  reveal ;  and,  when  the  officer  returns,  with 
powers  to  drag  him  to  the  temple  by  engines  if  he  resists, 
he  goes  willingly.     "  Go,  and  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  be  thy 
guide/'  say  the  chorus  watching  him  depart,  they  themselves 
remaining  behind.     Manoa,  who  had  gone  out  on  the  busi- 
ness of  his  son's  ransom,  now  returns,  and  informs  the  chorus 
how  he  has  negotiated  with  the  chief  Philistine  lords  one 
by  one  and  considers  the  business  nearly  concluded.     While 
Manoa  and  the   chorus  are  conversing,   there  is   heard  the 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  669 

great  shout  which  announces  that  Samson  has  arrived  at  the 
temple  and  is  under  the  gaze  of  his  assembled  enemies. 
The  chorus  and  Manoa  then  resume  their  talk,  Manoa  pictur- 
ing the  peaceful  years  which  may  yet  be  in  reserve  for  his 
son  when  he  is  restored  to  his  country,  there  to  be  tended  in 
his  blindness,  and  honoured  for  his  past  achievements.  The 
chorus  are  sympathizing  with  the  old  man  and  encouraging 
his  hope,  when 

"  0,  what  noise  ! 

Mercy  of  Heaven  !   what  hideous  noise  was  that  1 

Horribly  loud,  unlike  the  former  shout." 

In  consternation,  Manoa  and  the  chorus  are  conjecturing 
what  the  dreadful  accident  may  have  been  when  there  runs 
in  a  breathless  messenger.  He  is  a  Hebrew  who  had  chanced 
to  be  at  the  temple  on  the  skirts  of  the  Philistine  crowd,  and 
had  seen  Samson  brought  in  ;  and  now  he  relates  what  had 
happened.  The  building  was  a  great  theatre,  one  half  of  it 
arched  over  and  supported  by  two  main  pillars  in  the  midst, 
the  rest  open  to  the  sky.  Within  the  covered  space,  on  seats 
rising  tier  after  tier,  were  the  lords  and  all  others  of  any 
considerable  rank;  in  the  open  space  was  the  unprivileged 
throno",  clustered  on  scaffolds  and  benches.  Samson  had  been 
brought  in,  clad  in  state  livery  as  a  public  servant,  preceded 
by  pipes  and  timbrels,  and  attended  by  an  armed  guard. 
After  the  first  shout  of  his  reception,  he  had  patiently  let 
himself  be  led  to  the  stage  where  his  feats  of  strength  were 
expected,  and  had  performed  incredibly  whatever  of  that  sort 
had  been  demanded.  For  an  interval  of  rest  his  guide  had 
then  led  him  to  the  central  spot  between  the  two  pillars; 
against  which,  as  if  over-tired,  he  leant  a  little  while,  with 
his  arms  outstretched  to  feel  them.  He  had  stooped  for  a 
moment  as  if  praying,  and  then  for  the  first  time  had  spoken 
out.  Hitherto,  he  said  to  the  Philistines,  his  feats  had  been 
according  to  command,  but  he  would  now  perform  for  them 
one  more  of  his  own  accord. 

"  This  uttered,  straining  all  his  nerves,  he  bowed  ; 
As  with  the  force  of  winds  and  waters  pent 


670  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

When  mountains  tremble,  those  two  massy  pillars 
With  horrible  convulsion  to  and  fro 
He  tugged,  he  shook,  till  down  they  came,  and  drew 
The  whole  roof  after  them  with  burst  of  thunder 
Upon  the  heads  of  all  who  sat  beneath, 
Lords,  ladies,  captains,  counsellors,  or  priests, 
Their  choice  nobility  and  flower,  not  only 
Of  this,  but  each  Philistian  city  round, 
Met  from  all  parts  to  solemnize  this  feast. 
Samson,  with  these  immixed,  inevitably 
Pulled  down  the  same  destruction  on  himself : 
The  vulgar  only  scaped,  who  stood  without." 

Such  is  the  scheme  of  Milton's  drama,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  point  out  a  single  particular  in  which,  having-  chosen  for 
his  subject  the  Biblical  story  of  Samson's  dying-  revenge, 
he  has  overstrained  it  for  a  personal  purpose.  Neither  in 
the  plot  nor  in  the  language  of  the  dialogue  or  the  choruses 
is  anything  forced,  anything  inserted  that  is  out  of  keep- 
ing with  the  incidents  of  the  Hebrew  legend,  as  they  might 
be  reconceived  for  narration  by  the  coolest  poetic  artist. 
The  poem  indeed  was  offered  by  Milton  to  the  public  simply 
as  a  specimen  of  pure  and  careful  dramatic  production  after 
the  Greek  model.  This  is  seen  in  his  preface,  where  the 
points  discussed  are  exactly  such  as  might  have  been  dis- 
cussed in  a  critical  essay  by  Dryden  or  Boileau.  The  marvel, 
then,  is  that  this  purely  artistic  drama,  this  strictly  objective 
poetic  creation,  should  have  been  all  the  while  so  profoundly 
and  intensely  subjective.  Nothing  put  forth  by  Milton  in 
verse  in  his  whole  life  is  so  vehement  an  exhibition  of  his 
personality,  such  a  proclamation  of  his  own  thoughts  about 
himself  and  about  the  world  around  him,  as  his  Samson 
Agonistes.  But,  indeed,  there  is  no  marvel  in  the  matter. 
The  Hebrew  Samson  among  the  Philistines  and  the  English 
Milton  among  the  Londoners  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second  were,  to  all  poetic  intents,  one  and  the  same  person. 
They  were  one  and  the  same  not  only  by  the  similarity  of 
their  final  circumstances,  but  also  by  the  reminiscences  of 
their  previous  lives.     That  was,  no  doubt,  the  great  recom- 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  671 

mendation  to  Milton  in  his  last  years  of  the  subject  he  had 
thought  of  only  casually,  amid  so  many  others,  a  quarter  of 
a  century  before.  By  choosing-  that  subject  he  had  taken 
means  to  be  thoroughly  himself  once  more  in  addressing  his 
countrymen,  to  be  able  to  say  what  he  would  as  tremendously 
as  he  could,  and  yet  defy  the  censorship. 

Let  us  look  at  some  of  the  passages  which  Mr.  Tomkyns 
the  licencer  was  obliged  to  pass  for  the  press  because,  though 
the  writer  was  Mr.  Milton,  they  could  not  possibly  be  ejected 
from  a  tragedy  on  Samson  if  it  were  to  be  allowed  to  go 
forth  at  all. 

Take  Samson's  soliloquy  on  bis  blindness,  and  think  of 
Milton  as  you  read  : — 

"  But,  chief  of  all, 
0  loss  of  sight,  of  thee  I  most  complain. 
Blind  among  enemies  !    0  worse  than  chains, 
Dungeon,  or  beggary,  or  decrepit  age  ! 
Light,  the  prime  work  of  God,  to  me  is  extinct, 
And  all  her  various  objects  of  delight 
Annulled,  which  might  in  part  my  grief  have  eased. 
Inferior  to  the  vilest  now  become 
Of  man  or  worm,  the  vilest  here  excel  me  : 
They  creep,  yet  see ;     I,  dark  in  light,  exposed 
To  daily  fraud,  contempt,  abuse,  and  wrong, 
"Within  doors  or  without,  still  as  a  fool 
In  power  of  others,  never  in  my  own, — 
Scarce  half  I  seem  to  live,  dead  more  than  half. 
0  dark,  dark,  dark,  amid  the  blaze  of  noon, 
Irrecoverably  dark,  total  eclipse 
"Without  all  hope  of  day  ! 
0  first-created  beam,  and  thou  great  Word, 
'  Let  there  be  light,  and  light  was  over  all,' 
"Why  am  I  thus  bereaved  thy  prime  decree  ? 
The  Sun  to  me  is  dark 
And  silent  as  the  Moon 
"When  she  deserts  the  night, 
Hid  in  her  vacant  interlunar  cave. 
Since  light  so  necessary  is  to  life, 
And  almost  life  itself,  if  it  be  true 


672  LIFE   OF  MILTON  AND  HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 

That  light  is  in  the  soul, 

She  all  in  every  part,  why  was  the  sight 

To  such  a  tender  ball  as  the  eye  confined, 

So  obvious  and  so  easy  to  be  quenched, 

And  not,  as  feeling,  through  all  parts  diffused, 

That  she  might  look  at  will  through  every  pore  ? 

Then  had  I  not  been  thus  exiled  from  light, 

As  in  the  land  of  darkness,  yet  in  light, 

To  live  a  life  half  dead,  a  living  death, 

And  buried  ;    but,  0  yet  more  miserable  ! 

Myself  my  sepulchre,  a  moving  grave ; 

Buried,  yet  not  exempt, 

By  privilege  of  death  and  burial, 

From  worst  of  other  evils,  pains,  and  wrongs; 

But  made  hereby  obnoxious  more 

To  all  the  miseries  of  life, 

Life  in  captivity 

Among  inhuman  foes. 

But  who  are  these  1   for  with  joint  pace  I  hear 

The  tread  of  many  feet  steering  this  way ; 

Perhaps  my  enemies,  who  come  to  stare 

At  my  affliction,  and  perhaps  to  insult." 

Though  we  have  had  Milton's  own  word  to  Philaras  that 
lie  had  submitted  to  his  affliction  without  repining-,  and  his 
word  to  Cyriaek  Skinner  that  he  had  not  argued  against 
heaven's  will  or  bated  a  jot  of  heart  or  hope,  and  though 
we  have  seen  the  fact  for  ourselves  manifestly  enough,  there 
must  have  been  hours  and  hours,  especially  after  the  Re- 
storation, when  this  meditation  on  his  blindness  recurred 
to  him  overpoweringly,  and  his  dejection  was  extreme. 
Again,  while  Samson  speaks,  let  Milton  be  imagined  :  — 

"  Now  blind,  disheartened,  shamed,  dishonoured,  quelled, 
To  what  can  I  be  useful  ?    wherein  serve 
My  nation,  and  the  work  from  Heaven  imposed  1 
But  to  sit  idle  on  the  household  hearth, 
A  burdenous  drone ;  to  visitants  a  gaze, 
Or  pitied  object;    these   redundant  locks, 
Robustious  to  no  purpose,  clustering  down, 
Vain  monument  of  strength;    till  length  of  years 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  673 

And  sedentary  numbness  craze  my  limbs 
To  a  contemptible  old  age  obscure." 

The  depression  is  at  its  deepest  in  the  following"  lines,  the 
last  of  which  is  among-  the  most  pathetic  in  the  English 
language : — 

"  My  thoughts  portend 
That  these  dark  orbs  no  more  shall  treat  with  light, 
Nor  the  other  light  of  life  continue  long, 
But  yield  to  double  darkness  nigh  at  hand ; 
So  much  I  feel  my  genial  spirits  droop, 
My  hopes  all  flat  :     Nature  within  me  seems 
In  all  her  functions  weary  of  herself; 
My  race  of  glory  run,  and  race  of  shame, 
And  I  shall  shortly  be  with  them  that  rest." 

In  one  of  the  choruses  there  is  this  distinct  glance  at  the 
Restoration  itself,  with  all  its  circumstances  of  reaction  and  of 
revenge  on  the  regicides,  and  its  effects  on  Milton's  fortunes 
in  particular  : — 

"  God  of  our  fathers  !    what  is  Man, 
That  thou  towards  him  with  hand  so  various, — 
Or  might  I  say  contrarious  1 — 

Temper'st  thy  providence  through  his  short  course  : 
Not  evenly,  as  thou  rul'st 

The  angelic  orders,  and  inferior  creatures  mute, 
Irrational  and  brute  1 

Nor  do  I  name  of  men  the  common  rout, 
That,  wandering  loose  about, 
Grow  up  and  perish  as  the  summer  fly, 
Heads  without  name,  no  more  remembered ; 
But  such  as  thou  hast  solemnly  elected, 
With  gifts  and  graces  eminently  adorned, 
To  some  great  work,  thy  glory, 
And  people's  safety,  which  in  part  they  effect. 
Yet  toward  these,  thus  dignified,  thou  oft, 
Amidst  their  highth  of  noon, 

Changest  thy  countenance  and  thy  hand,  with  no  regard 
Of  highest  favours  past 
From  thee  on  them,  or  them  to  thee  of  service. 

VOL.  VI.  XX 


674  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Nor  only  dost  degrade  them,  or  remit 

To  life  obscured,  which  were  a  fair  dismission, 

But  throw'st  them  lower  than  thou  didst  exalt  them  high, — 

Unseemly  falls  in  human  eye, 

Too  grievous  for  the  trespass  or  omission  ; 

Oft  leav'st  them  to  the  hostile  sword 

Of  heathen  aud  profane,  their  carcases 

To  dogs  and  fowls  a  prey,  or  else  captived, 

Or  to  the  unjust  tribunals,  under  change  of  times, 

And  condemnation  of  the  ungrateful  multitude. 

If  these  they  scape,  perhaps  in  poverty 

With  sickness  and  disease  thou  bow'st  them  down, 

Painful  diseases  and  deformed, 

In  crude  old  age ; 

Though  not  disordinate,  yet  causeless  suffering 

The  punishment  of  dissolute  days." 

On  the  general  autobiographical  significance  of  the  episode 
of  Dalila's  entry  and  her  dialogue  with  Samson  there  has 
been  sufficient  remark  ;  but  it  may  not  have  been  noted  how 
much  of  the  following,  from  the  chorus  on  her  departure,  is 
almost  literal  excerpt  from  Milton's  Divorce  Pamphlets,  and 
how  strongly  the  whole  sums  up  his  incurably  perverted 
opinion  of  women  : — 

"  Is  it  for  that  such  outward  ornament 
Was  lavished  on  their  sex,  that  inward  gifts 
Were  left  for  haste  unfinished,  judgment  scant, 
Capacity  not  raised  to  apprehend 
Or  value  what  is  best 
In  choice,  but  oftest  to  affect  the  wrong  1 
Or  was  too  much  of  self-love  mixed, 
Of  constancy  no  root  infixed, 
That  either  they  love  nothing,  or  not  long  1 
Whate'er  it  be,  to  wisest  men  and  best 
Seeming  at  first  all  heavenly  under  virgin  veil, 
Soft,  modest,  meek,  demure, 
Once  joined,  the  contrary  she  proves, — a  thorn 
Inte3tine,  far  within  defensive  arms 
A  cleaving  mischief,  in  his  way  to  virtue 
Adverse  and  turbulent;  or  by  her  charms 


SAMSON  AGOXISTES.  675 

Draws  him  awry,  enslaved 

With  dotage,  and  his  sense  depraved 

To  folly  and  shameful  deeds,  which  ruin  ends. 

What  pilot  so  expert  but  needs  must  wreck, 

Embarked  with  such  a  steers-mate  at  the  helm  1 

Favoured  of  Heaven  who  finds 
One  virtuous,  rarely  found, 
That  in  domestic  good  combines ! 
Happy  that  house  !    his  way  to  peace  is  smooth  : 
But  virtue  which  breaks  through  all  opposition, 
And  all  temptation  can  remove, 
Most  shines  and  most  is  acceptable  above. 

Therefore  God's  universal  law 
Gave  to  the  man  despotic  power 
Over  his  female  in  due  awe, 
Nor  from  that  right  to  part  an  hour, 
Smile  she  or  lour : 
So  shall  he  least  confusion  draw 
On  his  whole  life,  not  swayed 
By  female  usurpation  nor  dismayed." 

In  the  chained  Samson's  challenge  to  the  giant  Harapha 
may  we  not  read  Milton's  own  unabated  pugnacity,  his 
longing  for  another  Salmasius  to  grapple  with,  his  chafino- 
under  the  public  silence  to  which  he  is  enforced  in  the  midst 
of  repeated  attacks  and  insults  ? 

"Therefore,  without  feign'd  shifts,  let  be  assigned 
Some  narrow  place  enclosed,  where  sight  may  give  thee, 
Or  rather  flight,  no  great  advantage  on  me; 
Then  put  on  all  thy  gorgeous  arms,  thy  helmet 
And  brigand  ine  of  brass,  thy  broad  habergeon, 
Vant-brace  and  greaves  and  gauntlet ;  add  thy  spear, 
A  weaver's  beam,  and  seven-times-folded  shield  : 
I  only  with  an  oaken  staff  will  meet  thee, 
And  raise  such  outcries  on  thy  clattered  iron, 
Which  long  shall  not  withhold  me  from  thy  head, 
That  in  a  little  time,  while  breath  remains  thee, 
Thou  oft  shalt  wish  thyself  at  Gath,  to  boast 
Again  in  safety  what  thou  wouldst  have  done 
To  Samson,  but  shalt  never  see  Gath  more." 

X  X  2 


676  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

The  management  needed  for  Milton's  escape  from  punish- 
ment at  the  Restoration,  and  the  variety  of  opinions  in  Par- 
liament and  at  Court  in  his  case,  seem  to  be  hinted  at  in 
Manoa's  account  of  his  negotiations  with  the  Philistine  lords 
for  the  ransom  of  Samson  : — 

"  I  have  attempted,  one  by  one,  the  lords, 
Either  at  home,  or  through  the  high  street  passing, 
With  supplication  prone  and  father's  tears, 
To  accept  of  ransom  for  my  son,  their  prisoner. 
Some  much  averse  I  found,  and  wondrous  harsh, 
Contemptuous,   proud,  set  on  revenge  and  spite ; 
That  part  most  reverenced  Dagon  and  his  priests  : 
Others  more  moderate  seeming,  but  their  aim 
Private  reward,  for  which  both  God  and  State 
They  easily  would  set  to  sale  :  a  third 
More  generous  far  and  civil,  who  confessed 
They  had  enough  revenged,  having  reduced 
Their  foe  to  misery  beneath  their  fears; 
The  rest  was  magnanimity  to  remit, 
If  some  convenient  ransom  were  proposed." 

But  in  the  entire  idea  of  the  drama  what  else  have  we  than 
a  representation  of  the  Puritan  and  Republican  Milton  in  his 
secret  antagonism  to  all  the  powers  and  all  the  fashions  of 
the  Restoration  ?  Who  are  the  Philistines  but  the  partisans 
of  the  Restoration,  all  and  sundry,  its  authors  and  abettors 
before  the  fact,  and  its  multitudinous  applauders  and  syco- 
phants through  the  nation  afterwards  ?  Who  are  the 
Philistine  lords  and  ladies,  and  captains,  and  priests,  as- 
sembled in  their  seats  within  the  covered  part  of  the 
temple  of  Dagon  on  the  day  of  festival  ?  Who  but  Charles 
himself,  and  the  Duke  of  York,  and  the  whole  pell-mell 
of  the  Clarendons,  Buckinghams,  Buckhursts,  Killigrews, 
Castlemaines,  Moll  Davises,  Nell  Gwynns,  Sheldons,  Morleys, 
and  some  hundreds  of  others,  men  and  women,  priests  and 
laymen,  with  even  Anglesey,  Howard,  and  Dryden  included, 
that  formed  the  court-society  of  England  in  that  most  swinish 
period  of  her  annals  ?  They  were  of  all  varieties  individually, 
the  more  respectable  and  the  less   respectable,  and  some  of 


SAMSON  AGONISTES.  677 

them  now  in  friendly  relations  with  Milton;  but,  collec- 
tively, in  his  regard,  they  were  all  Philistines.  There  were 
moments,  I  believe,  in  Milton's  musings  by  himself,  when  it 
was  a  fell  pleasure  to  him  to  imagine  some  exertion  of  his 
strength,  like  that  legendary  one  of  Samson's,  by  which, 
clutching  the  two  central  pillars  of  the  Philistine  temple, 
he  might  tug  and  strain  till  he  brought  down  the  whole 
fabric  in  crash  upon  the  heads  of  the  heathenish  congrega- 
tion, perishing  himself  in  the  act,  but  leaving  England 
bettered  by  the  carnage.  That  was  metaphorical  musing 
only,  a  dream  of  the  embers,  all  fantastical.  But  was  there 
not  a  very  real  sense  in  which  he  had  been  performing  feats 
of  strength  under  the  gaze  of  the  Philistine  congregation, 
to  their  moral  amazement,  though  not  to  their  physical 
destruction?  Degraded  at  the  Restoration,  dismissed  into 
obscurity,  and  thought  of  for  some  years,  when  thought  of 
at  all,  only  as  a  shackled  wretch  or  monster,  incapacitated 
for  farther  mischief  or  farther  activity  of  any  kind,  had  he 
not  re-emerged  most  gloriously  ?  By  his  Paradise  Lost 
already,  and  now  by  his  Paradise  Regained  and  this  very 
Samson  Agonistes,  he  had  entitled  himself  to  the  place  of 
preemineney  in  the  literature  of  that  Philistine  age,  the 
Philistines  themselves  being  the  judges.  This  man,  the 
generous  Dryden  had  said,  surpassed  them  all.  And  so 
even  the  closing  semi-chorus  of  the  drama,  though  directly 
a  chaunt  of  triumph  over  Samson's  great  revenge  and  end, 
will  bear,  and  even  recmires,  an  interpretation  appropriating 
it  to  Milton  himself.  No  one  can  study  the  subtle  wording 
and  curious  imagery  without  seeing  that  the  secondary  idea 
in  Milton's  mind  was  that  of  his  own  extraordinary  self- 
transmutation,  before  the  eyes  of  the  astonished  Restoration 
world,  out  of  his  former  character  of  horrible  prose  icono- 
clast into  that  of  supreme  and  towering  poet : — 

"  But  he,  though  blind  of  sight, 
Despised,  and  thought  extinguished  quite, 
AVith  inward  eyes  illuminated, 
His  fiery  virtue  roused 
From  under  ashes  into  sudden  flame, 


678  LIFE   OF    MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

And  as  an  evening  dragon  came, 

Assailant  on  the  perched  roosts 

And  nests  in  order  ranged 

Of  tame  villatic  fowl,  but  as  an  eagle 

His  cloudless  thunder  bolted  on  their  heads. 

So  Virtue,  given  for  lost, 

Depressed  and  overthrown,  as  seemed, 

Like  that  self-begotten  bird, 

In  the  Arabian  woods  embost, 

That  no  second  knows  nor  third, 

And  lay  erewhile  a  holocaust, 

From  out  her  ashy  womb  now  teemed, 

Revives,  reflourishes,  then  vigorous  most 

When  most  unactive  deemed  ; 

And,  though  her  body  die,  her  fame  survives, 

A  secular  bird,  ages  of  lives." 

And  what  all  the  while,  to  ordinary  appearance,  was  this 
man  who  could  be  so  tremendous  still  in  his  self-consciousness 
in  private  reverie?  Only  that  spare  figure,  of  middle  stature 
or  a  little  less,  whom  people  saw  led  about,  generally  in  a  grey 
overcoat,  by  the  bookseller  Millington,  or  by  some  other 
friend,  in  the  streets  between  Bunhill  and  Little  Britain. 
There  was  still  a  tinge  of  healthy  red  in  his  fair  complexion, 
and  any  trace  of  grey  in  his  hair  did  not  affect  the  natural 
lightish  auburn  ;  but  he  was  beginning  to  look  old,  and  his 
gait  was  feeble  from  established  gout.  This  disease,  certainly 
not  brought  on  in  his  case  by  a  "  disordinate"  life,  had  made 
such  advances  as  to  show  itself  now  in  the  extreme  form  of 
the  swelling  and  stiffening  of  the  finger-joints  by  the  peculiar 
chalky  deposits  called  gout-calculi.  From  accounts  of  the 
gout  in  medical  books  one  learns  that  affections  of  the  eye, 
ending  in  loss  of  sight,  are  not  an  unfrequent  accompaniment. 
There  may  therefore  have  been  some  organic  connexion 
between  Milton's  blindness,  total  since  1652,  and  the  gout 
which  had  declared  itself  so  strongly  in  his  later  years  as 
then  to  have  superseded  apparently  every  other  ailment  to 
which  he  had  been  liable. 

As  we  have  to  thank  Richardson  for  our  best  glimpse  of 


milton's  habits  in  his  last  years.  679 

Milton  walking-  out  of  doors  in  his  later  years,  so  we  have  to 
thank  him  for  our  best  glimpse  of  Milton  as  he  was  to  be 
seen  about  the  same  time  at  home  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill. 
"  I  have  heard  many  years  since,"  says  Richardson,  "  that  he 
"  used  to  sit  in  a  grey  coarse  cloth  coat  at  the  door  of  his 
(t  house,  near  Bunhill  Fields,  without  Moorgate,  in  warm 
"  sunny  weather,  to  enjoy  the  fresh  air,  and  so,  as  well  as 
"  in  his  room,  received  the  visits  of  people  of  distinguished 
"  parts,  as  well  as  quality  ;  and  very  lately  I  had  the  good 
"  fortune  to  have  another  picture  of  him  from  an  aged 
"  clergyman  in  Dorsetshire,  Dr.  Wright.  He  found  him  in 
"  a  small  house,  he  thinks  but  one  room  on  a  floor.  In  that 
"  up  one  pair  of  stairs,  which  was  hung  with  a  rusty  green, 
"  he  found  John  Milton,  sitting  in  an  elbow  chair,  black 
"  clothes,  and  neat  enough,  pale  but  not  cadaverous,  his 
"  hands  and  fingers  gouty  and  with  chalk-stones.  Among 
"  other  discourse  he  expressed  himself  to  this  purpose  :  that, 
"  was  he  free  from  the  pain  this  gave  him,  his  blindness 
"  would  be  tolerable."  Neat  black  within-doors  when  visitors 
were  expected,  and  rough  grey  for  home  deshabille,  as  for  out- 
of-doors  walking,  were  therefore  Milton's  latest  colours.  How 
he  appeared  to  visitors  Richardson  would  have  us  conceive 
more  minutely  by  reminding  us  that  he  wore  his  light  brown 
hair  parted  from  the  crown  to  the  middle  of  the  forehead? 
and  "  somewhat  flat,  long,  and  waving,  a  little  curled."  The 
Faithorne  portrait  tells  us  much  the  same.  Of  his  manner 
with  his  visitors,  or  with  those  of  them  with  whom  he  was 
least  familiar,  the  accounts  are  uniform.  "  His  deportment 
"  was  manly  and  resolute,  but  with  a  gentlemanly  affability," 
Richardson  had  heard ;  and,  on  the  whole,  the  impression 
given  is  that  of  a  stately  and  deliberate  courtesy,  with  just 
a  shade  of  austerity.  "  His  voice  was  musically  agreeable," 
says  Richardson  ;  which  is  no  news,  and  would  not  be  worth 
repeating,  but  for  a  particular  from  Aubrey  which  may  go 
along  with  it.  "  He  pronounced  the  letter  r  very  hard,"- 
says  Aubrey,  having  noted  the  fact  himself,  and  adding  this 
comment  by  Dryden,  when  he  and  Dryden  talked  of  the 
peculiarity  :    "  litem  eanina,  the  dog-letter,  a  certain  sign  of 


680  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  a  satirical  wit."  Whatever  tendency  to  the  satirical  went 
along"  with  the  strong*  utterance  of  the  dog-letter  in  Milton's 
case  showed  itself  chiefly,  of  course,  in  those  hours  of  the  day 
when  he  was  at  liberty  for  conversation. 

His  economy  of  his  day,  if  we  may  trust  Aubrey  and 
Toland,  was  very  strict.  He  rose,  they  say,  as  early  as  four 
o'clock  in  summer,  and  five  in  winter,  but  would  sometimes, 
Toland  judiciously  hints,  lie  in  bed  beyond  those  hours.  In 
either  case  he  began  the  day  by  having*  a  chapter  or  two  of 
the  Hebrew  Bible  read  to  him  by  his  "  man,"  as  Aubrey  calls 
him,  i.  e.,  we  are  to  suppose,  by  whatever  scholar  he  had  in 
attendance  upon  him,  for  love  or  money,  as  his  servant  in 
such  matters.  Breakfast  downstairs,  and  then  "  contempla- 
tion "  by  himself  in  his  upper  room  or  study,  carried  him  on 
to  about  seven  o'clock,  when  his  "  man  "  came  to  him  again 
for  the  solid  work  of  the  day  in  the  upstairs  room.  That 
consisted  of  reading-  and  dictation  till  the  mid-day  dinner, 
the  man  then  changing"  from  reader  to  amanuensis  by  direc- 
tion, and  the  writing-  generally  be ing-  "  as  much  as  the 
reading/'  says  Aubrey.  At  the  mid-day  dinner  down  stairs, 
Milton  "  took  what  was  set  before  him,"  says  Richardson, 
"  which  was  anything-  most  in  season  or  the  easiest  procured," 
explains  Toland,  both  agreeing  that  he  was  "  extraordinary 
temperate  in  his  diet "  and  "  no  friend  to  sharp  or  strong 
liquors."  He  had  his  preferences,  however,  in  matters  of 
diet,  like  other  people,  and  his  wife  knew  them.  Dinner 
over,  some  three  or  four  hours  of  the  afternoon  were  given 
to  exercise  and  recreation.  Walking,  either  out  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood, or  in  his  own  garden,  was  always  the  favourite 
exercise;  but  some  kind  of  swinging  machine  served  him  for 
more  artificial  exercise  within  doors  in  wet  weather.  What- 
ever other  recreation  there  was,  music  was  indispensable,  and 
the  organ,  or  some  other  instrument,  with  singing,  or  listening 
to  song,  whiled  away  part  of  every  afternoon.  At  about  four 
o'clock  Milton  seems  generally  to  have  returned  to  his  own 
room  again  for  an  hour  or  so  by  himself;  but  from  six  to 
eight  he  was  again  accessible  to  his  friends.  At  eight  o'clock 
"  he  went  down  to  supper,  which  was  usually  olives  or  some 


milton's  habits  in  his  last  years.  681 

"  light  thing;  and  after  supper  he  smoked  his  pipe  and  drank 
"  a  glass  of  water,  and  went  to  bed."  We  do  not  hear  of  a 
pipe  at  any  other  time  of  the  day,  but  may  suspect  as  we 
like.  Doubtless  he  was  temperate  in  this  as  in  every  other 
indulgence.  "  Temperate,  rarely  drank  between  meals,"  says 
Aubrey,  thinking  that  an  exceptional  trait. 

Such  being  the  usual  round  of  Milton's  day,  visitors 
in  general,  we  can  see,  could  take  tbeir  chance  of  finding 
him  between  one  and  four  in  the  afternoon,  but  were  surest 
to  find  him  between  six  and  eight.  Company  with  him 
at  table,  either  at  the  mid-day  dinner  or  at  the  eight- 
o'clock  supper,  can  have  been  but  a  rare  occurrence,  when 
his  brother  Christopher  dropped  in,  or  a  favoured  friend  or 
two  were  specially  invited  or  were  asked  to  stay.  His 
daughter  Deborah,  who  could  recollect  occurrences  of  the 
kind  before  1670,  while  she  was  still  in  the  Bunhill  house, 
and  also  the  little  afternoon  gatherings  round  Milton  there 
for  talk  and  music,  answered  inquiries  on  the  subject  long 
afterwards  by  vouching  that  her  father  on  such  occasions 
"  was  delightful  company,  the  life  of  the  conversation,  and 
"  that  on  account  of  a  flow  of  subject  and  an  unaffected  cheer- 
"  fulness  and  civility/'  The  words  are  Richardson's,  from 
report  to  him  of  what  she  had  said  to  others ;  but  the  sub- 
stance must  be  hers.  Richardson  had  himself  picked  up  an 
anecdote  of  one  of  the  little  musical  parties.  "  In  relation 
"  to  his  love  of  music  and  the  effect  it  had  upon  his  mind," 
says  Richardson,  "  I  remember  a  story  I  had  from  a  friend 
"  I  was  happy  in  for  many  years,  and  who  loved  to  talk  of 
'f  Milton,  as  he  often  did.  Milton  hearing  a  lady  sing  finely, 
"  '  Now  will  I  swear,'  says  he,  '  this  lady  is  handsome.' 
"  His  ears  now  were  eyes  to  him."  This  is  Milton  in  a 
gallant  moment;  and,  for  the  rest,  we  may  believe  Richard- 
son when  he  says,  "  He  was  a  cheerful  companion,  but  no 
" joker:  his  conversation  was  lively,  but  with  dignity,"  not 
forgetting  Aubrey's  equivalent  summary,  "  Extreme  pleasant 
"  in  his  conversation,  and  at  dinner,  supper,  &c,  but  satirical." 
Of  his  actual  discourse  when  he  was  in  fullest  flow  among 
his  most  capable  visitors  we  should  have  liked  to  have  more 


682         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

specimens  than  have  come  down  to  us.  With  his  varied 
tastes,  vast  learning,  and  strong  memory,  the  topics  ranged 
over  must  have  been  most  miscellaneous  ;  but  the  few  pre- 
served Miltoniana  of  our  present  date  refer  exclusively  to 
his  judgments  in  some  literary  matters.  If  talking  of  Greek 
literature,  we  are  told,  he  would  go  back  again  and  again 
on  the  greatness  of  Homer,  whom  he  could  repeat  almost  by 
heart,  and,  while  always  full  of  admiration  for  iEschylus 
and  Sophocles,  he  would  resent  any  depreciation  of  Euripides 
in  comparison.  Among  the  Latin  poets,  while  enthroning 
Virgil,  he  had  still  always  a  word  of  liking  for  Ovid.  Among 
English  poets  he  owned  allegiance  chiefly  to  Spenser  and 
Shakespeare.  His  allegiance  to  Shakespeare,  we  can  see,  was 
a  something  which  he  could  not  help.  It  was  a  reluctant 
survival  of  that  sense  of  Shakespeare's  intellectual  prodigi- 
ousness  which  he  had  expressed  so  enthusiastically  in  the 
"  What  needs  my  Shakespeare  ?  "  of  his  youth,  and  which 
he  had  striven  in  vain  to  subdue  since  by  reflections  and 
after-carpi ngs.  It  cost  him  less  to  confess  openly  his  allegi- 
ance to  Spenser.  "  Milton  has  acknowledged  to  me  that 
Spenser  was  his  original,"  is  Dry  den's  reminiscence  long 
afterwards  of  some  saying  of  Milton's  to  him  in  Bunhill 
about  1672,  to  the  effect  that  he  had  begun  his  poetical  life 
as  a  Spenserian.  Of  recent  English  poets,  his  own  contem- 
poraries, he  admired  Cowley  most.  Aubrey  ascertained  that 
Hobbes  was  not  one  of  his  acquaintances,  and  that  he  did 
not  like  Hobbes's  philosophy,  but  "  would  acknowledge  him 
to  be  a  man  of  great  parts  and  a  learned  man."  Finally, 
his  opinion  of  Dryden,  from  all  of  Dryden's  that  was  yet 
before  the  world,  was  that  he  was  "  a  rhymist  but  no  poet  V 
Milton,  in  his  last  years,  belonged  to  no  religious  com- 
munion, and  attended  no  place  of  worship.  Toland's  words 
on  this  subject  may  be  quoted.  "In  the  latter  part  of  his 
"life,"  says  Toland,  "he  was  not  a  professed  member  of  any 

1  The  collection  of  minutiae  in  this  one  or  two  of  his  particulars   by  tra- 

paragraph  is  from  Aubrey,  Wood,  To-  dition   through  Milton's   widow ;    and 

land,  Richardson,  and  Newton's  Life  of  Aubrey  had  interrogated  her,  as  well  as 

Milton  prefixed  to  his  edition  of  Milton's  Edward   Phillips,  for  additions  to  his 

Poetical     Works.       Newton     obtained  notes. 


milton's  habits  in  his  last  years.  683 

"  particular  sect  among-  Christians ;  he  frequented  none  of 
"  their  assemblies,  nor  made  use  of  their  peculiar  rites  in 
"  his  family.  Whether  this  proceeded  from  a  dislike  of 
"  their  uncharitable  and  endless  disputes,  and  that  love 
"  of  dominion,  or  inclination  to  persecution,  which  he  said 
"was  a  piece  of  Popery  inseparable  from  all  churches,  or 
"  whether  he  thought  one  might  be  a  good  man  without 
"subscribing  to  any  party,  and  that  they  had  all  in  some 
"  things  corrupted  the  institutions  of  Jesus  Christ,  I  will 
"  by  no  means  venture  to  determine  ;  for  conjectures  on  such 
"  occasions  are  very  uncertain,  and  I  never  met  with  any  of 
"his  acquaintance  who  could  be  positive  in  assigning  the 
"  true  reasons  of  his  conduct."  Milton  has  left  us  his  own 
doctrine  in  the  matter.  "Although  it  is  the  duty  of  all 
"believers,"  he  says,  "to  join  themselves,  if  possible,  to  a 
"church  duly  constituted  (Heb.  x.  25.)," — by  "church'"' 
Milton  meant  any  congregation  of  persons  meeting  volun- 
tarily in  any  place  for  worship  and  mutual  edification,  all 
contributing  and  officiating  on  occasion  though  there  may 
be  elected  ministers, — "  yet  such  as  cannot  do  this  conveni- 
"  ently,  or  with  full  satisfaction  of  conscience,  are  not  to  be 
"  considered  as  excluded  from  the  blessing  bestowed  by 
e(  God  on  the  churches."  He  claimed  the  benefit  of  the 
exception  himself,  partly  perhaps  on  account  of  his  blind- 
ness, but  mainly  because  he  found  no  denomination  to  suit 
him.  As  in  his  middle  life  the  Baptists  and  other  very 
free  varieties  of  Independents  had  been  most  to  his  taste, 
so  in  his  later  years  he  seems  to  have  found  much  to  like 
in  the  religious  habits  of  the  Quakers  ;  but,  on  the  whole, 
his  hatred  of  anything  like  a  professional  clergy,  any  sem- 
blance of  officialism  or  machinery  in  religion,  had  settled 
into  a  disgust  at  even  the  simplest  formalities  of  the  plainest 
conventicle.  Richardson  has  a  story  showing  positively  that 
Milton's  contempt  of  clergy  did  not  stop  at  those  who 
called  themselves  clergy,  but  extended  even  to  those  humble 
Nonconformist  preachers  whose  persistence  in  gospel  ministry 
under  difficulties  he  was  bound  to  admire.  "  Milton  had  a 
"  servant,"    he   says,   "  who  was  a  very  honest,  silly  fellow, 


684  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  and  a  zealous  and  constant  follower  of  those  teachers. 
"  When  he  came  from  the  meeting*,  his  master  would  fre- 
quently ask  him  what  he  had  heard,  and  divert  himself 
"  with  ridiculing-  their  fooleries,  or,  it  may  be,  the  poor 
"  fellow's  understanding :  both  one  and  t'other  probably. 
"■  However,  this  was  so  grievous  to  the  good  creature  that 
"  he  left  his  service  upon  it."  Richardson,  while  vouching 
that  he  had  heard  the  story  on  excellent  authority,  wishes 
that  it  were  not  true.  It  is  certainly  a  little  savage,  but  it 
is  perfectly  credible 1. 

The  next  publication  of  Milton  after  his  volume  of  1671 
containing  his  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes  was 
of  a  very  different  nature.  It  was  a  duodecimo  of  235 
pages,  with  this  ill-printed  title :  "  Joannis  Miltoni  Angli, 
Artis  Logicce  Plenior  Institutio,  ad  Petri  Rami  Methodum 
Concinnata,  Adjecia  est  Praxis  Annalytica  [sic]  et  Petri  Rami 
Vita.  Libris  duohus.  Londini,  Tmpensis  Spencer  Hickman, 
Sociefatis  Regalis  Typographic  ad  insigne  Rosa  in  Ccemeterio 
D.  Fault.  1672."  ("The  English  John  Milton's  Fuller 
Treatment  of  the  Art  of  Logic,  adjusted  to  the  method  of 
Peter  Ramus ;  to  which  are  added  an  Analytic  Praxis  and 
a  Life  of  Peter  Ramus.  In  two  books.  London,  at  the 
charge  of  Spencer  Hickman,  Printer  to  the  Royal  Society, 
at  the  sign  of  the  Rose  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard.  1672  "). 
The  publisher,  it  will  be  seen,  is  the  same  who  had  held 
the  copyright  of  the  History  of  Britain  for  some  time  in 
the  preceding  year  in  succession  to  the  original  publisher 
Allestree2.  There  is,  accordingly,  a  prefixed  portrait  of 
Milton,  re-engraved  on  a  reduced  scale  from  the  Faithorne 
portrait  in  that  work,  with  the  inscription  "W.  Dolle  sculpsit. 
Joannis  Miltoni  Effigies,  cetat.  63,  1671."  This  reduction  of 
the  Faithorne  portrait  by  W.  Dolle,  though  copying  the 
original  engraving  in  the  main,  is  not  nearly  so  carefully 
done  or  so  life-like. 

There  must  have  been  some    demand  for  such  a  book  at 

1   Richardson ;    xlvii,    and    Milton's   Treatise   of  Christian  Doctrine,  Book   I. 
chap.  xxix.  2  Ante,  p.  645,  footnote. 


milton's  treatise  on  logic.  685 

the  time  to  induce  the  printer  for  the  Royal  Society  to 
be  at  the  expense  of  publishing"  this  of  Milton's.  It 
can  hardly  have  been  written  by  Milton,  however,  for  the 
occasion.  It  was  probably  like  his  Accedence  Commend t  Gram- 
mar of  1669,  an  old  manuscript  which  he  found  among-  his 
papers,  and  thought  worth  offering  to  Hickman  or  giving* 
to  him  on  Hickman's  own  request  for  something  from  his 
pen.  It  may  even  have  been  sketched  out  in  Milton's  uni- 
versity days  at  Cambridge,  between  his  taking-  his  B.  A.  degree 
and  his  passing-  as  M.A.  The  Ramist  Logic,  adopted  with 
such  zeal  by  the  Protestant  Universities  of  Europe,  in  the 
last  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  in  opposition  to  the  Aris- 
totelian, with  which  the  cause  of  Roman  Catholicism  was 
thought  to  be  identified,  had  been  taught,  as  we  know,  in 
Cambridge  before  Milton  was  a  student  there,  especially 
by  Georg-e  Downam,  prselector  of  Log-ic  in  the  University 
from  1590  onwards1.  The  controversy  between  Ramism 
and  Aristotelianism,  therefore,  may  have  been  raging-  rather 
fiercely  in  the  Cambridge  colleges  during  Milton's  residence 
in  Christ's  from  1625  to  1632  ;  and  the  most  natural  sup- 
position respecting  the  present  book  is  that  Milton,  always 
disposed  to  revolt  from  authority,  took  the  Ramist  side,  and 
had  qualified  for  that  side  by  compiling  the  material  after- 
wards worked  up  into  this  Latin  digest  of  the  Ramist  Logic. 
It  is  not  of  thrilling  interest,  and  indeed  conveys  the  idea 
that  Ramus's  Logic,  memorable  though  Ramus  himself  was 
as  a  Protestant  and  a  victim  of  the  St.  Bartholomew  mas- 
sacre, was  a  mere  audacious  bungle,  concocted  in  a  spite 
of  phrenzy  against  the  good  old  Roman  Catholic  Aristotle. 
First,  in  a  few  introductory  pages,  Milton  speaks  of  the 
importance  of  Logic,  and  of  the  desirableness  of  a  fuller 
account  of  the  Ramist  Logic  and  its  developments  than  could 
be  obtained  in  Ramus's  own  writings.  Then  he  defines 
logic  to  be  "  the  art  of  reasoning  well,"  and  treats  it  as 
consisting  of  two  parts  or  processes,  —  the  "  Invention  "  of 
arguments  and  their  "  Disposition  "  or  "  Arrangement."  He 
devotes   a  book  to  each  of  these  subjects.     The  first   book, 

1  See  ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  231. 


686  LIFE   OP   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

which  is  mainly  De  Argumenforum  Inventione,  consists  of 
thirty-three  chapters,  and  the  second  book,  which  is  headed 
De  Argumentorum  Dispositione,  of  seventeen  chapters,  with 
certain  interpolations.  The  treatise,  it  will  be  seen,  proceeds 
so  far  in  the  track  of  the  Ancient  Rhetoric  rather  than  in 
that  of  the  Ancient  Logic  proper.  "  Oportet  in  Oratore  esse 
Inventionem,  Dispositionem,  Elocutionem,  Memoriam,  et  Pronun- 
tiationem  "  is  Cicero's  enumeration  of  the  requisites  of  Rhetoric 
or  Oratory;  and  the  first  three,  Invention,  Disposition,  and 
Style,  under  the  names  of  irio-ny,  ra£is,  and  Ae£is,  constitute 
in  fact  the  whole  art  and  science  of  Rhetoric  in  Aristotle's 
famous  treatise  on  that  subject.  Milton,  therefore,  follow- 
ing" Ramus,  assumes  into  Logic  two-thirds  of  what  Aristotle 
and  Cicero  regarded  as  Rhetoric,  thus  treating  Logic  less  as 
the  formal  science  of  the  laws  of  thought  than  as  the  Art 
of  Popular  Reasoning,  and  leaving  for  Rhetoric  nothing  of 
the  abstruser  portions  of  that  art,  but  only  Style  or  Diction, 
or  that  together  with  Cicero's  Memoria  and  Pronuntiatio, — 
to  wit,  Mnemonics  and  Delivery.  Much  of  the  treatise,  at  all 
events,  is  made  up  of  excerpts  or  suggestions  from  Aristotle's 
Rhetoric  and  Cicero's  miscellaneous  Rhetorical  writings,  what- 
ever of  soldering  matter  there  may  be  from  Ramus.  The 
Syllogism  is  discussed  but  imperfectly.  The  appended  Praxis 
Analytica  is  from  one  of  Downam's  commentaries  on  Ramus ; 
and  the  appended  Life  of  Ramus,  which  may  have  been  an 
addition  to  suit  the  book  for  publication  in  1672,  is  a  brief 
abridgment  of  the  Life  of  Ramus  by  the  German  Joannes 
Thomas  Freigius,  who  died  in  1583.  On  the  whole,  though 
one  looks  with  interest  at  the  examples  from  the  classic 
poets  given  in  illustration  of  the  abstract  terms  and  rules, 
the  entire  performance,  as  a  Digest  of  Logic,  may  be 
called  disorderly  and  unedifying.  That  Milton  thought  it 
worth  publishing  in  his  last  years  ought,  however,  to  re- 
commend it  to  a  more  minute  examination  than  it  has  yet 
received  from  those  who  are  curious  in  the  history  of  Logic 
in  England1. 

1  Bohn's  Lowndes  gives  an  edition  of       as    1670  ;  but  my  own  judgment  and 
Milton's  Artis  Logicce  Institutio  as  early       that  of  others  is  that  the  book  appeared 


SECOND   EDITION    OF   THE    MINOR   POEMS. 


687 


The  year  1673  was  marked  by  two  publications  of  Milton 
which  are  accepted  now  as  more  in  his  own  line.  One  was 
a  new  edition  of  his  Minor  Poems  with  this  title: — "Poems, 
Sfc,  upon  Several  Occasions.  By  Mr.  John  Milton :  Both  English 
and  Latin,  Sfc.  Composed  at  several  times.  With  a  small 
Tractate  of  Education  to  Mr.  Hartlib.  London,  Printed  for 
Tho.  Bring  at  the  White  Lion  next  Chancery  Lane  End,  in 
Fleet-street,  1673."  In  some  copies  the  imprint  gives  "for 
Tho.  Bring  at  the  Blew  Anchor  next  Mitre  Court  over  against 
Fetter  Lane  in  Fleet-street,  1673/'  as  if  Dring  had  changed 
his  premises  in  the  course  of  the  year.  The  volume  is  a  very 
pretty  and  neatly  printed  small  octavo  of  290  pages  in  all, 
the  Latin  poems  following  the  English  with  a  separate  title- 
page  and  numbering  of  the  pages,  and  the  reprint  of  the 
tract  to  Hartlib  coming  at  the  end.  In  some  copies  there 
is  a  repetition  of  Dolle's  reduction  of  the  Faithorne  portrait 
of  Milton  used  for  the  Treatise  on  Logic.  The  other  Milton 
publication  of  the  same  year  was  a  much  poorer  specimen 
of  typography.  It  was  a  small  quarto  tract  of  sixteen  pages, 
with  this  title: — "  Of  True  Religion,  TLreresie,  Schism,  Tolera- 
tion, And  what  best  means  may  be  us'd  against  the  growth  of 
Popery.  The  Author  J.  31.  London,  Printed  in  the  year,  1673." 
The  absence  of  any  printer's  or  publisher's  name,  the  use  of 
Milton's  initials  only,  and  the  general  appearance  of  the  tract, 
the  last  page  of  which  is  huddled  into  smaller  type  than  the 
rest,  suggest  that  the  publication  was  by  Milton  himself  at 
his  own  risk,  and  in  evasion  of  the  press  law. 

The  second  edition  of  the  Minor  Poems  is,  of  course,  in  the 
main  a  reprint  of  the  first  edition  in  the  Moseley  volume  of 
1645  1.  But  there  are  some  changes.  Moseley's  fine  little 
preface  to  the  first  edition,  entitled  "  The  Stationer  to  the 


first  in  1672.  As  there  are  subsequent 
copies  with  the  date  1673,  it  has  been 
usual  to  speak  of  a  "second  edition  "  in 
that  year.  I  suspect  there  was  only  a 
newly  dated  title-page  for  the  unsold 
copies  of  1672. 

1  The  printer,  indeed,  adhered  too 
strictly  in  one  instance  to  the  Moseley 
volume  of  1645.  The  separate  title-page 
to  the  Latin  Poems  in  the  Second  Edition 
runs  thus: — "Joannis  Miltoni  Londi- 


nensis  Poemata.  Quorum  pier  aque  intra 
Annum  cetatis  Vigesimum  L'onscripsit. 
Nunc  primum  Edita.  Londini,  Excu- 
debat  W.  B.  Anno  1673."  Here,  while 
the  proper  alteration  is  made  in  the 
corresponding  title-page  of  the  edition 
of  1645  (see  it  ante,  Vol.  III.  p.  452)  so 
far  as  the  printer's  name  and  the  dating 
are  concerned,  the  words  "  Nunc  primum 
edita  "  are  retained  inadvertently. 


688  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

Reader,"  is  omitted,  as  are  also  Lawes's  dedication  of  the 
Comus  to  Lord  Brackley  in  1637  and  Sir  Henry  Wotton's 
letter  to  Milton  in  praise  of  Comus  in  1638.  It  is  the  less 
easy  to  account  for  these  omissions  of  praise  of  the  English 
poems  because  the  foreign  De  Authore  Testimorda,  from  Manso, 
Salsilli,  Selvaggi,  Francini,  and  Dati,  are  all  duly  retained 
at  the  beginning-  of  the  Latin  poems.  Probably  the  author 
of  Paradise  Lost  thought  his  English  poems  did  not  now 
need  praise,  even  from  Sir  Henry  Wotton.  More  extensive 
than  the  omissions,  however,  are  the  additions.  To  the  ten 
Sonnets  which  had  appeared  in  the  edition  of  1645  there  are 
now  added  nine  more :  to  wit,  the  two  on  the  reception  of 
his  divorce  pamphlets  (XL  and  XII.),  that  to  Henry  Lawes 
(XIIL),  that  on  the  death  of  Mrs.  Catherine  Thomson  (XIV.), 
the  famous  Piedmontese  sonnet  (XVIII. ),  the  sonnet  on  his 
blindness  beginning  "When  I  consider  "  (XIX.),  that  to  young 
Lawrence  (XX.),  the  first  sonnet  to  Cyriack  Skinner  (XXL), 
and  the  sonnet  to  the  memory  of  his  second  wife  (XXIII. ). 
These  were  all  that  Milton  had  written  in  the  sonnet  form 
since  1645,  with  the  exception  of  his  sonnet  to  Fairfax  (XV.), 
that  to  Cromwell  (XVI.),  that  to  Vane  (XVIL),  and  the 
second  sonnet  to  Cyriack  Skinner,  beginning  "  Cyriack,  this 
three-years'  day "  (XXL).  These  four  sonnets  were  neces- 
sarily excluded  from  a  volume  of  the  year  1673  by  the 
nature  of  their  political  references.  The  same  objection  did 
not  apply  to  the  lines,  or  sonnet  prolonged,  entitled  "  On  the 
New  Forcers  of  Conscience  under  the  Long  Parliament," 
the  anti-Presbyterian  invective  of  which  would  be  welcome 
enough  after  the  Restoration.  The  lines  were,  accordingly, 
among  the  added  pieces.  So  were  the  translations  that  had 
been  done  at  various  times  since  1645  :  to  wit,  the  fifth 
of  the  first  book  of  Horace,  Psalms  i-viii.  in  service  metre 
ode  (done  in  April  1648),  and  Psalms  Ixxx-lxxxviii.  in 
various  metres  (done  in  August  1653).  Yet  two  other  pieces 
not  printed  in  the  Moseley  volume  appeared  among  the 
English  poems  in  the  new  or  Dring  edition.  They  were  the 
elegy  "  On  the  death  of  a  Fair  Infant  dying  of  a  cough," 
and  the  fragment  entitled  "  At  a  Vacation  Exercise  in  the 


SECOND   EDITION   OF  THE   MINOR   POEMS.  689 

College."  As  the  first  had  been  written  in  the  winter  of 
1625-6  on  the  death  of  Milton's  infant  niece,  and  the  second 
for  a  college  festivity  at  Cambridge  in  1628,  they  are  among 
the  most  juvenile  of  Milton's  pieces.  One  guesses  that  Milton, 
who  had  been  recently  directing  a  search  among  his  old 
papers,  and  had  in  this  way  turned  up  his  manuscript  digest 
of  Ramist  logic,  recovered  these  two  poems  unexpectedly ; 
and  the  guess  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  the  second  of 
the  two  is  out  of  its  chronological  place  in  the  Dring  volume, 
as  if  it  had  been  sent  for  insertion  while  the  volume  was  at 
press.  Altogether  the  English  additions  in  the  volume  were 
not  unimportant.  The  Latin  additions  consisted  only  of  the 
short  piece  entitled  Apologus  de  Rustico  et  Hero,  written  at 
some  uncertain  date  after  1645,  and  the  longer  ode  Ad 
Joannem  Rousium,  written  in  January  1646-7.  The  former 
was  now  appended  to  the  book  of  Elegies,  and  the  latter  to 
the  Sylvse.  Among  the  sylva?  was  now  also  included  the 
pungent  Greek  epigram  which  Milton  had  caused  Marshall 
to  engrave  under  the  portrait  in  the  Moseley  volume  of 
1645  in  abuse  of  his  own  handiwork.  The  portrait  itself 
was  dismissed  into  ignominious  oblivion,  but  Milton  would 
not  lose  the  epigram.  It  re-appeared,  therefore,  in  the  text 
of  the  Dring  volume,  with  the  heading  In  Effigiei  ejus  sculp- 
tor em. 

The  publication  of  the  new  edition  of  the  Minor  Poems  in 
1673  was  most  natural  and  judicious.  The  Moseley  volume 
of  1645  having  become  scarce,  people  had  almost  forgotten 
that  Milton  had  been  a  poet  long  before  he  had  been  a 
pamphleteer.  They  had  now  the  proof  in  their  hands  in  the 
form  of  a  handsome  little  volume,  containing  those  earlier 
miscellanies  which  would  have  entitled  Milton  to  a  memorable 
place  among  English  poets,  even  though  he  had  not  lived  to 
be  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise  Regained,  and  Samson 
Agonistes.  It  was  not  of  no  consequence  even  to  the  author 
of  these  great  poems  that  the  contemporaries  of  his  later 
age,  thirteen  years  now  after  the  Restoration,  should  have 
the  opportunity  of  reading  pleasantly  not  only  nearly  all  his 
Sonnets,  arranged  in  series,  but  also  his  Ode  on  the  Nativity, 

vol.  vi.  Y  y 


690  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

his  I! Allegro  and  II  Penseroso,  his  Comus,  his  Lycidas,  his 
Mansus,  and  his  Epitaphmm  Damonis,  written  in  the  days  of 
their  forefathers,  before  most  of  them  were  born.  There  was 
some  significance  also  in  the  reprinting*  of  the  Letter  on 
Education  to  Hartlib,  to  be  an  appendage  to  the  poetry  of 
the  new  volume.  "  Of  Education.  To  Master  Samuel  Hartlib. 
Written  above  twenty  years  since"  is  the  heading  of  the  re- 
print. Milton  held  the  doctrine  of  the  tract  in  some  value 
still ;  on  its  first  appearance  in  July  1644  it  had  been  but 
an  anonymous  thing  in  small  type,  and  had  probably  had 
no  great  circulation  l ;  and  people  might  now  peruse  it  more 
at  leisure,  presented  in  larger  type  and  with  the  name  of 
the  author  distinctly  in  front  of  it. 

But  what  shall  we  say  to  Milton's  reappearance  once  more 
about  the  same  time  in  his  old  and  hazardous  character  of 
political  pamphleteer?  Nothing  can  show  more  strongly 
the  inveteracy  of  his  interest  in  public  affairs,  his  passion 
for  inserting  his  hand  into  any  current  controversy,  than 
the  publication  in  1673  of  his  tract  Of  True  Religion,  Heresy  ^ 
Schism,  Toleration,  and  the  growth  of  Popery.  Were  not 
Poetry,  Latin  Grammar,  British  History,  and  Logic  suf- 
ficient to  occupy  the  blind  old  political  offender,  that  he 
must  venture  once  more  on  ground  so  perilous  to  him  here- 
tofore ?  That  Milton  was  aware  that  this  question  might  be 
asked  appears  from  his  having  put  forth  the  tract  irregularly, 
without  printer's  name,  and  apparently  without  licence.  As 
he  gave  his  initials,  which  were  as  good  in  his  case  as  his 
name  in  full,  the  publication  cannot  be  called  clandestine. 
But,  in  fact,  his  venture  becomes  explicable  enough  when 
we  remember  the  state  of  public  affairs  at  the  time  and  read 
the  tract  itself. 

Charles's  Declaration  of  March  15,  1671-2,  suspending 
by  his  own  prerogative  the  penal  statutes  against  Non- 
conformists, and  granting  them  liberty  of  worship  again, 
under  certain  restrictions,  in  meeting-houses  licenced  for 
the  purpose,   had  brought   on,   it  will  be    remembered,   the 

i  See  ante,  Vol.  III.  p.  233. 


TRACT  ON  TRUE  RELIGION  AND  TOLERATION.    691 

most  extraordinary  wave  and  conflict  of  English  opinion  on 
the  subjects  of  religion  and  churoh-policy  that  there  had 
been  since  the  Uniformity  Act  and  its  St.  Bartholomew 
consequence  in  1662.  As  the  Declaration  had  come  out  and 
been  put  into  effect  in  the  long  interval  of  nearly  two  years 
between  the  Ninth  Session  of  the  Cavalier  Parliament  and 
the  Tenth,  the  conflict  through  the  year  1672  had  been 
popular  only  and  not  Parliamentary.  The  mass  of  the 
Church  of  England  clergy  and  Cavaliers  were  alarmed  and 
indignant,  and  began  to  question  their  own  doctrine  of  Royal 
Prerogative  when  they  found  it  turned  in  favour  of  the  Non- 
conformists. The  Nonconformists  themselves  were  perplexed. 
On  the  one  hand,  they  were  thankful  for  the  enormous  relief 
brought  them  in  the  release  of  so  many  of  them  from  jails, 
and  the  restored  privilege  of  their  tabernacles  and  congre- 
gations. On  the  other  hand,  they  could  not  be  indifferent 
to  the  fact  that  this  relief  had  not  been  regular  or  consti- 
tutional, but  by  the  King's  grace  merely,  on  the  assumption 
of  a  doctrine  of  royal  prerogative  in  ecclesiastical  matters 
which  it  would  be  dangerous  to  admit,  if  only  because  he 
might  annul  or  reverse  by  prerogative  to-morrow  what  he 
had  done  by  prerogative  to-day.  Thus  strangely  drawn,  at 
the  expense  of  their  own  immediate  interests,  into  a  kind  of 
co-operation  on  the  constitutional  question  with  their  op- 
ponents and  persecutors,  the  mass  of  the  Nonconformists  were 
drawn  into  such  co-operation  yet  more  strongly  by  another 
sentiment,  which  they  and  the  mass  of  Church  of  England 
men  had  in  common.  Charles's  policy  of  toleration  for  the 
Nonconformists  was  motived  mainly  by  his  attachment  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  interest,  and  was,  in  fact,  as  we  now 
know,  part  and  parcel  of  his  secret  agreement  with  Louis  XIV  , 
with  the  cognisance  of  some  of  his  ministers  only,  for  his  own 
profession  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith  and  its  re-establishment 
at  his  leisure  in  his  dominions.  Though  not  known  in  detail  at 
the  time,  all  this  had  been  substantially  ascertained  orgujssed 
by  Church  of  England  men  and  Nonconformists  alike ;  and 
hence  a  unanimous  "  No  Popery"  cry  among  them,  blended 
with  their  criticisms  of  the  Declaration  of  Indulgence.     Of 

Y  y  2 


69.2         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  Nonconformist  sects  only  the  Quakers  seem  to  have  with- 
stood this  combination  of  the  "No  Popery"  excitement  with 
the  question  of  the  prerogative,  and  to  have  been  willing-  not 
only  that  the  toleration  should  come  by  mere  grace  from  the 
King's  own  hands,  as  it  was  forthcoming  from  no  other 
quarter,  but  also  that  the  Roman  Catholics  should  have  their 
full  share  of  the  benefit.  Presbyterians,  Independents,  Bap- 
tists, and  Nonconformists  generally,  agreed  to  subordinate 
or  postpone  their  own  immediate  interests  to  the  great  cause 
of  the  preservation  of  the  national  Protestantism,  and  won 
good  opinions  by  their  moderation  where  good  opinions  of 
them  had  been  hitherto  scarce. —  Such  had  been  the  con- 
dition of  matters  when  the  Parliament  met  for  its  Tenth 
Session,  Feb.  4,  1672-3,  the  chief  ministers  of  the  Cabal 
being  then  Lord  Chancellor  Shaftesbury  and  Lord  Treasurer 
Clifford.  The  results  of  that  memorable  short  session,  which 
ended  on  the  29th  of  March  1673,  will  be  in  the  reader's 
recollection.  Charles  and  his  ministers  baffled  and  subdued  ; 
the  Royal  Declaration  of  Indulgence  to  Dissenters  cancelled 
and  apologized  for;  the  right  of  suspending  statutes  in 
matters  ecclesiastical  asserted  for  Parliament  only ;  emphatic 
addresses  and  resolutions  against  the  encroachment  of  Popery 
registered  and  published  ;  and  the  Test  Act  passed,  disabling 
all  Roman  Catholics  for  public  employments :  such  is  the 
summary.  That  short  "  No  Popery"  session  broke  Charles's 
scheme  of  the  Catholicity  to  pieces,  compelled  him  to  be 
content  with  crypto-Catholicism  for  himself  for  the  rest  of 
his  life,  and  handed  over  the  open  representation  of  Roman 
Catholicism  in  England  thenceforth  to  the  Duke  of  York, 
disabled  by  the  Test  Act.  It  dismissed  Clifford  to  privacy 
and  suicide,  shook  the  Cabal,  and  taught  Shaftesbury  a  new 
and  more  popular  course  of  tactics. — In  reward  to  the  Non- 
conformists for  their  moderation  and  acquiescence,  it  had  been 
part  of  the  business  of  the  session  to  promise  them  a  Par- 
liamentaiy  substitute  for  the  cancelled  Royal  Declaration. 
The  brevity  of  the  session,  however,  had  prevented  the  pass- 
ino-  of  the  Bill  which  had  been  brought  in  for  the  relief  of 
Nonconformists.     Through  the  rest  of  1673,  therefore,  or  at 


TEACT  ON  TRUE  RELIGION  AND  TOLERATION.    693 

least  till  Parliament  should  meet  again,  they  had  to  live  on 
hope.  There  was  meanwhile  the  satisfaction  of  joining-  with 
the  rest  of  the  nation  in  the  "  No  Popery"  acclamations  and 
rejoicings,  and  at  the  same  time  discussing  the  various  ques- 
tions respecting  the  future  of  Nonconformity  which  the 
Royal  Declaration  and  the  promise  of  a  substitute  had  stirred. 
Ought  the  Nonconformists  to  be  content  with  a  mere  tolera- 
tion outside  the  Establishment,  or  ought  they  to  press  for 
more  or  desire  more  ?  Was  re-comprehension  of  the  whole 
body,  or  of  a  portion  of  it,  within  the  Establishment,  to  be 
argued  for  or  regarded  as  a  possibility?  Some  of  the  pro- 
ceedings under  the  King's  Declaration  of  Indulgence  had 
pointed  to  a  scheme  of  concurrent  endowment  as  perhaps 
more  practicable  to  some  extent  than  re-comprehension :  was 
it  expedient  to  steer  in  that  direction  ?  Such  were  the  ques- 
tions with  which  the  Nonconformists  had  occupied  them- 
selves through  1672  and  with  which  they  continued  to  occupy 
themselves  through  1673.  The  Presbyterians  and  some  of 
the  Independents  favoured  the  notion  of  re-comprehension  or 
concurrent  endowment;  but  the  mass  of  the  Independents, 
Baptists,  and  sects  generally,  the  Quakers  of  course  included, 
wanted  only  a  toleration. 

Milton's  tract  was  one  of  many,  most  discordant  among 
themselves,  which  the  juncture  called  forth.  It  was  a  very 
plain  and  simple,  not  to  say  feeble,  performance.  For  the 
quintessence  of  Milton's  views  on  the  religious  and  ecclesi- 
astical question,  we  must  go  to  his  pre-Restoration  pamphlets; 
the  Miltonism  of  this  one  is  very  diluted  indeed.  There  is 
no  thunder  whatever  and  very  little  lightning,  nothing  of 
that  disestablishment  notion  which  we  know  to  have  been 
his  cardinal  one,  nor  anything  insulting  or  even  appreciably 
disrespectful  to  the  Church  or  the  Monarchy  of  the  Restora- 
tion. From  all  expression  of  that  kind  he  was  precluded, 
and  he  adjusted  himself  to  the  necessity.  His  tract,  in  short, 
is  his  adhesion  to  the  popular  "  No  Popery  "  vote  of  the  day, 
with  an  implied  advice  to  the  Nonconformists  not  to  dream 
of  re-comprehension  within  the  Establishment,  but  to  be 
content  with  a  toleration  beyond  its  pale,  and  also  with  an 


694  LIFE    OF   MILTON  AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

exposition  of  the  reasonableness  of  such  a  toleration  of  all 
professedly  Christian  sects,  except  only  the  Roman  Catholics. 
The  following-  quotations  contain  the  whole  theoretical  sub- 
stance of  the  tract : — 

True  Religion  : — "  True  Religion  is  the  true  worship  and  service 
of  God,  learnt  and  believed  from  the  Word  of  God  only.  No  man 
or  angel  can  know  how  God  would  be  worshipped  and  served  unless 
God  reveal  it.  He  hath  revealed  and  taught  it  us  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures  by  inspired  ministers,  and  in  the  Gospel  by  his  own 
Son  and  his  Apostles,  with  strictest  command  to  reject  all  other 
traditions  or  additions  whatsoever  .  .  .  With  good  and  religious 
reason  therefore  all  Protestant  Churches,  with  one  consent,  and 
particularly  the  Church  of  England  in  her  thirty-nine  Articles 
(Articles  6th,  19th,  20th,  21st,  and  elsewhere),  maintain  these 
two  points  as  the  main  principles  of  true  religion :  that  the  rule 
of  true  religion  is  the  Word  of  God  only ;  and  that  their  faith 
ought  not  to  be  an  implicit  faith, — that  is  to  believe,  though  as 
the  Church  believes,  against  or  without  express  authority  of 
Scripture." 

Heresy  or  False  Religion : — "  Heresy  therefore  is  a  religion 
taken  up  and  believed  from  the  traditions  of  men  and  additions 
to  the  Word  of  God.  Whence  also  it  follows  clearly  that  of  all 
known  sects  or  pretended  religions  at  this  day  in  Christendom 
Popery  is  the  only  or  the  greatest  heresy,  and  he  who  is  so  for- 
ward to  brand  all  others  for  heretics,  the  obstinate  Papist,  the 
only  heretic." 

Reasonableness  of  mutual  toleration  among  all  Protestant 
Religionists  : — "  Sects  may  be  in  a  true  Church  as  well  as  in  a 
false  .  .  .  Heresy  is  in  the  will  and  choice  profestly  against 
Scripture  ;  Error  is  against  the  will,  in  misunderstanding  the 
Scripture  after  all  sincere  endeavours  to  understand  it  rightly  .  .  . 
The  Lutheran  holds  con  substantiation :  an  error  indeed,  but  not 
mortal.  The  Calvinist  is  taxed  with  predestination,  and  to  make 
God  the  author  of  sin :  not  with  any  dishonourable  thought  of 
God,  but,  it  may  be,  overzealously  asserting  His  absolute  power, 
not  without  plea  of  Scripture.  The  Anabaptist  is  accused  of  deny- 
ing infants  their  right  to  baptism :  again,  they  deny  nothing  but 
what  the  Scripture  denies  them.  The  Arian  and  Socinian  are 
charged    to  dispute    against   the   Trinity :    they  affirm    to  believe 


TRACT   ON   TRUE   RELIGION   AND  TOLERATION.         695 

the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  according  to  Scripture  and  the 
Apostolic  Creed.     As  for  terms  of  Trinity,  Triunity,  Co-essenti- 
ality, Tripersonality,  and  the  like,  they  reject  them  as  scholastic 
notions,  not  to  be  found  in  Scripture  ;  which,  by  a  general  Protes- 
tant maxim,  is  plain    and   perspicuous   abundantly  to  explain  its 
own  meaning  in  the  properest  words  belonging  to  so  high  a  matter 
and  so  necessary  to  be  known  :  a  mystery  indeed  in  their  sophistic 
subtleties,  but  in  Scripture  a  plain  doctrine.     Their  other  opinions 
are  of  less   moment.     They  dispute  the  satisfaction  of  Christ,  or 
rather  the  word  satis/action,  as  not  Scriptural ;  but  they  acknow- 
ledge  him   both  God  and  their  Saviour.       The  Arminian,   lastly, 
is  condemned  for  setting  up  free  will  against  free  grace ;  but  that 
imputation  he  disclaims  in  all  his  writings,  and  grounds  himself 
lai-^ely  upon  Scripture  only.     It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  authors 
or  late  revivers  of  all  these  sects  or  opinions  were  learned,  worthy, 
zealous,  and  religious  men,  as  appears  by  their  lives  written,  and 
the  same  of  their  many  eminent  and  learned  followers,  perfect  and 
powerful  in  the  Scriptures,  holy  and  unblameable  in  their  lives  ; 
and  it  cannot  be  imagined  that  God  would  desert  such  painful  and 
zealous  labourers  in  his  Church,  and  ofttimes  great  sufferers  for 
their  conscience,  to  damnable   errors  and  a  reprobate  sense,  who 
had    so    often    implored    the   assistance    of    his    Spirit  .  .  .  What 
Protestant,  then,  who   himself  maintains  the  same  principles  and 
disavows  all  implicit  faith,  would  persecute,  and  not  rather  charit- 
ably tolerate,   such  men  as  these,   unless  he  mean  to  abjure  the 
principles  of  his  own  religion  1     If  it  be  asked  how  far  they  should 
be  tolerated,  I  answer, — Doubtless  equally,  as  being  all  Protestants ; 
that  is,  on  all  occasions,  to  give  account  of  their  faith,  either  by 
arguing,  preaching  in  their  several  assemblies,  public  writing,  and 
the  freedom  of  printing." 

Popery  not  to  be  tolerated : — "  Popery  is  a  double  thing  to  deal 
with,  and  claims  a  twofold  power,  ecclesiastical  and  political,  both 
usurped,  and  the  one  supporting  the  other  .  .  .  The  Pope,  by  this 
mixed  faculty,  pretends  right  to  kingdoms  and  states,  and  especi- 
ally to  this  of  England  ;  thrones  and  unthrones  kings,  and  absolves 
the  people  from  their  obedience  to  them;  sometimes  interdicts  to 
whole  nations  the  public  worship  of  God,  shutting  up  their  churches  ; 
and  was  wont  to  drain  away  greatest  part  of  the  wealth  of  this  then 
miserable  land,  as  part  of  his  patrimony,  to  maintain  the  pride 
and  luxury  of  his  court  and  prelates  ;    and  now,  since  through  the 


696         LIFE    OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

infinite  mercy  and  favour  of  God  we  have  shaken  off  his  Babylonish 
yoke,  hath  not  ceased,  by  his  spies  and  agents,  bulls  and  emissaries, 
once  to  destroy  both  King  and  Parliament,  perpetually  to  seduce, 
corrupt,  and  pervert  as  many  as  they  can  of  the  People.  "Whether 
therefore  it  be  fit  or  reasonable  to  tolerate  men  thus  principled 
in  religion  towards  the  State  I  submit  it  to  the  consideration 
of  all  magistrates  .  .  .  As  for  tolerating  the  exercise  of  their 
religion,  supposing  their  state-activities  not  to  be  dangerous,  I 
answer  that  toleration  is  either  public  or  private,  and  the  exercise 
of  their  religion,  as  far  as  it  is  idolatrous,  can  be  tolerated  neither 
way  :  not  publicly,  without  grievous  and  unsufferable  scandal  given 
to  all  conscientious  beholders  ;  not  privately,  without  great  offence  to 
God  .  .  .  Are  we  to  punish  them  by  corporal  punishment,  or  fines 
in  their  estates,  upon  account  of  their  religion  1  I  suppose  it 
stands  not  with  the  clemency  of  the  Gospel,  more  than  what 
appertains  to  the  security  of  the  State.  But  first  we  must  remove 
their  idolatry  and  all  the  furniture  thereof,  whether  idols,  or  the 
mass  wherein  they  adore  their  God  under  bread  and  wine  .  .  . 
If  they  say  that  by  removing  their  idols  we  violate  their  con- 
sciences, we  have  no  warrant  to  regard  conscience  which  is  not 
grounded  on  Scripture." 

This,  from  Milton  in  1673,  may  disappoint  those  who  re- 
member the  vast  throb  of  his  utterances  for  religious  and 
intellectual  liberty  through  the  series  of  his  greater  pamphlets 
from  1641  to  1660.  If  he  had  not  been  a  tolerationist  then 
absolutely  and  universally,  at  one  with  Roger  Williams  and 
John  Goodwin  in  expressly  advocating  liberty  in  every  State 
for  Jews,  Turks,  anti-Scripturists,  and  Atheists,  as  well  as  for 
all  varieties  of  Christians,  the  drift  of  his  reasonings,  and 
especially  his  repeated  protests  that  the  sphere  of  conscience 
and  religion  is  distinct  from  that  of  the  civil  magistrate,  had 
always  indicated  a  sympathy  with  the  doctrine  and  spirit  of 
absolute  toleration  rather  than  with  any  scheme  of  toleration 
limited.  Compare,  for  example,  the  extracts  given  at  pp.  583- 
584  of  Vol.  V.  from  his  Treatise  of  Civil  'Power  in  Ecclesias- 
tical Causes,  published  in  1659,  with  the  extracts  just  given 
from  his  True  Religion,  Heresy,  Schism,  and  Toleration  of  1673. 
In  the  former  we  found  him  laughing  at  the  word  "heresy" 


TRACT  ON  TRUE  RELIGION  AND  TOLERATION.    697 

as  a  mere  hobgoblin  word,  "  no  word  of  evil  note "  really, 
but  only  a  Greek  word  for  "  the  choice  or  following  of  any 
opinion,   good    or   bad,  in    religion   or  any   other   learning." 
Now  he  re-defines  the  word  opprobriously  as  the  wilful  choice 
of  religious  opinions  without  or  against  Scripture  authority, 
and  he  affixes  it  to  Roman  Catholicism  in  particular.     Then, 
though  he  had  not  positively  asserted  that  no  action  ought  to 
be  taken  against  Roman  Catholics,  non-Christian  religionists, 
or  anti-Christians,  he  had  slurred  over  the  subject  as  a  dis- 
agreeable one,  remarking  that  the  reasons  for  not  tolerating 
the  Roman  Catholics  were  political  rather  than  religious,  and 
hinting  that  the  prohibition  of  the  "public  and  scandalous"  ex- 
ercise of  non-Christian  religions  might  be  enough.     He  comes 
forward  now  with  a  doctrine  of  toleration  which  throws  Jews, 
Turks,  and  all   non-Christians   or  anti-Christians   overboard 
by  implication,  and  he  declares  that  Roman  Catholic  worship 
is  not  to  be  tolerated  either  in  public  or  in  private.     "  We 
have  no  warrant  to  regard  conscience  which  is  not  grounded 
on  Scripture  "  is  now  his  unmitigated  maxim.     How  had  he 
shrunk  into  this  rigidity,  this  narrowness?    The  times  had 
changed,  and  Milton  with  them.     Rudely  disenchanted  of  his 
former  great  dreams  of  disestablishment,  an  absolute  divorce 
of  Church  from  State,  as  the  one  sovereign  way  to  universal 
spiritual  liberty,   he   had    steeled  himself  to    think   of  what 
would  suit  facts  and  circumstances.     At  the  same  time  there 
had  been  a  growing  intensification,  we  may  say  induration, 
in  his  own  heart  and  mind   of  his  habitual  worship  of  the 
Bible  as  God's  one  revelation  of  himself  to  mankind,  and  the 
infallible  and  exhaustless  source  of  instruction  for  the  human 
spirit.      These    two    considerations   going  together, — present 
expediency  and  his  personal  conviction  that  the  one  sheet- 
anchor  for  the   soul    of  every  man  in  this  world  of  uncer- 
tainties is  the  Bible, — there  was  evolved  the  Miltonic  doctrine 
of  toleration  for  1673.      Until  and  without  the  acceptance  of 
the  Scriptures,  no  liberty  of  conscience;  after  and  with  that 
acceptance,  all  liberty  !    Practically  in  England  at  the  time 
this  was  a  very  broad  platform  of  limited  toleration,  broader 
than  any  which  had  ever  been  proposed  by  Owen  or  others 


698  LIFE   OF    MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  the  Limited  Toleration  Nonconformists.  Episcopalians  of 
the  Established  Church,  and  Presbyterians,  Independents, 
Baptists,  and  all  other  sects  of  Protestant  Christians,  out  of 
that  Church,  inasmuch  as  they  all  professed  faith  in  the  Bible 
as  the  one  authority  in  religion,  were  to  have  equal  rights 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible,  and  were  to  tolerate  all 
differences  among*  themselves  arising*  from  differences  of  in- 
terpretation. Arians  and  Socinians  are  included  by  name, 
the  very  class  of  heretics  about  whom  there  had  been  most 
horror  and  most  difficulty  in  the  schemes  of  limited  toleration 
hitherto.  What  proportion  of  the  English  population  re- 
mained unprovided  for?  Milton  takes  no  notice  of  the 
Quakers,  and  it  does  not  appear  from  the  tract  what  he 
would  have  done  with  those  good  friends  of  his.  Probably 
he  meant  that  they  should  be  included  among  the  Protestant 
sects,  though  their  doctrine  about  the  Bible  as  a  rule  of  faith 
was  slightly  under  the  common  Protestant  mark.  For  the  rest, 
why  should  he  trouble  himself?  Jews,  Turks,  and  the  like 
were  not  numerous  in  England ;  and  such  as  resided  there 
were  foreigners,  whose  exceptional  rights  by  the  law  of  nations 
he  expressly  postulates  in  his  tract.  As  for  domestic  anti- 
Scripturists  and  Atheists,  they  need  not  suffer  in  the  least, 
if  they  would  keep  their  opinions  prudently  to  themselves. 
Liberty  of  separate  meetings  for  worship  was  not  observed 
to  be  so  passionate  a  demand  among  them  but  that  they 
could  continue  to  belong  professedly,  as  most  of  them  had 
hitherto  done,  to  the  Church  of  England,  or  they  could  lodge, 
like  Milton  himself,  in  the  interstices  of  the  different  com- 
munions, belonging  to  none,  disliking  them  all,  and  staying 
at  home  on  Sundays.  Thus  all  was  left  free  for  the  main 
matter.  That  was  the  suppression  of  Popery.  Roman  Catholic 
worship  was  to  be  permitted  at  the  embassies  and  to  resident 
foreigners,  but  not  to  natives.  The  "  No  Popery  "  excitement 
of  1673,  the  sudden  popular  dread  of  "  the  growth  of  this 
Romish  weed,"  was  the  healthiest  thing  Milton  had  seen  in 
England  for  many  a  day,  and  he  had  thought  it  his  duty, 
"  how  unable  soever,"  to  assist  what  was  going  forward  by 
writing  his  little  tract.     Part  of  its  purpose,  according  to  the 


SAMUEL  PARKER  AND  ANDREW  MARVELL.      699 

title,  had  been  to  propound  "  what  best  means  may  be  used 
against  the  growth  of  Popery."  That  had  been  done  so  far 
by  his  exposition  of  the  true  idea  of  toleration  and  by  his 
advice  not  to  tolerate  the  Papists,  but  to  suppress  their 
worship  and  opinions  by  every  possible  means,  short  of  that 
punishment  by  fine  and  imprisonment  which  he  supposed 
"  stands  not  with  the  clemency  of  the  Gospel  more  than  what 
appertains  to  the  security  of  the  State."  How  there  could 
have  been  a  policy  of  suppression  without  fines  and  imprison- 
ment he  leaves  unexplained.  But  he  adds,  at  the  end  of  the 
tract,  other  means  for  the  diminution  of  Popery  in  England. 
Let  the  English  of  all  ranks  become,  more  than  hitherto,  a 
Bible-reading,  Bible-believing,  and  Bible-studying  nation,  and 
Popery  will  vanish  from  among  them  very  fast.  Then  also, 
as  "  it  is  a  general  complaint  that  this  nation  of  late  years 
"is  grown  more  numerously  and  excessively  vicious  than 
"  before/'  let  there  be  a  thorough  reformation  of  manners, 
"  lest  through  impeniteney  we  run  into  that  stupidly  which 
"  we  now  seek  all  means  so  warily  to  avoid,  the  worst  of 
"superstitions,  and  the  heaviest  of  all  God's  judgments, 
"  Popery." 

We  have  another  glimpse  of  Milton  as  involved  in  the 
complex  ecclesiastical  controversy  of  the  years  1672  and  1673. 
The  reader  may  remember  a  certain  young  Mr.  Samuel  Parker, 
of  Puritan  parentage  and  education,  who  used  to  go  much 
about  Milton,  in  his  house  in  Jewin  Street,  as  long  ago  as 
1661  or  1662,  confiding  to  Milton  his  difficulties  about  con- 
formity to  the  Church  of  the  Restoration,  and  asking  his 
advice.  He  may  remember  also  that  Andrew  Marvell  met 
the  young  man  there  and  did  not  like  him.  Ten  years  had 
passed  since  then  ;  and  now,  in  1673,  all  England  was  ring- 
ing with  a  paper- warfare  between  this  Samuel  Parker  and 
Mr.  Andrew  Marvell. 

The  young  man's  difficulties  about  conformity  had  not 
lasted  long.  Having  been  "rescued,"  in  Trinity  College-, 
Oxford,  "  from  the  chains  and  fetters  of  an  unhappy  educa- 
tion," he  had  graduated  as  M.A.  and  taken  holy  orders  in  1663, 
and  had  become  "a  zealous  anti-Puritan  and  strong  assertor 


700        LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

of  the  Church    of  England/' — in   fact,  the    most   rancorous 
ribald  against  the  Nonconformists  among  the  younger  Angli- 
can clergy.     Having    become   known,    by    some    theological 
publications,   to  Sheldon,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  he  had 
been  brought  to  London  in  1667  as  one  of  the  archbishop's 
chaplains,  and   had  become  a  fellow   of  the   Royal  Society. 
Like    his    fellow-chaplain    Tomkyns,    he    was    employed    in 
licensing  work  ;  and  the  Stationers'  Registers  exhibit  him  as 
an  occasional  licencer  of  books  from  1669  onwards, — e.g.  of 
Isaak  Walton's  life  of  George  Herbert,   and  of  a  volume  of 
Stillingfieet's  sermons.     The  fourth  of  his  own  publications 
appeared  in  1670,  with  the  title  A  Discourse  of  Ecclesiastical 
Polity,  wherein  the  Authority  of  the  Civil  Magistrate  over  the 
Consciences  of  Subjects  in  matters  of  External  Religion  is  asserted, 
the  mischiefs  and  inconveniences  of  Toleration  are  represented, 
and  all  pretences  pleaded  in  behalf  of  Liberty  of  Conscience  are 
fully  answered.     The  book  caused  a  consternation  among  the 
Nonconformists.      "  He    writeth/'    says    Baxter    of  it,   "  the 
"  most  scornfully  and  rashly  and  profanely  and  cruelly  against 
"  the   Nonconformists   of  any  man  that    ever   yet  assaulted 
"  them  that  I  have  heard  of,  and,  in  a  fluent,  fervent,  ingenious 
"  style   of  natural  rhetoric,  poureth  out  floods  of  odious  re- 
"  proaches,  and,  with  incautelous  extremities,  saith  as  much 
"  to    make    them   hated   and   to   stir  up  the  Parliament    to 
"  destroy  them  as  he  could  well  speak."     Dr.  Owen  wanted 
Baxter  to  write  a  reply,  as  "the  fittest  man  in  England  for 
that   work,"  and,  when  Baxter  declined,  wrote  one  himself, 
called  Truth  and  Innocence  Vindicated.     This  brought  Owen 
personally  under  Parker's  notice.    Having  meanwhile  brought 
out  another  anti-Nonconformist   pamphlet,  called  Toleration 
discussed  in  two  Dialogues,  he  published  in  1671  A  Defence 
and  Continuation  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity.     Here  there  was  not 
only  another  "  most  voluminous  torrent  of  natural  and  mali- 
"  cious  rhetoric  "  against  the  Nonconformists  of  all  varieties, 
as   collectively    "  the    most   villainous,    unsufferable    sort    of 
"  sanctified  fools,  knaves,  and  unquiet  rebels,"  but  also  such 
an  onslaught  on  Dr.  Owen,  with  inconvenient  recollection  of 
his  former  preachings  and  political  intriguings,  more  especi- 


SAMUEL  PAEKER  AND  ANDREW  MARVELL.      701 

ally  when  lie  aided  Fleetwood  and  Desborough  to  pull  down 
Richard's  Protectorate,  that  the  poor  doctor  was  silenced  and 
felt  that  he  had  injured  the  Nonconformist  cause  by  his 
appearance  for  it.  Though  one  or  two  others  replied  to 
Parker,  he  remained  virtually  master  of  the  field  ;  and  in 
1672  he  returned  to  the  charge  in  A  Discourse  in  Vindicatio7i 
of  Bishop  John  Bramhall  and  the  Clergy  of  the  Church  of 
V  a  gland  from  the  fanatic  charge  of  Popery,  together  with  some  Re- 
fections on  the  present  state  of  affairs.  In  this  discourse,  which 
was  prefixed  to  a  posthumous  treatise  of  Bramhall,  Owen  was 
again  attacked,  with  Baxter  and  the  whole  body  of  the  Non- 
conformists. Parker  was  now  Archdeacon  of  Canterbury,  and 
D.D.,  with  any  farther  preferments  ready  for  him  that  could 
be  expected  by  a  man  of  thirty-two  years  of  age  who  had 
made  himself  the  terror  of  the  Nonconformist  world. 

Would  nobody  grapple  with  this  Harapha  of  Gath  ? 
Andrew  Marvell  stepped  out,  fifty-two  years  of  age,  but  hale 
and  smiling. — He  had  given  up  long  ago  that  vein  of  pure 
idyllic  poetry  in  which  he  had  promised  so  well  in  his 
tutorship  in  Fairfax's  house  of  Nunappleton  during  the 
Commonwealth.  His  literary  performances  since  the  Res- 
toration had  been  almost  exclusively  rough  satirical  pieces 
in  prose  and  verse,  such  as  came  naturally  from  the  patriotic 
and  incorruptible  member  for  Hull,  one  of  the  staunchest 
voters  with  the  small  knot  of  extreme  liberals  in  the  Cavalier 
Parliament,  though  not  much  of  a  speaker.  Some  of  these 
scraps  of  satire,  all  necessarily  anonymous,  had  been  extremely 
clever  and  witty,  treating  Clarendon  and  his  government, 
and  the  court  and  courtiers  of  Charles,  and  Charles  himself, 
with  a  severity  quite  refreshing  amid  the  sickly  panegyrics 
of  Waller,  Dryden,  and  the  rest,  though  descending  now 
and  then,  as  in  several  pictures  of  the  Duchess  of  York  and 
Lady  Castlemaine,  into  reckless  savagery  and  coarseness. 
Thus  he  had  been  qualifying  himself  for  an  encounter  with 
any  one  that  needed  a  public  exposure  ;  and  he  had  not  the 
least  hesitation  in  appearing  for  the  defence  of  the  Noncon- 
formists, and  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  generally,  against 
Dr.    Parker. — Taking    as   his   immediate    text    Parker's    last 


702  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

publication,  his  preface  to  Bramhall's  treatise,  but  referring" 
to  his  previous  writings,  Marvell  sent  out  quietly  in  the 
same  year  1672,  without  his  name,  The  Rehearsal  Transposed, 
or  Animadversions  upon  a  late  Book.  The  fantastic  title  was 
suggested  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's  farce,  The  Rehearsal, 
which  had  been  so  famous  since  December  1671,  when  it 
had  been  brought  out  to  ridicule  Dry  den  and  heroic  plays. 
It  had  just  been  published  and  was  in  everybody's  hands. 
One  of  the  jests  against  Dryden,  in  his  character  of  Bayes 
in  the  farce,  turns  on  the  explanation  which  Bayes  gives 
to  his  friends  Johnson  and  Smith  of  his  "  Rule  of  Trans- 
version,  or  Regula  Duplex,  changing  verse  into  prose,  or 
prose  into  verse,  alternative  as  you  please."  They  ask  how 
he  works  that  rule.  "  Why,  thus,  sir,"  says  Bayes  ;  "  nothing 
"  more  easy  when  understood  :  I  take  a  book  in  my  hand, 
"  either  at  home  or  elsewhere,  for  that 's  all  one.  If  there 
"  be  any  wit  in  't,  as  there  is  no  book  but  has  some,  I  trans- 
"  verse  it ;  that  is,  if  it  be  prose,  put  it  into  verse,  (but 
"  that  takes  up  more  time) ;  if  it  be  verse,  put  it  into  prose." 
On  Johnson's  remark,  "  Methinks,  Mr.  Bayes,  that  putting 
verse  into  prose  should  be  called  transprosing,"  Bayes  answers, 
"By  my  troth,  a  very  good  notion,  and  hereafter  it  shall 
be  so." — MarvelPs  appropriation  of  the  title  of  Bucking- 
ham's popular  farce,  and  of  the  new  word  "  transprosing," 
may  have  been  to  the  advantage  of  his  book  against  Parker, 
whom  throughout,  to  keep  up  the  jocose  reference,  he  persists 
in  calling  "  Mr.  Bayes."  That  was  but  a  clumsy  trick ;  but 
it  was  convenient  to  have  some  personification  for  Parker, 
while  respecting  the  etiquette  of  the  anonymous.  There  was 
no  other  respect  for  him  from  first  to  last.  He  is  played  with 
and  lectured ;  he  is  battered  and  shattered  ;  he  is  turned  about 
and  about  writh  every  variety  of  ludicrous  dexterity  of 
invention  ;  he  is  kept  standing  in  the  midst,  while  Marvell 
fetches  amusing  anecdotes  and  apophthegms  from  all  quarters, 
with  much  quaint  learning,  and  fine  quotations  from  the 
Latin  and  Italian  poets,  all  to  be  mixed  with  the  scurrilities 
already  at  hand  in  plenty.  The  satire,  for  mingled  humour, 
irony,  and  indecency  now  and  then,  may  match  with  some  of 


MARVELL'S   EE1IEAESAL    TBANSPEOSED.  703 

Swift's,  though  the  texture  is  looser  and  sometimes  finer,  and 
there  are  ordinary  argumentative  passages  interspersed,  quot- 
ing sentences  from  Parker  and  commenting  on  them  seriously. 
Marvell  had  resolved  at  all  risks  to  he  readahle,  and  he  had 
succeeded.  "  To  which,'""  says  Baxter,  speaking  of  Parker's 
preface  to  Bramhall,  "  Mr.  Andrew  Marvell,  a  Parliament 
"  man,  burgess  for  Hull,  did  publish  an  answer  so  exceeding 
"jocular  as  thereby  procured  abundance  of  readers  and  pardon 
"  to  the  author."  Not  only  was  the  Nonconformist  world  in 
thankful  ecstasies,  but,  as  Baxter  hints,  the  public  at  large, 
Church  of  England  men  included,  looked  on  with  glee  at 
Parker's  punishment. 

Exerting  himself  to  the  utmost,  Parker  produced  in  1673 
A  Reproof  to  the  Rehearsal  Transprosed  in  a  Discourse  to  its 
Author.  There  also  appeared  about  the  same  time  at  least 
five  other  anonymous  answers  to  Marvell  by  friends  or  ad- 
herents of  Parker.  One  was  called  A  Commonplace  Book  out 
of  the  Rehearsal  Transprosed ;  another,  entitled  The  Transproser 
Rehearsed,  was  thought  at  the  time  to  be  by  Parker  himself, 
though  the  real  author,  according  to  Wood,  was  Richard 
Leigh,  B.A.,  of  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  then  an  actor  in  one 
of  the  London  theatres.  Of  the  controversy,  when  it  was 
thus  at  its  thickest,  and  of  the  comparative  merits  of  the 
two  principals,  Parker  and  Marvell,  Wood's  account  may  be 
taken  as  the  most  unprejudiced.  "  This  pen  combat  exer- 
"  cised  between  our  author  and  Marvell,"  he  says  in  his 
sketch  of  Parker,  "  was  briskly  managed,  with  as  much  smart, 
"  cutting  and  satircal  wit  on  both  sides  as  any  other  perhaps 
"  of  late  hath  been,  they  endeavouring  by  all  the  methods 
tl  imaginable,  and  the  utmost  forces  they  could  by  any  means 
"  rally  up,  to  blacken  each  other's  cause,  and  to  set  each 
"  other  out  in  the  most  ugly  dress  ;  their  pieces  in  the  mean- 
"  while,  wherein  was  represented  a  perfect  trial  of  each  other's 
"  skill  and  parts,  in  a  jerking,  flirting  way  of  writing,  enter- 
'•  taming  the  reader  with  a  great  variety  of  sport  and  mirth, 
"  on  seeing  two  such  right  cocks  of  the  game  so  keenly 
"  engaging  with  sharp  and  dangerous  weapons.  And  it  was 
"  generally  thought,  nay  even  by  many  of  those  who   were 


704  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  otherwise  favourers  of  Parker's  cause,  that  he,   through    a 

"  too  loose  and  unwary  handling-  of  the  debate,  though  in  a 

"brave,  flourishing,  and  lofty  style,  laid  himself  too  open  to 

"  the  severe  strokes  of  his  sneering  adversary,  and  that  the 

"  odds  and  victory  lay  on  Marvell's  side.     However  it  was, 

"  it  wrought  this  good  effect  upon  our  author  that  for  ever 

"  after  it  took  down  somewhat  of  his  high  spirit,  insomuch 

"  that,  though  Marvell  in  a   Second  Part  replied  upon  our 

"  author's  Reproof,  yet  he  judged  it  more  prudent  rather  to 

"  lay  down  the  cudgels  than  to  enter  the  lists  again  with  an 

"  untowardly  combatant  so  well  versed  and  experienced  in 

"  the  then  but  newly-refined  art  (though  much  in  mode  and 

"  fashion  almost  ever  since)  of  sportive  and  jeering  buffoonery." 

The  Second  Part  of  Marvell's   Rehearsal  Transprosed,  which 

thus  finished  Parker  and  wound  up  the  controversy,  appeared 

very  late  in  1673,  with  this  title  : — The  Rehearsall  Transprosed: 

The  Second  Pari.     Occasioned  by  two  Letters  :  The  first,  printed 

by   a  nameless  Author,  intituled  a  Reproof,   Sfc.     The   Second 

Letter  left  for  me  at  a  Friend's  house,  dated  November  3,  1673. 

Subscribed  J.  G.,  and  concluding  with  these  toords  ;  if  thou  darest 

to  Print  or  Publish  any  Lie  or  Libel  against  Dr.  Parker,  By  the 

eternal  God  I  will  cut  thy  Throat.     Answered  by  Andrew  Marvel. 

London,  Printed  for  Nathaniel  Ponder  at  the  Peacock  in  Chancery 

La.ne  near  Fleet  Street,  1673."     Marvell,   as  the  victor,  now 

gave  his  name  openly. 

That  Milton's  name  should  have  occurred  in  the  course  of 
this  controversy  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  in 
any  case.  On  the  appearance  of  the  first  part  of  Marvell's 
Rehearsal  Transprosed,  however,  Parker  and  his  friends  seem 
to  have  assured  themselves  that  Marvell  had  been  inspired 
and  assisted  by  Milton.  Hence,  both  in  Parker's  own  reply, 
called  A  Reproof,  and  in  Leigh's  Transproser  Rehearsed,  which 
Marvell  supposed  to  be  Parker's  also,  as  well  as  in  the 
Commonplace  book  out  of  the  Rehearsal  Transprosed,  Milton  is 
dragged  in.  The  following  are  specimens  of  the  references 
to  him : — 

"  If  we  take  away  some  simpering  phrases  and  timorous  intro- 
ductions, your  collection  will  afford  as  good  precedents  for  rebellion 


MILTON    AND   THE    PARKER-MARVELL    CONTROVERSY.     705 

and  king-killing  as  any  we  meet  with  in  the  writings  of  J.  M. 
in  defence  of  the  Rebellion  and  the  Murder  of  the  King."  Reproof, 
p.  212. 

"  He  might  have  as  well  called  him  Bayes  Anonymus,  in  imita- 
tion of  Milton's  learned  bull  (for  that  bulls  in  Latin  are  learned 
ones  none  will  deny)  ;  who  in  his  answer  to  Salmasius  calls  him 
Claudius  Anonymus."     Trans.  Reh.  p.  9. 

"  The  work  would  have  been  more  gratefully  accepted  than 
Donne's  Poems  turned  into  Dutch, — but  what  talk  I  of  that  1 — 
than  Prynne's  Mount  Orgueil  or  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  in  blank 
verse."     Ibid,  p.  30. 

"  He  has  all  the  terms  of  that  art  [railing]  which  Smectymnuus, 
Marchamont  Needham,  J.  Milton,  or  any  other  of  the  professors, 
ever  thought  of."     Ibid.  p.  32. 

"  Dark  souls  may  be  illuminated  with  bright  and  shining 
thoughts.  As,  to  seek  no  fai'tker  for  an  instance,  the  blind  author 
of  Paradise  Lost  (the  odds  betwixt  a  Transproser  and  a  Blank 
Verse  poet  is  not  great)  begins  his  third  Book  thus,  groping  for 
a  beam  of  light  : — 

Hail,  holy  Light,  offspring  of  Heaven  first-born 

Or  of  the  Eternal  coeternal  beam 

May  I  express  thee  unblamed  1     .     .     .     . 

Thee  I  revisit  safe, 

And  feel  thy  sovran  vital  lamp ;  but  thou 

Revisit' st  not  these  eyes,  that  roll  in  vain 

To  find  thy  piercing  ray,  and  find  no  dawn  ; 

So  thick  a  drop  serene  hath  quenched  their  orbs, 

Or  dim  suffusion  veiled. 

No  doubt  but  the  thoughts  of  this  vital  lamp  lighted  a  Christmas 
candle  in  his  brain.  What  dark  meaning  he  may  have  in  calling  it 
this  thick  drop  serene  I  am  not  able  to  say  ;  but,  for  his  Eternal 
coeternal,  besides  the  absurdity  of  his  inventive  Divinity  in  making 
light  contemporary  with  its  Creator,  that  jingling  in  the  middle  of 
his  verse  is  more  notoriously  ridiculous  because  the  blind  bard  (as 
he  tells  us  himself  in  his  apology  for  writing  in  blank  verse) 
studiously  declined  rhyme  as  a  jingling  sound  of  like  endings. 
Nay,  what  is  more  observable,  it  is  the  very  same  fault  which 
he  was  so  quicksighted  as  to  discover  in  this  verse  of  Hall's  Tooth- 
less Satires : — 

'  To  teach  each  holloAv  grove  and  shrubby  hill.' 

This  teach  each  he  has  upbraided  the  Bishop  with  in  his  Animad- 
versions on  the  Remonstrant's  Defence  against  Smectymnuus." 
Ibid.  pp.  41-43. 

"  Once  perhaps  in  a  century  of  years  there  may  arise  a  Martin 
Marprelate,  a  Milton,  or  such  a  brave  as  our  present  author." 
Ibid.  p.  55. 

"  I    shall    only  match    them  with    some    historical    remarks    in 

VOL.  vi.  z  z 


706  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

an  ingenious  writer  against  Mr.  Milton,  concerning  the  rise  and 
fall  of  Republics  [quotation  from  Censure  of  the  Rota  on  Milton] ." 
Ibid.  p.  113. 

"  In  his  Accidence  (whether  it  be  the  same  with  Milton's  Ac- 
cidence Commenc'd  Grammar  I  know  not)  .  .  .  ."    Ibid.  p.  126. 

"In  page  83  he  tells  us  this  J.  O.  [John  Owen]  has  a  head  and 
a  mouth,  with  tongue  and  teeth  in  it,  and  hands  with  fingers  and 
nails  upon  them.  Which  is  almost  as  apposite  a  description  of  an 
Independent  as  his  friend  Mr.  Milton  has  given  us  of  a  Bishop  ; 
who  in  his  Apology  for  his  Animadversions  upon  the  Remonstrant's 
Defence  against  Smectymnuus  says  that  a  Bishop's  foot  that  hath 
all  his  toes,  maugre  the  gout  and  a  linen  sock  over  it,  is  the  aptest 
emblem  of  the  Bishop  himself ;  who,  being  a  pluralist,  under  one 
surplice,  which  is  also  of  linen  (and  therefore  so  far  like  the  toe- 
surplice,  the  sock),  hides  four  benefices,  besides  the  metropolitan 
see.  So  that,  when  Archbishop  Abbott  was  suspended,  we  might 
say,  in  Mr.  Milton's  style,  his  metropolitan  toe  was  cut  off.  But, 
since  Milton  is  so  great  an  enemy  to  great  toes  (however  dignified 
and  distinguished,  be  they  Papal  or  Metropolitan),  we  would  fain 
know  whether  his  are  all  of  one  length,  since  the  Leveller  it  seems 
affects  a  parity  even  in  toes.  Whether  now  his  Bishop  with  a 
metropolitan  toe  or  our  author's  Congregational  Man  with  ten 
fingers  and  long  nails  upon  all  be  the  fitter  monster  to  be  shown  is 
hard  to  say.  Only,  &c.  .  .  .  For,  unluckily,  among  other  calami- 
ties of  late,  there  has  happened  a  prodigious  conjunction  of  a  Latin 
Secretary  and  an  English  Schoolmaster,  the  appearance  of  which 
none  of  our  astrologers  foretold,  nor  no  comet  portended.  . .  . 

O  marvellous  fate  !    O  fate  full  of  marvel  ! 

That  Noll's  Latin  pay  two  clerks  should  deserve  all, 

Hiring  a  gelding,  and  Milton  the  stallion." 

Ibid.  pp.  126-8  and  135. 

"  In  his  [Marvell's]  discourse  of  the  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing, 
p.  6  (which  is  little  else  but  Milton's  Areopagitica  in  short  hand), 
the  very  sponges,  &c.  [quotation  from  Marvell]."     Ibid.  p.  131. 

"  If  you  will  have  it  in  his  elegancy,  I  never  saw  a  man  in 
so  high  a  state  of  salivation.  If  in  Milton's  (I  know  he  will  be 
proud  to  lick  up  his  spittle),  he  has  invested  himself  with  all  the 
rheum  of  the  town,  that  he  might  have  sufficient  to  bespawl  the 
clergy."     Ibid.  p.  132. 

"  Such  was  the  liberty  of  his  [Milton's]  unlicensed  printing  that 
the  more  modest  Aretine,  were  he  alive  in  this  age,  might  be  set  to 
school  again  to  learn  in  his  own  art  of  the  blind  schoolmaster." 
Ibid.  pp.  136-7. 


In  the  Second  Part  of  the  Rehearsal  Transprosed  Marvell 
devotes  one  dignified  paragraph  to  a  notice  of  these  attacks 


MAKVELL   ON   HIS   CONNEXION    WITH    MILTON.  707 

on  Milton  and  insinuations  that  Milton  had  assisted  him  in 
the  First  Part.     He  addresses  Parker  thus  : — 

"  You  do  three  times  at  least  in  your  Reproof,  and  in  your 
Transproser  Rehearsed  well  nigh  half  the  book  thorough,  run  upon 
an  author  J.  M. ;  which  does  not  a  little  offend  me.  For  why  should 
any  other  man's  reputation  suffer  in  a  contest  betwixt  you  and 
me  1  But  it  is  because  you  resolved  to  suspect  that  he  had  an 
hand  in  my  former  book  ■  wherein,  whether  you  deceive  yourself 
or  no,  you  deceive  others  extremely.  For  by  chance  I  had  not 
seen  him  of  two  years  before;  but,  after  I  undertook  writing,  I 
did  more  carefully  avoid  either  visiting  or  sending  to  him,  lest 
I  should  any  way  involve  him  in  my  consequences.  And  you 
might  have  understood,  or  I  am  sure  your  friend  the  author  of 
the  Commonplaces  could  have  told  you  (he  too  had  a  slash  at 
J.  M.  on  my  account)  that,  had  he  took  you  in  hand,  you  would 
have  had  cause  to  repent  the  occasion,  and  not  escaped  so  easily  as 
you  did  under  my  Trcmsprosal.  But  I  take  it  moreover  very  ill 
that  you  should  have  so  mean  an  opinion  of  me  as  not  to  think  me 
competent  to  write  such  a  simple  book  as  that  without  any  assist- 
ance. It  is  a  sign  (however  you  upbraid  me  often  as  your  old 
acquaintance)  that  you  did  not  know  me  well,  and  that  we  had  not 
much  conversation  together.  But,  because  in  your  p.  1 1 5  you  are 
so  particular, — You  'know  a  friend  of  ours,'  intending  that  J.  M. 
and  his  answer  to  Salmasius, — I  think  it  here  seasonable  to  ac- 
quit my  promise  to  you  in  giving  the  reader  a  short  trouble 
concerning  my  first  acquaintance  with  you. — J.  M.  was,  and  is, 
a  man  of  great  learning  and  sharpness  of  wit  as  any  man.  It  was 
his  misfortune,  living  in  a  tumultuous  time,  to  be  tossed  on  the 
wrong  side,  and  he  writ,  flagrante  bello,  certain  dangerous  treatises. 
His  books  of  Divorce  I  know  not  whether  you  may  have  use  of ; 
but  those  upon  which  you  take  him  at  advantage  were  of  no  other 
nature  than  that  which  I  mentioned  to  you,  writ  by  your  own 
father  :  only  with  this  difference,  that  your  father's,  which  I  have 
by  me,  was  written  with  the  same  design,  but  with  much  less  wit 
or  judgment ;  for  which  there  was  no  remedy,  unless  you  will 
supply  his  judgment  with  his  High  Court  of  Justice.  [The  al- 
lusion is  to  the  fact  that  Parker's  father,  the  Puritan  and  Re- 
publican lawyer,  John  Parker,  had  been  one  of  the  High  Court  of 
Justice  that  sentenced  to  death  the  three  great  Royalist  peers, 
Lord  Capel,  the  Earl  of  Holland,  and  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  im- 
mediately after  the  execution  of  Charles  I.]  At  his  Majesty's 
happy  return  J.  H.  did  partake,  even  as  you  yourself  did  for  all 
your  huffing,  of  his  regal  clemency,  and  has  ever  since  expiated 
himself  in  a  retired  silence.  It  was  after  that,  I  well  remember  it, 
that,  being  one  day  at  his  house,  I  there  first  met  you,  and  acci- 
dentally. Since  that  I  have  been  scarce  four  or  five  times  in  your 
company ;  but,  whether  it  were  my  foresight  or  my  good  fortune, 

Z  Z  2 


708  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

I  never  contracted  any  friendship  or  confidence  with  you.  But 
then  it  was,  when  you,  as  I  told  you,  wandered  up  and  down  Moor- 
fields,  astrologizing  upon  the  duration  of  his  Majesty's  Government, 
that  you  frequented  J.  M.  incessantly,  and  haunted  his  house  day 
hy  day.  What  discourse  you  there  used  he  is  too  generous  to 
rememher.  But,  he  never  having  in  the  least  provoked  you,  for 
you  to  insult  thus  over  his  old  age,  to  traduce  him,  by  your  scara- 
muccios  and  in  your  own  person,  as  a  schoolmaster,  who  was  born 
and  hath  lived  much  more  ingenuously  and  liberally  than  yourself; 
to  have  done  all  this  and  lay  at  last  my  simple  book  to  his  charge, 
without  ever  taking  care  to  inform  yourself  better,  which  you  had 
so  easy  opportunity  to  do ;  nay,  when  you  yourself  too  have  said, 
to  my  knowledge,  that  you  saw  no  such  great  matter  in  it  but  that 
I  might  be  the  author :  it  is  inhumanly  and  inhospitably  done,  and 
will,  I  hope,  be  a  warning  to  all  others,  as  it  is  to  me,  to  avoid 
— I  will  not  say  such  a  Judas,  but — a  man  that  creeps  into  all 
companies  to  jeer,  trepan,  and  betray  them  \" 

The  Second  Part  of  Marvell's  Rehearsal  Transprosed,  with 
this  passage  in  it,  was  out  in  London  in  the  winter  of  1673-4. 
It  must  have  been  in  that  winter,  if  not  a  little  before,  that 
Milton  received  a  memorable  visit,  perhaps  the  last,  from  the 
real  Bayes.     "  Jo.  Drey  den,  Esq.,   Poet  Laureate,  wrho  very 

1  Authorities  for  my  account  of  following  year,  he  is  very  large  upon 
Parker,  and  of  the  Parker  -  Marvell  Marvell,  representing  him  as  one  of 
controversy  in  its  connexion  with  Mil-  those  infamous  reprobates  who  kept 
toD,  are  : — Wood's  Ath.  IV.  225 — 235  English  society  agitated  after  the  Re- 
(Parker),  IV.  101  and  108  (Owen),  and  storation  by  a  deliberate  and  chronic 
IV.  533  (Leigh) ;  Baxter's  Life,  Part  III.  conspiracy  for  the  subversion  of  the 
41,  42,  and  102  ;  my  notes  from  the  Monarchy.  "  Amongst  these  lewd  re- 
Stationers'  Registers  ;  old  copies  of  the  vilers,"  he  says,  "  the  lewdest  was  one 
books  on  the  Parker  side  quoted  from  ;  "  whose  name  was  Marvell.  As  he  had 
and  Marvell's  Rehearsal  Transprosed,  "lived  in  all  manner  of  wickedness  from 
in  Dr.  Grosart's  edition  of  Marvell's  "  his  youth,  so,  being  of  a  singular  ini- 
Works.      The  quotation  from  this  last  "pudence  and  petulancy  of  nature,  he 

is  from  pp.  498 — 500. Parker  wrote  "exercised  the  province  of  a  Satirist  for 

more  books,  some  of  them  theological  "the  use  of  the  faction,  being  not  so 

and  others  of  High  Church  and  Passive  "  much  a  Satirist  through  quickness  of 

Obedience  politics,  and  had  farther  pre-  "wit  as  sourness  of  temper;  of  but  in- 

ferments  in  the  Church,  ending  in  his  "  different  parts,  except  it  were  in  the 

being  Bishop  of  Oxford  in  the  reign  of  "  talent  of  railing  and  malignity .  .  .  Out 

James  II.     He  held  the  bishopric,  re-  "of  the  House,  when  he  could  do  it  with 

taining  his  archdeaconry  in  commendam,  "  impunity,  he  vented  himself  with  the 

but  a  short  time,  i.  e.  from  Oct.  17, 1686  "greater    bitterness    [because    he    was 

to   his   death,  March  20,  1687-8.     He  "always    hissed    down    in   the   House, 

figures  in  Burnet's  History  as  carrying  "asserts  Parker]  and  daily  spewed  in- 

his  rancour  and  meanness  with  him  to  "  famous  libels  out  of  his  filthy  mouth 

all  lengths  through   his  life,  his  High  "  against  the  King  himself.     If  at  any 

Churchism  transmutable  into  Popery  at  "time  the   Fanatics  had   occasion   for 

last  if  need  were.     He  had  never  for-  "  this  libeller's  help,  he  presently  issued 

gotten  Marvell's  castigation  ;   for  in  a  "  forth  out  of  his  cave  like  a  gladiator 

History  of  his  oion  Time  which  he  left  "  or  wild  beast."     There  is  much  more 

behind  him,  and  which  was  published  about  Marvell,  with  one  or  two  allusions 

in  Latin  in  1726  and  in  English  in  the  to  Milton  as  his  patron. 


DEYDEN'S    VISIT   TO   MILTON.  709 

"  much  admired  him,"  says  Aubrey,  "  went  to  him  to  have 
"  leave  to  put  his  Paradise  Lost  into  a  drama  in  rhyme.  Mr. 
"  Milton  received  him  civilly,  and  told  him  that  he  would 
"  give  him  leave  to  tag  his  verses.''  The  proposal  strikes  us 
now  as  an  impudent  one  ;  but,  with  Dryden's  ideas,  it  was 
the  highest  compliment  he  could  pay  to  Milton.  Dryden's 
veneration  for  Shakespeare  had  not  prevented  him  and 
Davenant  together  from  recasting  Shakespeare's  Tempest  six 
years  before,  to  adapt  it  to  the  improved  dramatic  tastes  and 
the  improved  stage-decorations  of  the  Restoration.  Remem- 
bering this,  and  always  in  quest  of  new  subjects,  it  had 
occurred  to  Drydenthat  a  condensation  of  the  plot  of  Paradise 
Lost  into  several  acts  of  a  sacred  drama  or  opera,  with  a 
cunning  selection  of  the  most  telling  passages,  "transversed  " 
into  sonorous  rhyme  by  his  peculiar  method,  would  be  an 
attractive  novelty  at  the  King's  Theatre.  There  might  be 
difficulty  in  obtaining  permission  for  such  a  production,  and 
there  would  be  the  farther  difficulty  of  devising  a  proper 
stasre-substitute  for  the  costume  of  Paradise.  But  both  diffi- 
culties  might  be  overcome  ;  and,  even  if  the  stage-perform- 
ance of  such  a  drama  should  turn  out  to  be  impossible,  the 
written  drama  would  be  a  good  example  of  Dryden's  process 
of  "  transversing,"  and  might  illustrate,  in  corpore  nobili,  that 
very  question  of  the  comparative  powers  of  rhyme  and  blank 
verse  in  poetry  about  which  he  and  Milton  differed.  It  was 
but  polite  in  Dryden  to  ask  Milton's  sanction  of  the  liberty 
beforehand  ;  and  Milton,  it  appears,  was  equally  polite  in 
granting  the  request.  "  O,  certainly,  you  may  tag  my  verses 
if  you  please,  Mr.  Dryden,"  seem  to  have  been  the  words. 
Tags,  in  those  daj^s  of  elaborate  dressing,  were  the  metal 
points  or  knobs,  gold  or  silver  if  possible,  at  the  ends  of  the 
laces  or  cords  with  which  dresses  were  fastened.  They  were 
partly  for  ornament,  partly  to  keep  the  ends  of  the  laces  from 
fraying.  Blank  verse,  therefore,  in  Milton's  clever  momentary 
fancy,  consisted  of  lines  in  their  natural  state,  or  untagged, 
and  to  make  them  rhyme,  as  Dryden  proposed,  was  to  tag 
them,  or  put  on  the  fashionable  shining  points  at  the  ends. 
To  that  experiment  with  Paradise  Lost  Dryden   was  made 


710  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

welcome  to  any  extent,  and  went  away  satisfied.  If  ever 
Milton  laughed  by  himself  after  the  departure  of  a  visitor,  it 
must  have  been  on  this  occasion.  His  amusement  must  have 
lasted  for  some  time  ;  for  he  mentioned  the  visit  and  its 
purport,  we  shall  find  presently,  to  Marvell,  if  not  to  others, 
repeating  the  exact  words  of  the  answer  he  had  given  to 
Dryden. 

Dryden  was  a  rapid  worker  ;  and  within  the  space  of  a 
month,  as  he  tells  us  himself,  he  accomplished  his  task.  He 
does  not  mention  the  particular  month,  but  it  must  have 
been  before  the  17th  of  April  1674  ;  on  which  day,  as  the 
Stationers'  Registers  inform  us,  "  Mr.  Henry  Herringman 
"  entered  for  his  copy,  under  the  hands  of  Roger  L'Estrang, 
"  Esq.,  and  Mr.  Warden  Mearne,  a  Booke  or  Coppy  entituled 
"  The  Fall  of  Angells  and  Man  in  Innocence :  An  Heroick 
"  Opera,  written  to  [sic]  John  Dreyden,  Servant  to  his 
"  Majestic"  For  some  reason,  though  the  opera  was  then 
quite  ready,  its  publication  was  postponed.  But,  as  all  the 
poet-laureate's  movements  interested  the  public,  and  his 
intention  of  transversing-  Milton's  poem  had  become  a  matter 
of  special  gossip,  there  was  such  a  curiosity  to  see  the  result 
that,  without  Dryden's  knowledge  or  consent,  transcripts  of 
his  opera  were  in  circulation  through  the  town,  he  says,  while 
his  own  manuscript  still  lay  in  Herringman's  hands.  These 
transcripts  were  passing  from  hand  to  hand  and  being  multi- 
plied, each  new  copy  more  erroneous  than  the  last,  and  critics 
were  already  pronouncing  their  judgments  on  the  performance, 
some  of  which  reached  Dryden's  ears,  and  were  not  flattering. 
Among  those  critics  of  the  opera,  as  it  was  to  be  read  in  the 
copies  that  had  got  about  early  in  1674,  were  Milton  himself 
and  his  friend  Marvell.  The  fact  has  escaped  notice  hitherto, 
but  is  certain  nevertheless  *. 

If  Milton  had   been  amused   by    Dryden's  proposal  of  a 

i  The  proof  will  be  completed  pre-  published  in  the  end  of  1674,  that  "many 

gently,  if  it  should  not  seem  complete  hundred  copies   of  it "  had  meanwhile 

already  in  the  fact  of  the  entry  of  the  been  "  dispersed  abroad,"  doing  injustice 

opera  in  the  Stationers'  Registers  on  the  to  the  work  by  their  incorrectness.    See 

17th  of  April,  1674,  taken  in  connexion  the  Preface  in  Scott's  edition  of  Dryden's 

with  Dryden's  express  statement,  in  his  Works,  Vol.  V. 
preface  to  the  opera  when  it  was  actually 


dryden's  opera  from  paradise  lost.  711 

dramatic  transversion  of  his  Paradise  Lost,  he  must  have  been 
even  more  amused  by  the  result.  The  heroic  opera  consists 
of  five  short  acts,  grasping  the  main  story  of  Milton's  epic 
pretty  coherently  for  scenic  effect,  and  telling"  it  in  soliloquies 
and  dialogue,  aided  by  stage-directions.  The  soliloquies  and 
dialogue  are  almost  entirely  rhymed  translations  of  passages 
of  Milton's  blank  verse,  only  a  speech  or  two  being  left  un- 
rhymed,  and  the  translation  in  those  speeches  being  from 
Milton's  blank  to  Dryden's  other  kind  of  blank.  The  fol- 
lowing are  sufficient  specimens  : — 

Act  I :  Scene  I. 

Represents  a  Chaos,  or  a  confused  mass  of  matter ;  the  stage  is 
almost  wholly  dark  :  A  symphony  of  warlike  music  is  heard  for 
some  time ;  then  from  the  Heavens  (which  are  opened)  fall  the 
rebellious  Angels,  wheeling  in  air  and  seeming  transfixed  with 
thunderbolts :  The  bottom  of  the  stage,  being  opened,  receives  the 
Angels,  who  fall  out  of  sight.  Tunes  of  victory  are  played,  and 
an  hymn  sung ;  Angels  discovered  above,  brandishing  their  swords  : 
The  music  ceasing,  and  the  Heavens  being  closed,  the  scene  shifts, 
and  on  a  sudden  represents  Hell :  Part  of  the  scene  is  a  lake  of 
brimstone  or  rolling  fire,  the  Earth  of  a  burnt  colour  :  The  Fallen 
Angels  appear  on  the  lake,  lying  prostrate ;  a  tune  of  horror  and 
lamentation  is  heard. 

LUCIFER,    RAISING    HIMSELF    ON    THE    LAKE. 

Lucifer.     Is  this  the  seat  our  conquei-or  has  given  1 
And  this  the  climate  we  must  change  for  Heaven  1 
These  regions  and  this  realm  my  wars  have  got ; 
This  mournful  empire  is  the  loser's  lot : 
In  liquid,  burnings  or  on  dry  to  dwell 
Is  all  the  sad  variety  of  Hell. 
But  see,  the  Victor  has  recalled  from  far 
The  avenging  storms,  his  ministers  of  war : 
His  shafts  are  spent,  and  his  tired  thunders  sleep, 
Nor  longer  bellow  through  the  boundless  deep. 
Best  take  the  occasion  and  these  waves  forsake 
While  time  is  given. — Ho  !  Asmodai,  awake, 
If  thou  art  he  !     But  ah  !  how  changed  from  him, 
Companion  of  my  arms  !  how  wan,  how  dim, 
How  faded  all  thy  glories  are  !     I  see 
Myself  too  well  and  my  own  change  in  thee. 

Asmodai.     Prince  of  the  Thrones,  who  in  the  fields  of  light 
Led'st  forth  the  embattled  Seraphim  to  fight; 
Who  shook,  &c. 


712  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

Act  II :  Scene  II. 

Paradise. 

Trees  cut  out  on  each  side,  with  several  fruits  upon  them ;  a 
fountain  in  the  midst :  At  the  far  end  the  prospect  terminates  in 
walks. 

Adam.     O  virgin  heaven-begot,  and  born  of  man, 
Thou  fairest  of  thy  great  Creator's  works  ! 
Thee,  goddess,  thee  the  Eternal  did  ordain 
His  softer  substitute  on  earth  to  reign ; 
And,  wheresoe'er  thy  happy  footsteps  tread, 
Nature  in  triumph  after  thee  is  led. 
Angels  with  pleasure  view  thy  matchless  grace, 
And  love  their  Maker's  image  in  thy  face. 

Eve.     0  only  like  myself  (for  nothing  here 
So  graceful,  so  majestic,  does  appear), 
Art  thou  the  form  my  longing  eyes  did.  see, 
Loosed  from  thy  fountain,  and  come  out  to  me  1 
Yet  sure  thou  art  not ;  nor  thy  face  the  same, 
Nor  thy  limbs  moulded  in  so  soft  a  frame ; 
Thou  look'st  more  sternly,  dost  more  strongly  move, 
And  more  of  awe  thou  bear'st  and  less  of  love. 
Yet  pleased  I  hear  thee,  and  above  the  rest 
I,  next  myself,  admire  and  love  thee  best. 

Adam.     Made  to  command,  thus  freely  I  obey, 
And  at  thy  feet  the  whole  Creation  lay  .... 

Eve.     Something  forbids  me,  which  I  cannot  name ; 
For,  ignorant  of  guilt,  I  fear  not  shame : 
But  some  restraining  thought,  I  know  not  why, 
Tells  me  you  long  should  beg,  I  long  deny. 

It  was  evidently  high  time  that  there  should  be  a  second 
edition  of  the  real  Paradise  Lost.  The  wonder  is  that,  the 
first  edition  having-  been  sold  out  five  years  ago,  there  should 
not  have  been  a  second  long  ere  this  time.  The  printer 
Simmons  may  have  thought  that  the  1300  or  1500  copies 
already  published  had  reached  all  the  likely  purchasers  of 
such  a  poem  then  in  England,  and  that  a  new  edition  might 
be  postponed  till  new  readers  grew  up.  He  was  stirred  at 
last,  however,  and  it  seems  not  impossible  that  the  poet- 
laureate's  proposed  publication  of  his  dramatic  transversion  of 
Paradise  Lost  may  have  been  the  immediate  stimulus.  Were 
the  poet-laureate  and  Mr.  Herringman  to  be  making  money 
by  the  sale  of  hundreds  of  copies  of  a  rapid  adaptation  of  an 
important  book  the   copyright   of  which    belonged  to  him, 


SECOND   EDITION   OF   PARADISE  LOST.  713 

Mr.  Simmons  ?  Had  Mr.  Milton  acted  legally  in  authorizing 
such  an  adaptation?  In  the  covenant  of  April  1667,  when 
Mr.  Simmons  acquired  the  copyright  and  paid  Mr.  Milton 
his  first  five  pounds,  was  it  not  expressly  stipulated  "  that 
"he  the  said  Jo.  Milton,  his  executors  or  administrators,  or 
"  any  other  by  his  or  their  means  or  consent,  shall  not  print 
"or  cause  to  be  printed,  or  sell,  dispose,  or  publish  the 
"said  book  or  manuscript,  or  any  other  booh  or  manuscript  of 
"  the  same  tenor  or  subject,  without  the  consent  of  the  said 
"  Samuel  Symons,  his  executors  or  assigns  ?  "  Whether  it  was 
this  consideration  that  moved  Simmons,  or  whether  he  and 
Milton  had  already  been  agreeing  independently  in  the  course 
of  1673  that  a  new  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  ought  to  be 
ventured,  certain  it  is  that  such  a  new  edition  was  one  of 
the  events  of  the  year  1674.  "Paradise  Lost.  A  Poem  In 
Twelve  Books.  The  Author  John  Milton.  The  Second  Edition 
Revised  and  Augmented  by  the  same  Author.  London,  Printed 
by  S.  Simmons  next  door  to  the  Golden  Lion  in  Aldersgate-street, 
1674  : "  such  was  the  title-page  of  the  new  volume.  The 
precise  month  of  its  appearance  in  the  year  1674  cannot  be 
ascertained 1. 

The  Second  Edition  differs  from  the  First  in  various  me- 
chanical particulars,  in  some  for  the  better,  in  others  for  the 
worse.  The  size  of  the  volume  is  small  octavo,  instead  of 
small  quarto,  and  some  copies  at  least  contain  Dolle's  portrait 
of  Milton,  reduced  in  1671  from  the  Faithorne  engraving. 
The  pages,  not  numbered  in  the  first  edition,  are  now  num- 
bered in  the  ordinary  fashion.  On  the  other  hand,  the  mar- 
ginal numbering  of  the  lines  by  tens  is  omitted, — a  decided 
inconvenience.  The  "  Argument "  of  the  poem,  prepared  for 
the  late  issues  of  copies  of  the  first  edition,  and  then  put  in 
block  at  the  beginning,  is  now  distributed  through  the 
volume,  each  piece  heading  its  own  proper  Book.     More  im- 

1  Why  is  there  not  in  every  printed  announcement  of  Dryden'a  opera  might 

book  a  note  of  the  month  of  its  publica-  account  for  the  delay  in  the  publication 

tion,  as  well  as  of  the  yearl    For  his-  of  the  opera  so  long  after  its  registration 

torical    and  biographical   purposes  the  in  April  1674.     Simmons  may  have  in- 

niere  notation  by  the  year  is  very  in-  sisted  that  his  second  edition  of  I'uradise 

sufficient. — The  hypothesis   that  Sim-  Lo*t   should   have  the  precedence   by 

mons    was    roused    by    Herringman's  some  mouths  at  least. 


714  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

portant  still,  the  poem  is  arranged  now  in  twelve  books, 
instead  of  ten  as  originally.  This  is  done  by  dividing-  the 
two  longest  books  of  the  poem  in  the  first  edition,  viz.  those 
numbered  VII.  and  X.  there,  into  two  books  each.  To  smooth 
the  breaks  caused  by  these  divisions  a  few  new  lines  had  to 
be  dictated  by  Milton ;  and,  accordingly,  the  second  edition 
contains  eight  lines  that  had  not  been  in  the  first, — to  wit, 
the  three  that  now  open  book  VIII.  and  the  five  that  open 
book  XII.  This  is  all  that  can  justify  the  word  "  augmented  " 
in  the  title-page.  There  are  one  or  two  slight  alterations  of 
the  text  besides,  and  a  few  verbal  or  literal  variations  due  to 
the  printer.  Altogether  the  book  is  a  very  correct  one,  and 
presents  the  poem  in  the  form  finally  judged  best  by  Milton  ; 
but  it  is  not  nearly  so  handsome,  or  so  pleasant  to  read,  as  a 
copy  of  the  first  edition.  The  two  editions  taken  together, 
there  were  now  2600  or  3000  copies  of  the  epic  in  print. 

Two  sets  of  commendatory  verses  were  prefixed.  One  was 
in  Latin  elegiacs,  headed  In  Paradlsum  Amissam  Swmmi  Poeta 
Johannis  Miltoni,  and  signed  "  S.  B.,  M.D.;"  the  other  was 
in  English  heroics,  headed  "  On  Paradise  Lost,"  and  signed 
"  A.  M."  These  sets  of  verses  are,  or  ought  to  be,  in  all 
modern  editions  of  the  poem,  and  are  of  interest  here 
biographically. — The  writer  of  the  Latin  set  was  that  Dr. 
Samuel  Barrow,  a  Norfolkshire  man  by  birth,  whom  we  en- 
countered as  long  ago  as  1659,  when  he  was  chief  physician 
to  Monk's  army  in  Scotland  and  one  of  Monk's  most  con- 
fidential advisers,  and  whom  we  found  marching  with  Monk 
and  that  army  into  England,  and  assisting  Monk  in  the  first 
difficulties  of  his  temporary  dictatorship 1.  Having  been  one 
of  the  minor  negotiators  for  the  Restoration,  he  had  been 
made  physician  in  ordinary  to  the  King  and  advocate  general 
and  judge  martial  of  the  army;  he  had  a  large  medical 
practice  in  London ;  and  he  had  married  the  wealthy  widow 
of  a  knight.  It  need  be  no  surprise  to  us,  after  finding  the 
Earl  of  Anglesey,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  and  others  more  or 
less  eminent  in  Court  society,  on  terms  of  kindly  familiarity 

i  See  ante,  Vol.  V.  p.  476  ;  also  p.  52S,  and  p.  534. 


ENCOMIUMS   BY  BARROW   AND    MARVELL.  715 

with  Milton  in  his  later  years,  to  find  that  the  eminent 
court-physician  Dr.  Barrow  had  also  then  been  drawn  into  his 
company.  Though  this  is  his  first  appearance  there,  he  has 
now  to  be  added,  therefore,  to  the  list  of  those  who  had  been 
among-  Milton's  admirers  and  visitors  since  the  publication 
of  Paradise  Lost  in  1667.  He  was  then  but  forty-two  years 
of  age,  Milton's  junior  by  about  seventeen  years.  That  he 
was  a  scholarly  and  intelligent  man,  whose  admiration  was 
worth  something,  is  attested  by  his  Latin  lines  themselves, 
and  by  the  fact  that  Milton  used  them  to  introduce  his 
second  edition.  Whether  they  were  offered  expressly  for  that 
purpose,  or  had  already  been  in  Milton's  possession  for  some 
time  as  a  private  testimony  of  Barrow's  regard,  does  not 
appear.  The  concluding  four  lines,  calling  upon  all  Roman 
and  all  Greek  writers  to  acknowledge  Milton's  superiority,  and 
declaring  that  the  readers  of  Paradise  Lost  would  agree  with 
him  in  thinking  Homer  and  Virgil  but  poor  in  comparison, 
may  pass  as  mere  hackneyed  hyperbole.  But  the  preceding 
thirty-eight  lines  show  real  acquaintance  with  the  poem,  and 
are  a  spirited  summary  of  a  portion  of  its  contents.  "  Thou 
who  readest  Paradise  Lost,  the  grand  poem  of  the  great 
Milton,"  says  Barrow,  "  what  readest  thou  but  the  universe  of 
things?"  There  is  then  a  sketch  of  Milton's  plan  of  Heaven, 
Chaos,  Hell,  and  Earth,  and  of  his  story  of  the  Angelic 
Wars1. — The  "A.  M."  of  the  English  commendatory  verses 
was,  of  course,  Andrew  Marvell.  They  must  have  been  written 
expressly  for  the  second  edition ;  for  their  very  peculiarity 
consists  in  their  being  a  studied  combination  of  eulogium  on 
Milton  for  his  Paradise  Lost  with  rebuke  to  Dryden  for  his 
impudence  in  attempting  a  dramatic  and  rhymed  transversion 
of  such  an  epic.  When  first  he  saw  the  blind  poet  engaging 
with  his  vast  theme,  he  says,  he  trembled  for  his  failure, 
great  as  he  knew  his  powers  to  be.  Heaven,  Hell,  Earth, 
Chaos,  the  crowned  Messiah,  the  Rebel  Angels,  the  Fall  of 

1  Ante,  Vol.  V.  p.  476,  p.  528,  and  p.  of   his    life;    Chamberlayne's    Anglia 

534  ;  Lysons's  Environs  of  Loudon,  II.  Notitia  from  1671  to  1682  ;  the  Com- 

371,   where    there   is  quoted   the   long  mendatory  Verses.     Barrow  died  March 

Latin  inscription  on  Barrow's  tomb  in  21, 1681-2,  aetat.  57. 
Fulham  church,  containing  reticulars 


716  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND  HISTORY  OF  HIS  TIME. 

Man  :  how  could  the  blind  man  compass  such  a  union  of 
grandeurs?  Would  he  not,  like  his  own  Samson,  pull  down 
the  edifice,  and  be  buried  in  the  ruins?  There  was  yet  another 
danger : — 

"  Or,  if  a  work  so  infinite  he  spanned, 
Jealous  I  was  that  some  less  skilful  hand 
(Such  as  disquiet  always  what  is  well, 
And  by  ill-imitating  would  excel) 
Might  hence  presume  the  whole  Creation's  Day 
To  change  in  scenes,  and  show  it  in  a  play." 

Marvell's  fears  for  Milton's  success  had  been  groundless,  and 
he  begs  the  mighty  poet's  pardon  for  having  ever  entertained 
them — 

"  Thou  singst  with  so  much  gravity  and  ease, 
And  above  human  flight  dost  soar  aloft 
With  plume  so  strong,  so  equal,  and  so  soft : 
The  bird  named  from  the  Paradise  you  sing 
So  never  flags,  but  always  keeps  on  wing. 
Where  couldst  thou  words  of  such  a  compass  find  1 
Whence  furnish  such  a  vast  expense  of  mind? 
Just  Heaven,  thee  like  Tiresias  to  requite, 
Rewards  with  prophecy  thy  loss  of  sight." 

Then,  in  that  very  thing  which  had  been  most  misdoubted, 
his  use  of  Blank  Verse,  what  a  literary  revelation  he  had 
given  to  all,  and  what  a  lordly  lesson  to  certain  litterateurs 
who  need  not  be  particularly  named  ! — 

"Well  mightst  thou  scorn  thy  readers  to  allure 
With  tinkling  rime,  of  thy  own  sense  secure ; 
While  the  Town-Bayes  writes  all  the  while  and  spells, 
And,  like  a  pack-horse,  tires  without  his  bells. 
Their  fancies  like  our  bushy  points  appear; 
The  poets  tag  them,  we  for  fashion  wear. 
I  too,  transported  by  the  mode,  offend, 
And,  while  I  meant  to  praise  thee,  must  commend. 
Thy  verse,  created,  like  thy  theme  sublime, 
In  number,  weight,  and  measure,  needs  not  rime." 

Marvell's  discipleship  to  Milton,  it  will  be  seen,  is  perfect 
and  exceptionless  to  the  last.  He  will  do  anything  for 
Milton, — drink  up  eisel  for  him,  eat  a  crocodile.  He  will 
forswear  rhyme  for  him,  though  he  had  himself  practised 
nothing  else  in  his  own  poetry ;   and  he  will  beard  Bayes 


milton's  circumstances  in  1674.  717 

the  poet-laureate  for  him  as  fearlessly   as  he    had   bearded 
Bayes  the  archdeacon  on  a  more  general  account  K 

In  a  preserved  account  of  the  Hearth-money  taxation  of 
the  county  of  Middlesex  for  the  year  ending-  at  Lady  Day 
1674  Milton's  house  is  entered  as  the  ninth  from  one  end  in 
the  row  of  houses  then  forming  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill,  and 
his  position  among  his  nearest  neighbours  in  the  row  is 
presented  thus  : — "  Mr.  Becke,  6  hearths  ;  Samuel  Kindall,  4 
hearths ;  Widow  Bowers,  4  hearths  ;  John  Melton,  4  hearths  ; 
Richard  Hardinge,  6  hearths ;  Mr.  Howard,  5  hearths." 
His  house  was,  therefore,  one  of  the  smallest  in  the  row  at 
that  date,  of  the  same  size  as  that  of  Widow  Bowers,  the 
next  on  one  side,  but  considerably  smaller  than  that  of 
Richard  Hardinge,  the  next  on  the  other.  As  the  house, 
however,  had  sufficed  for  Milton  ten  years  before,  when  he 
had  removed  to  it  from  Jewin  Street  with  his  third  wife 
and  his  three  daughters,  and  as  now  the  only  inmates  were 
himself,  his  wife,  and  a  single  maidservant,  named  Elizabeth 
Fisher,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  besides  being  the 
most  celebrated  householder  in  the  row,  the  most  famous  man 
of  the  whole  Bunhill  neighbourhood,  he  still  ranked  also 
among  his  neighbours  as  a  man  of  very  good  means. 

Richardson,  it  is  true,  has  transmitted  these  lines  "  Upon 
"  John  Milton's  not  suffering  for  his  Traitorous  Book  when 
"  the  Triers  were  executed  1660,"  found  written,  appar- 
ently about  the  year  1674,  and  certainly  while  Milton  was 
alive,  on  the  spare  leaf  at  the  beginning  of  a  copy  of  the 
Eikonohlastes  : — 

That  thou  escaped'st  that  vengeance  which  o'ertook, 

Milton,  thy  regicides  and  thy  own  book 

Was  clemency  in  Charles  beyond  compare ; 

And  yet  thy  doom  doth  prove  more  grievous  far. 

Old,  sickly,   poor,  stark  blind,  thou  writ'st  for  bread  : 

So  for  to  live  thoud'st  call  Salmasius  •  from  the  dead." 

i    The    quotations    from    Marvell's  ment   thai    Milton    and    Marvel]    had 

verses  for  the  second  edition  of  Para-  talked  together  over  I  Myden's  visit  to 

dise  Lost   complete  the   evidence  of  a  Milton  to  request  leave  to  turn  parts  of 

previous  note  (ante,  p.  710) ;   and   the  Paradise   Lost   into   rhyme,    and   over 

wording  of  the  last  quotation,  "  tag,"  Milton's  answer  (ante,  pp.  709—710). 
"  bushy  points,"  &c,  verities  the  state- 


718  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

The  writer  of  the  lines,  however,  must  have  written  very- 
much  from  hearsay.  As  at  no  period  of  Milton's  life  had  he 
known  what  poverty  was,  as  his  condition  through  a  great 
part  of  his  life  might  be  described  as  that  of  wealth  or  at 
least  of  very  easy  and  liberal  means,  so  not  even  in  his  latest 
years  had  he  sunk  into  anything  like  destitution.  What  is 
true,  and  what  the  writer  of  the  lines  has  exaggerated,  is 
simply  the  fact  that  he  was  now,  with  all  his  new  celebrity 
as  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise  Regained,  and  Samson 
Agonistes,  a  much  poorer  man  than  he  had  ever  been  before. 
That  fact  is  certain  and  is  worth  remembering.  Our  calcula- 
tion of  Milton's  means  about  the  year  1662,  when  his  former 
fortunes  had  been  wrecked  by  the  Restoration,  was  that  he 
was  then  still  in  possession  of  about  ,^1500  of  saved  capital 
and  of  about  ^200  a  year  of  income  from  that  capital  and 
from  other  sources.  But  in  the  interval  between  that  date  and 
1674  there  had  been,  as  we  have  had  to  note,  other  losses  and 
disturbances.  By  the  Great  Fire  of  London  in  1666  he  had 
lost,  it  appears,  all  that  part  of  his  income  which  consisted  in 
rents  from  remaining  pieces  of  house  property,  and  so  had 
been  reduced  nearly,  if  not  quite,  to  the  interest  from  his 
savings.  Add  the  expenses,  reported  as  very  heavy,  to  which 
he  had  been  put,  in  and  after  1670,  by  the  apprenticing  and 
boarding  out  of  his  daughters,  and  it  may  be  a  fair  estimate 
that  Milton's  personal  estate  from  about  1670  was  one  third  less 
than  it  had  been  in  1662,  and  that  he  had  been  living  for 
some  years  on  an  income  of  not  more  than  ^100  a  year  of 
the  money  of  that  time.  The  equivalent  might  be  somewhere 
about  ^300  a  year  now.  To  ensure  even  such  an  annual 
competency  he  had,  it  seems,  been  put  to  shifts.  "  Towards 
the  latter  end  of  his  life,"  Toland  informs  us,  "  he  contracted 
"  his  library,  both  because  the  heirs  he  left  could  not  make  a 
"  right  use  of  it,  and  that  he  thought  he  might  sell  it  more  to 
"  their  advantage  than  they  could  be  able  to  do  themselves." 
As  Milton's  library  must  have  been  a  pretty  valuable  one, 
the  probability  is  that  the  conversion  of  a  portion  of  it  into 
cash  was  convenient  to  himself  for  more  immediate  reasons. 
All   in    all,    though    it   has   to    be   distinctly  repeated    that 


milton's  circumstances  in  1674.  719 

Milton's  condition  in  1674  was  by  no  means  that  of  poverty, 
but  only  of  very  frugal  gentility,  and  that  not  even  then,  any 
more  than  at  any  former  time  in  his  life,  was  he  reduced  to 
"  write  for  bread,"  yet  one  can  see  that  the  writer  of  the  lines 
quoted  was  not  so  very  far  astray  in  one  part  of  his  guess. 
Any  little  sums  that  Milton  may  have  made  by  his  recent 
publications  in  verse  and  prose,  in  addition  to  the  ^10  he 
had  received  from  Simmons  for  Paradise  Lost,  must  have 
been  welcome  enough  to  him,  and  the  prospect  of  another 
^5  or  ^10  now  and  then  from  a  bookseller,  for  any  little 
thing  he  had  by  him  or  could  concoct  and  dictate  in  an 
honest  way  on  the  spur  of  occasion,  may  not  have  been  in- 
different to  him  as  late  as  1674 1. 

In  addition  to  Simmons,  Allestree,  Hickman,  Starkey,  and 
Dring,  the  five  booksellers  or  printers  with  whom  there  had 
been  transactions  by  Milton  since  his  literary  reappearance 
in  1667,  a  sixth  now  comes  on  the  scene.  He  was  Brabazon 
Aylmer  "  at  the  sign  of  the  Three  Pigeons  in  Cornhill.'"  The 
tradition  is  that  he  was  a  man  of  noted  integrity  and  good 
taste  in  his  business,  and  it  is  borne  out  by  what  we  see  of 
him  in  his  transactions  with  Milton.  They  were  Milton's 
last  with  any  bookseller. 

1  Hunter's  Milton  Notes,  p.  43,  for 'the  be  remembered,  had  been  one  of  the 
extract  from  the  Hearth  Tax  Record ;  members  of  the  Republican  Council  of 
Richardson's  IJfe  of  Milton,,  p.  xcv  ;  To-  State  in  the  second  year  of  the  Coin- 
land's  Life  ;  and  ante,  pp.  444— 5.— May  monwealth  (Vol.  IV.  p.  177),  and  again 
not  the  sale  of  part  of  the  library  have  in  the  fourth  year,  and  in  the  fragment 
been  in  or  about  the  year  1670,  and  may  of  the  fifth  preceding  Cromwell's  disso- 
not  the  transaction  have  had  something  lution  of  the  Rump  Government  on  the 
to  do  with  the  residence  of  Milton  about  20th  of  April  1653  (Vol.  IV  pp.  351 — 
that  time  with  the  book-auctioneer,  355) ;  and  he  had  been  one  of  those 
Millington?  (see  ante,  pp.  650—651).  ultra-Republicans  who  had  bearded 
— Richardson,  in  noticing  the  state  of  Cromwell  most  boldly  in  the  House  at 
Milton's  circumstances  in  his  later  years,  the  moment  of  the  famous  dissolution, 
takes  into  account  "presents"  received  and  had  been  addressed  by  Cromwell  on 
by  him  from  friends  and  admirers,  add-  that  occasion  in  language  more  forcible 
ing  "for  so  1  have  heard  it  intimated"  than  polite  (Vol.  IV.  p.  412).  Went- 
(p.  xcix).  In  J,Totes  and  Queries  for  worth's  regard  for  Milton  must  date 
March  3,  1877,  a  correspondent,  signing  from  those  days,  when  they  used  to 
himself  "  W.  S.  E.,"  communicates  the  meet  in  the  Council-ltoom,  Wentworth 
fact  that  Milton  is  mentioned  in  the  as  Councillor  and  Milton  as  Foreign 
will  of  Sir  Peter  Wentworth,  K.B.,  of  Secretary;  and  the  fact  that  Wentworth 
Livingston  Lovell,  Co.  Oxon,  dated  Dec.  continued  his  friendship  with  Milton  to 
20,  1673,  in  these  words:— "To  my  as  late  as  1673,  and  then  remembered 
worthy  and  vcrrie  learned  friend  Mr.  him  so  handsomely  in  his  will,  and  with 
John  Milton  (who  wrote  against  Sal-  a  spirit  of  the  old  Republican  in  the 
matins)  one  hundred  pounds  of  like  words  of  the  bequest,  is  peculiarly  in  - 
money."    Sir  Peter  Wentworth,  it  may  teresting. 


720  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

There  were  two  masses  of  manuscript  lying-  by  Milton  the 
publication  of  which,  in  his  own  lifetime  if  possible,  he  es- 
pecially desired.  One  was  that  Latin  Body  of  Divinity  from 
the  Bible,  or  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine,  on  which  he  had 
been  engaged  for  many  years,  and  which  he  had  now  com- 
pleted ;  the  other  was  his  collection  of  Latin  State  Letters, 
written  by  him  during  his  Secretaryship  to  the  Councils  of 
the  Commonwealth,  and  to  Oliver  and  Richard.  For  the  pre- 
paration of  these  manuscripts  for  the  press,  and  for  assistance 
to  him  among  his  papers  generally,  there  had  for  some  time 
been  in  his  employment  a  certain  Daniel  Skinner,  the  son  of 
a  merchant  in  Mark  Lane.  He  had  been  educated  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  and  had  taken  his  B.A.  degree  in  1673. 
He  was  a  relative,  it  is  believed,  of  Milton's  intimate  friend 
Cyriack  Skinner,  and  had  probably  been  recommended  to 
Milton  by  Cyriack.  At  all  events,  he  was  an  excellent 
amanuensis,  perhaps  the  best  Milton  ever  had, — not  only 
a  trained  scholar,  but  a  beautiful  penman.  He  had  already, 
under  Milton's  direction,  made  a  complete  transcript,  in  his 
clear  Italian  hand,  of  such  of  the  Latin  State  Letters  as 
Milton  had  preserved  or  thought  worth  publication,  and  he 
had  transcribed  the  first  196  pages  of  the  Treatise  of  Christian 
Doctrine,  and  gone  over  the  remaining  540  pages  of  the 
bulky  manuscript  of  it  left  by  previous  amanuenses,  revising 
the  spelling,  and  inserting  little  additions  from  Milton's  dic- 
tation. Readings  aloud  of  the  two  manuscripts  to  Milton 
by  the  young  Cantab,  for  the  purpose  of  perfecting  them 
for  the  press,  must  have  been  among  the  occupations  in  the 
house  in  Artillery  Walk  through  part  of  1673  and  some  way 
into  1674 1. 

An  attempt  was  made  with  the  Latin  State  Letters.  They 
were   to  be  put  forth  by  Brabazon  Aylmer  in  a  volume  in- 


i  Mr.  Leigh  Sotheby's  Milton  Ram-  is   distinctly   recognisable  that  of  the 

Mings,  pp.  159—165  ;  where  there  is  an  person  to  whom   Milton  had  dictated 

ample  account  of  the  manuscript  of  the  the  Sonnet  in  memory  of  his  second 

Treatise   of  Christian  Doctrine  and  of  wife,  and  who  had  also  signed  for  him 

Daniel  Skinner's  share  in  the  transcrip-  the  transfer  of  a  Bond  to  Cyriack  Skin- 

tion  and  revision  of  it,  with  fac-simile  ner  in  May  1660  (ante,  Vol.  V.  p.  409, 

specimens  of  his  and  the  other  hand-  footnote,  and  p.  703). 
writings.  Among  the  other  handwritings 


MILTON    AND   BRABAZON   ATLMEK.  721 

eluding-  also  Milton's  Latin  Familiar  Epistles.  It  was  perhaps 
thought  that  the  conjunction  of  the  Private  Letters  with  the 
State  Letters  might  make  the  publication  less  objectionable 
to  the  authorities.  But  it  was  an  absurdly  bold  hope  in 
those  days.  How  vigilant  the  authorities  were  in  preventing 
publications  of  a  suspicious  tendency  is  proved  by  Baxter's 
account  of  what  happened  in  his  case  in  1673.  "  My  book- 
"  seller/'  he  says,  "  came  to  me  and  told  me  that  Roger 
"  L'Estrange,  the  overseer  of  the  Printers,  sent  for  him,  and 
"  told  him  that  he  heard  I  was  answering  Bishop  Bramhall, 
"  and  swore  to  him  most  vehemently  that,  if  I  did  it,  he 
"  would  ruin  him  and  me,  and  perhaps  my  life  should  be 
"  brought  in  question/'  If  so  with  a  book  of  Baxter's,  how 
could  Milton  expect  to  be  allowed  by  the  Government  of 
Charles  II.  to  publish  his  State  Letters  for  the  Republic  and 
Oliver,  reviving  memories  of  Oliver  and  of  a  foreign  policy 
which  it  was  convenient  now  to  forget  ?  In  such  a  case 
permission  by  L'Estrange  himself  might  be  insufficient,  even 
if  it  could  be  obtained,  and  appeal  might  have  to  be  made 
to  Lord  Arlington,  as  Secretary  of  State,  or  to  his  Under- 
Secretary,  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  who  was  also  Keeper  of 
the  State  Papers.  That  there  was  some  kind  of  application 
to  the  authorities,  and  that  it  failed,  we  learn  from  Brabazon 
Aylmer  in  a  neat  little  Latin  advertisement,  headed  "  The 
Printer  to  the  Reader,"  at  the  beginning  of  the  little  volume 
which  took  the  place  of  the  projected  larger  one.  "  I  had 
"  reason  for  some  time  to  hope,  benevolent  reader,"  he  says, 
"  that  I  might  be  permitted  the  printing  of  both  the  Public 
"  and  the  Familiar  Letters  of  our  author  in  one  volume." 
Intimation  had  reached  him,  however,  that  the  Public  Letters 
must  be  kept  back, — the  form  of  the  intimation,  we  may  fancy, 
having  been  a  message  from  Arlington  or  Williamson  through 
the  rude  L'Estrange.  Daniel  Skinner's  fine  transcript  of  the 
State  Letters,  therefore,  remained  private  property;  and  only 
the  Latin  Familiar  Epistles  which  Milton  had  selected,  or 
which  were  all  he  had  kept  copies  of,  were  at  Aylmer  s  dis- 
posal. To  eke  out  these,  too  few  to  make  even  a  small  volume 
by  themselves,  Aylmer,  as  we  saw  in  his  own  words  long  ago, 
vol.  vi.  3  A 


722         LIFE   Or   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

had  applied  to  Milton  for  something  else  of  a  publishable 
kind,  and  had  obtained  his  Prolusiones  Qu/sedam  Oratorio,  or 
Latin  Academical  Exercises.  These  very  juvenile  composi- 
tions must  have  been  turned  up  in  the  rummaging'  among 
Milton's  old  papers  in  1673  ;  for  the  English  verses  "  At 
a  Vacation  Exercise  in  the  College  "  had  then  been  detached 
from  one  of  them  to  be  printed  in  the  Second  Edition  of  the 
Minor  Poems.  All  the  i-est,  with  that  exception,  having 
been  handed  over  to  Aylmer,  he  did  make  up  a  neat  little 
duodecimo  volume  of  156  pages,  which  he  published  with  the 
title  :  "  Joannis  Miltonii  Angli,  Epistolarum  Familiarium  Liber 
Unus :  Quibus  accesserunt,  Fjusdem,  jam  olim  in  Collegio  Ado- 
leseentis,  Prolusiones  Qucedam  Oratories.  Londini,  Impensis 
Brabazoni  Aylmeri  sub  Signo  Trium  Columbarum,  Via  vulgo 
Comhill  dicta,  An.  Bom.  1674."  ("  One  Book  of  the  Familiar 
Epistles  of  John  Milton,  Englishman :  to  which  are  added 
some  of  his  Oratorical  Exercises  long  ago  when  he  was  a 
youth  at  College.  London,  at  the  expense  of  Brabazon  Aylmer, 
at  the  sign  of  the  Three  Pigeons  in  the  street  commonly  called 
Cornhill,  An.  Bom.  1674.")  Aylmer  had  taken  every  pre- 
caution; for  the  little  book  was  duly  entered  in  the  Stationers' 
Registers  as  licensed  by  L'Estrange.  The  date  of  the  entry  is 
July  1,  1674.  Copies,  we  may  suppose,  were  out  that  month  1. 
Of  the  Prolusiones  Oratories  we  gave  a  sufficient  account 
when  editing  them,  or  portions  of  them,  in  connexion  with 
Milton's  University  life  at  Cambridge  2.  They  belong  properly 
to  that  early  period  of  the  biography,  and  the  only  observation 
about  them  required  here  is  that  it  is  characteristic  of  Milton 
that  those  juvenile  performances  should  have  been  preserved 
and  accessible  after  two-and-forty  years,  and  that  he  did 
not  then  hesitate  to  let  them  go  forth  just  as  they  were. 
The  Fpistolce  Familiares  have  all  been  given  in  translation 
in  these  pages,  each  in  its  proper  chronological  place.     It  is 

1  Book  itself,  with  Aylmer's  Preface  ;  been  those  addressed  by  Cromwell  to 

Stationers'  Registers  of  date  ;  and  ante,  Charles  Gustavus,  showing  Cromwell's 

Vol.  I.  pp.  239 — 240.     Toland's  state-  admiration   of  that  heroic  Swede  and 

ment  is  that  "  the  Danish  Resident  pre-  his  desire  of  a  strict  alliance  between 

vailed  with  Milton  to  get  the  Letters  of  England  and  Sweden  for  common  action 

State  transcribed."    The  letters  chiefly  on  the  Continent, 

interesting  to  the  Resident  must  have  2  Vol.  I.  pp.  239 — 274. 


PUBLICATION   OF   THE   EPISTOLAE  FAMILIABES.  723 

characteristic  that  these  too,  ranging-  as  they  do  from  1625, 
Milton's  seventeenth  year,  to  1666,  his  fifty-eighth  year, 
should  have  been  preserved ;  but  they  may  be  supposed  to  be 
only  the  casual  survivors  of  a  great  many  Latin  letters  he 
had  written  and  of  which  he  had  not  kept  copies.  The  fact 
of  their  publication  by  Milton  in  1674  is  also  characteristic, 
when  we  consider  the  very  private  and  confidential  nature 
of  the  contents  of  some  of  them.  They  were  thirty-one  in 
number  in  all,  and  had  been  addressed  to  seventeen  persons. 
Of  the  seven  earliest,  appertaining  to  the  Cambridge  and 
Italian  periods  of  his  life,  two  had  been  addressed  to  his  first 
preceptor,  Thomas  Young,  three  to  Alexander  Gill  the  younger, 
his  preceptor  in  St.  Paul's  School,  and  two  to  the  bosom- 
friend  of  his  youth,  the  never -forgotten  Charles  Diodati. 
Two  letters,  addressed  respectively  to  Buommattei,  the  Flor- 
entine Grammarian,  and  Lucas  Holstenius,  the  Librarian  of 
the  A'atican,  recalled  memories  of  his  Italian  journey  in 
1638-9.  One,  written  from  London  in  1647  to  the  Florentine 
Carlo  Dati,  returned  to  those  Italian  memories,  but  contained 
intimate  details  respecting  Milton  himself  in  the  interval. 
Three,  addressed  respectively  to  the  Oldenburg  diplomatist- 
Hermann  Mylius,  the  Greek  Parisian  Philaras,  and  the 
English  clergyman  Heath,  belonged  to  the  time  of  his 
Secretaryship  for  the  Council  of  State  of  the  Common- 
wealth. Fourteen  belonged  to  the  time  of  his  Secretaryship  to 
Oliver ;  of  which  one  was  to  Philaras  again,  one  to  the  Dutch 
Aitzema,  one  to  the  Genevese  Ezekiel  Spanheim,  one  to  the 
French  Emeric  Bigot,  two  to  Henry  de  Brass,  two  to  the 
German  Peter  Heimbach,  three  to  Henry  Oldenburg,  and 
three  to  Mr.  Richard  Jones.  Of  three  written  between  Crom- 
well's death  and  the  Restoration  one  was  to  the  French  en- 
thusiast Jean  L'Abadie,  one  to  Oldenburg  again,  and  one  to 
Richard  Jones  again  ;  and  the  last  of  the  series,  and  the  only 
one  written  after  the  Restoration,  was  that  to  Peter  Heim- 
bach in  1666,  just  after  the  Great  Plague.  Most  of  the 
seventeen  correspondents  were  dead,  some  of  them  long  ago  ; 
but,  of  the  foreigners  among  them,  Carlo  Dati,  Spanheim, 
Bigot,  and  others  were  still  alive,  as  were  also  Oldenburg,  the 

3  A  2 


724         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

naturalized  Englishman,  now  Secretary  of  the  Royal  Society, 
and  his  and  Milton's  pupil,  Mr.  Richard  Jones.  This  last,  now 
thirty-four  years  of  age,  was  no  longer  merely  Mr.  Richard 
Jones,  but  Viscount  Ranelagh,  Vice-Treasurer  of  Ireland,  a 
very  important  man  in  that  kingdom,  reputed  "  of  good  parts, 
great  wit,  and  very  little  religion,"  and  on  the  eve  of  being 
created  Earl  of  Ranelagh.  Several  of  the  persons  mentioned 
in  the  letters,  in  terms  of  praise  or  dispraise,  were  also  alive. 
Moras,  indeed,  who  had  figured  chiefly  in  them  for  dispraise, 
was  dead ;  but  Viscount  Ranelagh's  mother,  the  incomparable 
Lady  Ranelagh,  was  the  living  lady-chief  of  learned  society 
in  London,  the  brilliant  hostess,  in  her  sixtieth  year,  for  her 
brother  Robert  Boyle,  in  their  well-known  house  in  Pall 
Mall.  On  the  whole,  though  Oldenburg  may  not  have  been 
altogether  satisfied  with  his  appearance  in  Milton's  Epislolte 
Familiares,  the  only  living  person  entitled  to  complain  a  little 
was  the  dashing  Viscount  Ranelagh.  What  need  was  there 
to  remind  the  public,  the  good-natured  fellow  might  have 
asked  in  the  midst  of  his  troubles  with  Irish  revenue-affairs, 
that  he  had  been  formerly  the  soft-headed  boy  Jones,  who 
had  caused  so  much  anxiety  to  his  mother,  and  who  had  been 
held  in  such  tight  rein  both  by  blind  Mr.  Milton  and  by  Mr. 
Oldenburg  ?  That  was  a  trifle ;  and,  for  the  rest,  Milton  had 
judged  for  himself  and  had  judged  wisely.  He  had  been  pre- 
vented from  giving  to  the  world  such  a  history  of  his  Latin 
Secretaryship  as  might  have  been  gathered  from  his  State 
Letters;  but  he  had  communicated  in  his  Familiar  Epistles  a 
good  many  autobiographic  particulars  that  would  otherwise 
have  been  unknown.     Who  would  now  miss  one  of  them l  ? 

1  See  Carte's  Ormond,  II.  451  et  seq.,  sons  and  four  daughters  by  his  first  mar- 

for  an  account  of  Ranelagh's   part   in  riage ;  but,  the  sons  having  died  young, 

the  Irish  administration  from  1670  on-  the  Earldom  of  Ranelagh  became  extinct, 

wards  and  his  differences  with  Ormond,  The  Viscountcy  of  Ranelagh,  however, 

and  also  for  an  ill-natured  mention  of  with  the  Barony  of  Navan,  was  revived, 

his  mother,  Lady  Ranelagh,  as  a  strong-  In  the  codicil  to  the  will  of  the  Earl  of 

minded  woman,  with  "  the  same  genius  Ranelagh,  dated  Feb.    20,   1710-11,  is 

or  taste  for  intrigue"  as  her  son,  and  mentioned  "his  dear  mother's  picture 

holding  political  cabals  "  several  nights  hanging  up  in  his  closet  in  Chelsea" 

in  every  week  at  her  house."  Earl  Rane-  (Lodge's  Peerage  of  Ireland,  enlarged  by 

lagh  lived  on  through  King  William's  Archdall,  1789,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  303—304). 

reign,  was  a  Privy  Councillor  in  that  Ranelagh  Gardens,  Chelsea,  derived  their 

reign  and  a  man  of  consequence  gene-  name  from  the  fact  that  they  occupied 

rally,  and  did  not  die  till  Jan.  5, 1711-12.  ground  that  had  belonged  to  this  Irish 

He  had  been  twice  married,  and  had  two  Earl,  once  Milton's  pupd. 


THE   SOBIESKI   DECLARATION.  725 

In  the  same  month  of  July  1674,  or  perhaps  a  little  later 
in  the  year,  Brabazon  Aylmer  published  a  small  quarto  tract 
of  twelve  pages  with  this  title:  "A  Declaration,  Or  Letters 
Patents  of  the  Election  of  tins  present  King  of  Poland  John  the 
Third,  Elected  on  the  22d  of  May  last  past,  Anno  Bom.  1674. 
Containing  the  Reasons  of  this  Election,  the  great  Vertices  and 
Merits  of  the  said  Serene  Elect,  His  eminent  Services  in  War, 
especially  in  his  last  great  Victory  against  the  Turks  and  Tartars, 
whereof  many  Particulars  are  here  related,  not  published  before. 
Now  faithfully  translated  from  the  Latin  Copy.  London,  Printed 
for  Brabazon  Aylmer,  at  the  Three  Pigeons  in  Comhil,  1674."  The 
translation  was  reprinted  as  Milton's  in  the  collected  edition 
of  his  prose-works  in  1698,  and  was  then  distinctly  ascribed 
to  Milton  by  Toland ;  and  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt 
the  fact.  The  subject  of  the  tract  must  have  been  strongly 
interesting  to  Milton  : — Through  the  reign  of  John  Casimir 
(1648-1668),  and  under  his  successor  Michael  Wisnowietzki, 
Poland,  once  an  important  European  kingdom,  had  been 
struggling  for  her  very  existence.  Disorganized  internally 
by  her  wretched  political  constitution,  and  by  the  reactionary 
policy  that  had  been  adopted  against  the  Protestant  religion, 
which  had  taken  such  a  strong  hold  of  her  population  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  she  had  been  overrun  by  invasion  after 
invasion  of  Swedes,  Russians,  Tartars,  and  Turks.  Her 
warrior-chief,  the  one  man  upon  whom  her  hopes  had  been 
centred  in  the  confusion,  was  John  Sobieski,  Castellan  of 
Cracow.  His  last  great  victory  over  the  Turks  had  been  in 
November  1673,  the  very  day  after  the  death  of  the  Polish 
King  Michael.  Accordingly,  when  the  Polish  Diet  met  at 
Warsaw  in  April  1674  for  the  election  of  a  new  King,  and 
when,  as  usual,  several  foreign  candidates  were  nominated, 
one  of  them  by  Sobieski  himself,  the  words  "  Let  a  Pole 
reign  over  Poland,"  uttered  by  another  Polish  magnate,  had 
an  electrical  effect.  Unanimously  and  with  acclamation 
Sobieski  was  elected  King  ;  and  a  Latin  Declaration  to  that 
effect  having  been  duly  executed  and  vouched  at  Warsaw,  on 
the  22nd  of  May,  by  ten  Polish  bishops,  twenty-three  palatins, 
twenty-four  castellans,  and  seventy-five  senators  and  great 


726  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

officers,  and  Sobieski  having  taken  his  oath  on  the  5th  of 
June,  the  document  was  published  for  the  information  of 
Europe.  Too  large  to  be  given  in  full  in  the  miserable 
London  Gazette  of  that  day,  it  was  likely  to  be  in  demand  if 
put  forth  in  the  form  of  a  tract  in  English  ;  and  Aylmer 
may  either  have  applied  to  Milton  for  a  translation,  or 
been  offered  one.  The  document  is  by  no  means  a  dry  and 
formal  affair  but  full  of  fervour,  and  with  sentiments  about 
popular  rights  and  the  nature  of  true  sovereignty  which  it 
must  have  pleased  Milton  to  present  again,  in  any  form,  to  his 
countrymen.  It  begins  by  sketching  the  proceedings  of  the 
Diet  and  referring  to  the  foreign  candidates  who  had  tendered 
their  services.  "  But  the  Commonwealth/'  it  proceeds,  "  be- 
"  coming  more  diligent  by  the  prodigal  ambition  used  in  the 
"  last  interreign  and  factions  and  disagreeings  of  minds,  nor 
"  careless  of  the  future,  considered  with  herself  whether  firm 
"  or  doubtful  things  were  promised,  and  whether  she  should 
"  seem  from  the  present  state  to  transfer  both  the  old  and 
"  new  honours  of  Poland  into  the  possession  of  strangers,  or 
"  the  military  glory,  and  their  late  unheard  of  victory  over 
Ci  the  Turks,  and  blood  spilt  in  the  war,  upon  the  purple  of  some 
(!  unwarlike  Prince ;  as  if  any  one  could  so  put  on  the  love 
"  of  the  country,  and  that  Poland  was  not  so  much  an  enemy 
"  to  her  own  nation  and  fame  as  to  favour  strangers  more 
"  than  her  own,  and,  valour  being  found  in  her,  should  suffer 
"  a  guest  of  new  power  to  wax  proud  in  her.  Therefore  she 
"  thenceforth  turned  her  thoughts  upon  some  one  in  her  own 
"  nation,  and  at  length  abolished  (as  she  began  in  the  former 
"  election)  that  reproach  cast  upon  her,  under  pretence  of  a 
"  secret  maxim  That  none  can  be  elected  King  of  Poland  but 
"  such  as  are  born  out  of  Poland.  Neither  did  she  seek  long- 
"  among  her  citizens  whom  she  should  prefer  above  the  rest 
"  (for  this  was  no  uncertain  or  suspended  election :  there 
"  was  no  place  for  delay) ;  for,  although  in  the  equality  of 
"  our  nobles  many  might  be  elected,  yet  the  virtue  of  a  hero 
"  appeared  above  his  equals.  Therefore  the  eyes  and  minds 
"  of  all  men  were  willingly,  and  by  a  certain  divine  instinct, 
"  turned  upon  the  High  Marshal  of  the  Kingdom,  Captain  of 


milton's  last  days.  727 

"  the  Army,  John  Sobietzki."  There  follows  a  glowing-  cha- 
racter of  Sobieski,  with  an  account  of  his  family  and  his 
life  hitherto.  At  the  time  of  his  election  Sobieski  was  forty- 
five  years  of  age.  His  great  reign  of  twenty-two  years,  with 
such  farther  exploits  against  the  Turks  as  were  to  earn  the 
admiration  of  all  Europe,  justified  the  election,  and  gave 
Poland  her  one  chance  of  being  permanently  a  nation.  Of 
that  reign  Milton  was  to  know  nothing.  He  had  lived  but 
to  see  another  hero  emerge  out  of  things  in  wreck  and  become 
John  III.  of  Poland. 

The  Declaration  of  the  Election  of  John  III.  of  Poland  and 
the  tiny  volume  containing  the  Epistolm  Familiares  and  the 
Prolusiones  Orator m  were  both  on  sale  in  Brabazon  Aylmer's 
shop,  as  we  have  seen  reason  for  believing,  in  July  1674. 

In  the  end  of  that  month  Milton  had  an  attack  of  gout 
more  serious  than  usual.  His  brother,  Christopher  Milton, 
Bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple,  and  Deputy  Recorder  for  Ipswich, 
had  occasion  to  remember  the  fact  very  particularly.  It  was 
Christopher  Milton's  custom,  before  going  to  Ipswich,  which 
he  generally  did  for  each  vacation  after  the  midsummer  term, 
to  call  on  his  brother  for  a  special  leave-taking ;  and  "  on  or 
about  the  20th  of  July  1674,"  as  he  afterwards  testified,  he 
went  to  Bunhill,  on  this  customary  visit.  He  could  not  be 
more  precise  as  to  the  day  of  the  month ;  but  he  was  certain 
that  the  visit  was  in  the  forenoon,  because  the  Ipswich  coach, 
by  which  he  was  to  start  that  day,  always  left  town  about 
noon.  He  found  his  brother  in  his  own  chamber,  "  not  well," 
though  "  of  perfect  mind  and  memory "  and  discoursing 
sensibly.  In  a  very  serious  manner  Milton  spoke  of  the 
possibility  of  his  dying  before  his  brother's  return  to  London, 
and  desired  him  to  take  notice,  in  that  case,  of  his  intentions 
with  regard  to  his  property.  He  spoke  deliberately,  like  one 
making  a  word-of-mouth  will.  As  near  as  Christopher  could 
recollect,  the  words  were  these :  "  Brother,  the  portion  due 
"  to  me  from  Mr.  Powell,  my  former  wife's  father,  I  leave  to 
"  the  unkind  children  I  had  by  her ;  but  I  have  received  no 
"  part  of  it :  and  my  will  and  meaning  is  they  shall  have  no 
"  other  benefit  of  my  estate  than  the  said  portion  and  what 


728  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    H1STOEY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  I  have  besides  done  for  them,  they  having  been  very  un- 
"  dutiful  to  me.  And  all  the  residue  of  my  estate  I  leave  to 
"  the  disposal  of  Elizabeth,  my  loving  wife."  At  the  time  of 
his  thus  speaking  his  wife  was  in  the  room,  and  the  maid- 
servant, Elizabeth  Eisher,  was  "going  up  and  down  the 
room";  but  whether  they  heard  the  words,  or,  at  all  events, 
whether  the  maidservant  heard  them,  Christopher  could  not 
be  sure.  He  was  quite  sure,  however,  that  his  brother,  "  then 
ill  of  the  gout,"  was  perfectly  calm,  only  declaring,  "  but 
without  passion,"  that  "  his  children  had  been  unkind  to 
"him,  but  that  his  wife  had  been  very  kind  and  careful  of 
"him;"  and  the  entire  impression  on  Christopher  was  that 
his  brother  had  been  induced  to  the  communication  merely  by 
the  thought  that,  as  he,  Christopher,  was  going  into  the 
country,  they  might  never  meet  again.  The  complaint  about 
the  undutifulness  of  the  daughters  was  not  then  made  for  the 
first  time.  Christopher  had  heard  it  from  him  before  more 
than  once1. 

It  may  have  been  on  the  same  day,  just  after  Christopher 
had  left  the  house  in  Bunhill  to  take  the  Ipswich  coach,  or 
it  may  have  been  a  day  or  two  afterwards,  that  Milton,  seated 
with  his  wife  at  their  midday  dinner,  recurred  to  the  subject 
of  his  conversation  with  his  brother.  Our  informant  is  the 
above-named  maidservant,  Elizabeth  Eisher.  She  had  been 
about  a  year  in  Milton's  service ;  and  she  remembered  per- 
fectly that,  on  a  certain  day  which  she  could  not  farther 
specify  than  that  it  was  in  July  1674,  Milton  and  his  wife 
being  at  dinner  together  by  themselves  in  his  "  lodging- 
chamber,"  and  she  waiting  on  them,  and  something  having 
been  provided  for  dinner  which  Milton  "  very  well  liked," 
she  heard  him  say  to  his  wife,  whom  he  usually  called  Betty, 
"  God  have  mercy,  Betty,  I  see  thou  wilt  perform  according 
"  to  thy  promise  in  providing  me  such  dishes  as  I  think  fit 
"  whilst  I  live ;  and,  when  I  die,  thou  knowest  that  I  have 
"left  thee  all."  He  was  at  that  time  "of  perfect  mind  and 
memory,  and  talked  and  discoursed  sensibly  and  well,   but 

1  Christopher  Milton's  evidence  in  Court  in  the  case  of  his  brother's  Nuncupative 
Will. 


milton's  last  dais.  729 

was  then  indisposed  in  his  body  by  reason  of  the  distemper 
of  the  gout  which  he  had  then  upon  him  "  ;  and  she  remem- 
bered that,  at  the  moment  of  his  speaking  the  above  words,  he 
was  "  very  merry  and  not  in  any  passion  or  angry  humour/' 
Nor  did  she  hear  him  then  refer  at  all  to  his  children  or 
their  conduct.  She  had  heard  him  say  enough  on  that 
topic  before1. 

Milton,  it  appears,  recovered  sufficiently  from  his  illness 
of  the  end  of  July  to  be  seen  again,  in  his  garden,  or  at 
the  door  of  his  house,  in  his  grey  coarse  cloth  coat,  receiv- 
ing visitors  or  led  about  on  his  walks  out  of  doors.  And  so 
August  passed  with  its  heat,  and  September  and  October  came 
with  the  falling  leaves.  Not  by  fall  of  leaf  or  changing 
colour  did  month  follow  month  for  Milton.  The  world  came 
to  him  by  hearing  only. — From  abroad  the  main  rumours, 
in  those  months,  were  still  of  the  war  between  Louis  XIV. 
and  the  Dutch,  and  of  the  unflinching  heroism  of  the  young 
Prince  of  Orange.  England  having  retired  from  that  war 
several  months  ago  by  her  separate  peace  with  the  Dutch, 
there  was  leisure  at  home  for  speculating  on  the  new  domestic 
policy  of  the  Danby  Administration,  then  shaping  itself  se- 
cretly in  the  interval  between  the  Twelfth  Session  of  the 
Parliament  and  the  uncertain  day  of  the  meeting  of  the 
Thirteenth.  It  was  necessarily  to  be  a  "No  Popery"  polic}', 
on  the  principles  of  the  Test  Act,  and  so  far  popular ;  but, 
for  the  rest,  appearances  were  that  it  would  be  very  much 
a  return  to  Clarendon's  policy,  and  therefore  unpromising 
for  the  Nonconformists.  By  the  advice  of  Danby,  Charles 
had  begun  to  entertain  the  idea  of  the  marriage  of  his  niece, 
the  Princess  Mary,  with  the  Prince  of  Orange;  and  the 
chances  that  the  marriage  might  come  about  were  eagerly 
discussed  among  the  Londoners.  Among  other  matters  of 
public  gossip  were  Shaftesbury's  plottings  for  the  revenge 
of  his  political  disgrace,  and  the  appointment  of  Arlington 
to  the  office  of  Lord  Chamberlain,  in  compensation  for  his 
removal   from  the  Secretaryship  of  State,  now  held  by  Sir 

1  Elizabeth  Fisher's  evidence  in  Court  in  the  case  of  Milton's  Nuncupative  Will. 
See  ante,  p.  476. 


730  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

Joseph  Williamson.     The  statue  of  Charles  I.  had  been  set 
up  at  Charing-  Cross,  and  they  were  laying-  the  foundations  of 
the  new  St.  Paul's.      There  were  new  pieces  every  week  at 
the  two  theatres,  and  Shadweli,  Wycherley,  and  Crowne  were 
now  the  familiar  names  among  theatre-goers  after  Dryden's. 
There  were  advertisements  in  the  London  Gazette  of  a  new 
and  enlarged  edition  of  Huclibras,  the  first  and  second  parts 
together,  as  on  sale  jointly  by  Martin  and  Herringman,  and 
of  an    exhibition  in  Grocers'  Hall  of  Sir  Samuel  Morland  s 
new  pumps  and  engines,  for  which  his  Majesty  had  granted 
him  a  patent  for  seventeen  years. — Amid  this  confused  buzz 
of  facts  and  rumours  round  the  invalid  Milton,  with  whatever 
of  more  vague  news   reached  him  of  the  state  of  affairs  in 
Scotland  and  in  Ireland,  his  thoughts,  one  finds,  were  turning 
more   and  more  on  the    certainty   that  his  own    days    were 
numbered.     Again  and   again    he    recurred,   in    conversation 
with  his   wife,  and  also  quite  openly  with  the  maidservant 
Elizabeth  Fisher,  to  the  arrangement  he  had  made  with  his 
brother   in   case   of  his   death.      He  seems  to   have  thought 
the  verbal  arrangement  sufficient  without  the  formality  of  a 
written  will,   but  to  have  been  anxious   to  leave  additional 
testimony  to  it,  and  to  his  reasons  for  it,  if  there  should  be 
need.     Several  times,  accordingly,  after  his  partial  recovery 
from  his  gout-fit  in  the  end  of  July,  Elizabeth  Fisher  heard 
him   "  declare  and   say  that  he   had  made  provision  for  his 
"  children  in  his  life-time,  and  had  spent  the  greatest  part 
"  of  his  estate  in  providing  for  them,  and  that  he  was  resolved 
"  he  would  do  no  more  for  them  living  or  dying,  for  that  little 
"  part  which  he  had  left  he  had  given  to  his  wife."     In  these 
words,  and  in  the  fact  that  he  likewise  told  Elizabeth  Fisher, 
one  Sunday  afternoon,  that  "  there  was  a  thousand  pounds  left 
"  in  Mr.  Powell's  hands  to  be  disposed  amongst  his  children 
"hereafter,"    we    see    something    like    pains  taken  to   prove 
himself  not  unjust.     But,  indeed,  the  settlement  he  had  made 
seems  to  have  been  such  a  relief  to  his  mind  that  he  could 
not   help   reverting  to  the  topic  whoever  was  present.     As 
late  as  October  1674  there   was    a   repetition,    with    slight 
variation,  of  the  little  incident  of  the  midday  dinner  of  July, 


DEATH  AND  BURIAL  OF  MILTON.  731 

with  its  ejaculation  "  God  have  mercy,  Betty."  The  fact 
conies  to  us  not  from  Elizabeth  Fisher,  but  from  her  sister 
Mary  Fisher,  a  servant  in  the  same  neighbourhood,  who  used 
often  to  look  in  upon  her  sister,  and  in  that  way  knew  Mr. 
Milton  very  well.  She  testifies  that,  one  day  about  the 
middle  of  October,  as  nearly  as  she  could  remember,  being1 
in  Milton's  house  about  noon,  and  in  the  kitchen  with  her 
sister,  and  Milton  and  his  wife  dining  that  clay  in  the 
kitchen,  she  heard  Milton  say  to  his  wife,  "  Make  much  of 
"  me  as  long  as  I  live,  for  thou  knowest  I  have  given  thee 
"all  when  I  die  at  thy  disposal."  He  "  was  then  very  merry 
and  seemed  to  be  in  good  health  of  body."  The  words  about 
his  will,  we  can  see,  had  by  this  time  established  themselves 
half-humorously  between  him  and  his  wife  as  his  formula  for 
his  sense  of  helplessness  and  dependence  on  her  alone1. 

November  1674  had  come, — the  beginning,  as  the  chronicles 
inform  us,  of  an  unusually  warm  and  unhealthy  winter  through 
the  British  Islands.  Again  Milton  was  ill,  this  time  of  "the 
gout  struck  in,"  or  severe  gout-fever.  His  neighbours  were 
thenceforth  to  miss  their  famous  blind  man  in  grey.  He 
died  on  Sunday,  the  8th  of  November,  late  at  night,  "  with 
"  so  little  pain  that  the  time  of  his  expiring  was  not  perceived 
"  by  those  in  the  room."  He  had  reached  the  age  of  sixty- 
five  years  and  eleven  months. 

Bunhill  Fields  Burying-ground,  close  to  Milton's  house, 
was  already  known  as  peculiarly  the  London  burying-ground 
of  the  Dissenters,  and  was  to  be  more  and  more  famous  in 
that  character  as  one  eminent  Nonconformist  after  another 
found  a  grave  within  it  and  the  number  of  the  tombstones 
increased.  Not  there,  however,  was  Milton  buried,  but  in  his 
<»\\n  parish-church  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  beside  his  father, 
and  according  to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  England.  The 
funeral  was  on  Thursday,  the  12th  of  November.  "  He  had 
"  a  very  decent  interment,  according  to  his  quality,"  says 
Phillips,  "  being  attended  from  his  house  to  the  church  by 
"  several  gentlemen  then  in  town,  his  principal  well-wishers 

1  Evidence  of  Elizabeth  Fisher  and  Mai  y  Fisher  in  the  case  of  Milton's  Nuncu- 
pative Will. 


732  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"and  admirers."  Toland's  account  is  as  trustworthy  and 
is  more  particular.  "  All  his  learned  and  great  friends  in 
"  London,  not  without  a  concourse  of  the  vulgar,"  says  Toland, 
"  accompanied  his  body  to  the  church  of  St.  Giles,  near  Crip- 
"  plegate,  where  he  was  buried  in  the  chancel."  We  can  see 
the  coffin  brought  out  from  the  small  house  opposite  the 
Artillery  Garden  Wall,  the  neighbours  looking  on  from  their 
windows,  and  the  widow  left  in  the  house  with  one  or  two 
women  attending  her,  but  perhaps  not  one  of  the  three 
daughters.  We  can  see  the  funeral  procession,  from  Bunhili 
Row,  along  Eeech  Lane  and  Whitecross  Street  or  Redcro^s 
Street,  to  Cripplegate  church,  Christopher  Milton  and 
perhaps  the  two  Phillipses  as  chief  mourners,  and  surely 
Andrew  Marvell  and  Dr.  Nathan  Paget  following  in  the 
ranks,  whether  the  Earl  of  Anglesey,  Sir  Robert  Howard, 
and  Dryden  were  there  or  not.  It  arrives  at  the  church 
gate,  where  there  is  some  little  concourse,  either  because  the 
neighbourhood  has  heard  that  Mr.  Milton  is  to  be  buried, 
or  merely  because  it  is  the  funeral  of  somebody.  There  one 
or  two  clergymen  meet  the  coffin  ;  they  place  themselves 
before  it  and  begin  the  reading  or  chaunt,  "  I  am  the 
"  resurrection  and  the  life,  saith  the  Lord  :  he  that  believeth 
"  in  me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live."  They  read 
or  chaunt  the  rest,  advancing  into  the  church,  till  the  coffin 
rests  by  the  side  of  the  grave  that  has  been  opened  for  it  in 
the  pavement  of  the  upper  end  of  the  chancel,  and  round 
which  the  mourners  are  now  grouped.  Then  comes  the 
moment  for  the  lowering  of  the  coffin  and  for  the  words, 
"  Forasmuch  as  it  hath  pleased  Almighty  God,  of  his  great 
"  mercy,  to  take  unto  himself  the  soul  of  our  dear  brother  here 
"  departed,  we  therefore  commit  his  body  to  the  ground,  earth 
"  to  earth,  ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust."  With  these  words, 
the  handfuls  of  earth  fall  on  the  coffin-lid  ;  some  eyes  are  in 
tears ;  the  remaining  prayers  are  read  ;  the  workmen  bustle 
to  fill  up  the  grave ;  and  the  company  depart. 


BOOK  IV. 


Posthumous  Miltoniana. 


POSTHUMOUS  MILTONIANA. 

In  no  case  can  the  life  of  a  man  be  said  to  end  precisely  at 
his  death  ;  hut  the  amount  of  posthumous  matter  appertain- 
ing to  the  biography  of  Milton  is  unusually  large.  It  may 
be  arranged  under  a  series  of  headings  : — 

milton's  nuncupative  will. 

Hardly    was    Milton    dead    when   there    arose    a    dispute 
between   his  widow  and   his  three  daughters  as  to  the  in- 
heritance   of  his   property.     The    dispute   took    the   form   of 
resistance  by  the  three  daughters  to  the  widow's  application 
in   the  Prerogative  Court   of  Canterbury  for  probate  of  the 
nuncupative  or  word-of-mouth  will  which  she  alleged  Milton 
to  have  made,  on  or  about  the  20th  of  the  preceding  July, 
in  presence  of  his  brother,  Mr.  Christopher  Milton,  Bencher 
of  the  Inner  Temple  and  Deputy  of  Recorder  of  Ipswich  (ante, 
p.  727-728).     The  words  of  the  will,  as  they  were  reduced 
to  writing  by  Christopher  Milton  on  the  23rd  of  November 
1674,  and  lodged  that  day  in  Court  on  the  widow's  behalf, 
attested  by  Christopher  Milton's  signature  and  by  the  mark 
of  Elizabeth    Fisher,    Milton's    maidservant,    were    these : — 
"  The   portion  due  to  me  from  Mr.  Powell,  my  former   ivife's 
"father,  1  leave  to  the  unkind  children  I  had  by  her,  having 
"  received  no  part  of  it ;  but  my  meaning  is  they  .shall  have  no 
"  other  benefit  of  my  estate  than  the  said  portion  and  what  I 
"   have  besides  done  for  them,  they  having  been  very  nndutiful  to 
"  me  :  ,  til  the  rest  of  my  estate  I  leave  to  disposal  of  Elizabeth,  my 
"  loving  wife."     The  question  for  the  Court  was  whether  this, 
in  the  circumstances,  could  be  taken  as  a  good  nuncupative 
will.     Verbal   or   nuncupative   wills,    if  sufficiently  vouched, 


736  LIFE   OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

were  valid  enough  in  those  days  for  personal  property,  and 
it  was  not  till  1677  that  they  were  distinctly  discouraged 
by  a  statute  subjecting  them  to  very  strict  conditions.  Natu- 
rally, however,  wills  of  this  kind  were  always  liable  to  sus- 
picion, and  were  never  allowed  till  the  objections  of  adverse 
parties  had  been  fully  considered. 

The  objections  lodged  in  Court  on  the  part  of  the  daughters 
were  in  the  form  of  a  paper  of  nine  interrogatories  to  be 
tendered  to  the  witnesses  for  the  will.  It  was  desired  that 
it  should  be  asked — (1)  in  what  relation  or  dependence  each 
witness  stood  to  the  widow,  and  to  which  of  the  contesting 
parties  each  witness  would  give  the  victory  if  it  depended  on 
mere  vote  ;  (2)  whether  each  witness  could  be  positive  as  to 
the  day  of  the  alleged  will,  the  time  of  the  day,  and  the  very 
words  spoken  by  the  deceased ;  (3)  whether,  if  the  will  was 
as  had  been  declared,  the  deceased  was  not  in  perfect  health 
at  the  time,  and  declared  the  will  in  a  "  present  passion  or 
some  angry  humour  against  some  or  one  of  his  children  ; " 
(4)  whether  the  deceased  was  known  to  have  any  "  cause  of 
displeasure  "  against  his  daughters,  and  whether,  on  the  con- 
trary, they  had  not  always  been  and  still  were  "great  fre- 
quenters of  the  Church  and  good  livers;"  (5)  whether  the 
will,  if  any,  had  not  been  that  the  widow  should  have  ^1000, 
and  that  the  residue  should  go  to  Mr.  Christopher  Milton's 
children,  and  whether  there  was  not  an  understanding  to  that 
effect  between  Mr.  Christopher  Milton  and  the  widow,  if  her 
present  suit  should  succeed  ;  (6)  whether  the  unpaid  marriage- 
portion  which  was  all  that  had  been  left  to  the  three  daughters 
by  the  alleged  will,  and  which  it  supposed  to  be  still  recover- 
able out  of  the  estate  of  the  Powells,  was  not  "  reputed  a  very 
bad  or  altogether  desperate  debt ;"  (7)  whether  Mr.  Christopher 
Milton  was  not  acting  as  the  widow's  solicitor  in  the  cause, 
superintending  the  suit,  and  paying  fees  to  her  proctor,  &c. ; 
(8)  what  provision  deceased  had  made  for  his  daughters  in 
his  life-time,  and  whether  the  eldest  of  them,  Anne  Milton, 
was  not  "  lame  and  almost  helpless  ;  "  (9)  what,  as  far  as  each 
witness  could  guess,  was  the  total  value  of  the  estate  of  the 
deceased. 


milton's  nuncupative  will.  737 

The  depositions  of  the  witnesses  for  the  will  in  answer 
to  these  interrogatories  were  duly  taken  and  recorded.  The 
examination  of  Christopher  Milton  was  on  the  5th  of  De- 
cember, before  Dr.  Lloyd,  one  of  the  surrogates  of  the  Court ; 
that  of  Elizabeth  Fisher  on  the  15th,  before  Dr.  Trumbull, 
afterwards  Sir  William  Trumbull,  Ambassador  and  Secretary 
of  State  for  some  time  to  William  III,  and  remembered  as  in 
his  last  years  the  friend  and  literary  adviser  of  Pope  ;  and  on 
the  same  15th  of  December  another  surrogate  took  the  evi- 
dence of  Mary  Fisher,  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of  dropping 
in  upon  her  sister  Elizabeth  in  Milton's  kitchen,  knew  Milton 
and  his  wife  in  that  way  pretty  well,  and  had  heard  him, 
on  one  of  these  visits,  about  two  months  after  the  date  of  the 
alleged  will,  use  words  which  seemed  to  refer  to  the  will 
as  a  settled  thing.  How  the  story  of  Milton's  express  de- 
claration of  his  will  to  his  brother,  and  his  subsequent  re- 
ferences to  it  in  conversation,  and  the  story  also  of  the 
unpleasant  relations  between  Milton  and  his  daughters,  did 
come  out  in  the  three  examinations,  we  know  already  to  the 
last  detail.  There  are  several  points  of  additional  interest  here, 
however,  in  the  answers  to  the  queries  of  the  three  daughters. 
Christopher  Milton  distinctly  acknowledged  that  he  had 
drawn  up  the  will  with  his  own  hand  out  of  consideration  for 
the  widow,  recollecting  his  brother's  exact  words  to  the  best 
of  his  ability,  and  that  he  wished  to  see  the  will  take  effect, 
though  he  denied  that  there  was  any  other  foundation  for 
the  idea  that  he  was  conducting  the  case  at  his  own  expense 
than  that,  having  gone  with  the  widow  to  proctor's  chambers 
in  the  course  of  the  business,  he  had  lent  her  two  half- 
crowns  to  make  up  a  sum  she  wanted.  He  also  acknow- 
ledged that  Mrs.  Milton  had  told  him  that  Milton  had  pri- 
vately intimated  a  wish  to  her  that,  if  the  property  left  should 
exceed  ^'1000,  the  surplus  should  be  given  to  Christopher 
Milton's  children  ;  but  he  denied  having  heard  anything  to 
that  effect  from  his  brother  himself  or  considering  it  part 
of  the  will.  In  the  matter  of  the  undutiful  behaviour  of  the 
daughters  to  their  father  he  could  speak  mainly  from  what 
his  brother,  when  declaring  his  will  and  at  different  times 

vol.  vi.  3  B 


738         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

before,   had   told   him ;    and    of  their   present  church-going 
habits  and  general  manner  of  life  he  knew  nothing,  "  they 
living  apart  from    their  father  four  or  five  years  last  past." 
He  was  by  no  means  of  opinion  that  the  bequest  to  the  three 
girls  of  their  mother's  unpaid  marriage-portion  was  valueless, 
knowing  the   said  portion  to   be   "in  the  hands  of  persons 
of  ability,  able  to  pay  the  same,  being  their  grandmother  and 
uncle,"  and  having  "  seen  the  grandfathers  will,  wherein  'tis 
particularly  directed  to  be  paid  unto  them  by  his  executors." 
This  marriage-portion,   consisting   of  a  principal  of  <^J1000, 
"  besides  the  interest  thereof  for  about  twenty  years,"  was, 
he  believed,  all  that  Milton  had  given  to  his  daughters,  over 
and  above  "  his  charges  in  their  maintenance  and  breeding  ;■" 
and  the  eldest  of  the  daughters,  Anne  Milton,  he  did  under- 
stand to  be   "  lame  and   helpless."     On  this   last  point  the 
maidservant  Elizabeth  Fisher,  as  a  workwoman  herself,  had 
more  distinct  notions  than  the   Bencher.      "  Anne  Milton," 
she  said,  "  is  lame,  but  hath  a  trade  and  can  live  by  the  same, 
which  is  the  making  of  gold  and  silver  lace,  and  which  the 
deceased  bred  her  up  to."     The  same  witness  had  also  several 
times  heard  Mr.  Milton  "  declare  and  say  that  he  had  made 
provision  for  his  children  in  his  life-time,  and  had  spent  the 
greatest  part  of  his  estate  in  providing  for  them,"  and  assign 
this  as  one   reason   for  doing  nothing  more  for  them  at  his 
death.     She  believed,  moreover,  that  their  mother's  marriage- 
portion,  left  them,  and  due  to  them  by  their  uncle  Mr.  Powell, 
was  a  good  debt  enough,  "  for  that  the  said  Mr.  Powell  is  re- 
puted a  rich  man."     On  the  whole,  though  it  was  the  evi- 
dence of  this  witness  that  was  most  damaging  to  the  girls,  and 
especially  to  the  second  daughter,  Mary,  the  dreadful  story  of 
whose  words  about  her  father  as  far  back  as  1663  she  testified 
to  have  heard  from  Milton's  own  lips,   yet  there  seems  to 
have  been  no  spite  in  her  evidence,  but  good  rough  sense  and 
feeling.     To  the  first  of  the  nine  interrogatories  she  answered 
that  she   was   still  in  Mrs.  Milton's  service,   and  therefore, 
of  course,  had  "  a  dependency  upon  her  as  her  servant,"  but 
declared  that,  notwithstanding  that  relation,  if  the  decision 
of  the  case  were  in  her  power,  "  she  would  give  the  deceased's 


milton's  nuncupative  will.  739 

estate  equally  to  be  shared  between  the  ministrants  and  the 
producent,"  i.e.  between  the  three  daughters  and  the  widow. 

Elizabeth  Fisher's  notion  of  rough  justice  seems  to  have 
been  also  that  of  the  Court.  There  was  not  the  least  doubt 
of  the  trustworthiness  of  any  of  the  witnesses ;  but  the  nun- 
cupative will  as  attested  by  them  wanted  some  of  the  qualifi- 
cations deemed  essential.  It  had  not  been  made  on  the  death- 
bed of  the  testator,  nor  even  in  what  could  be  supposed  his 
last  sickness ;  the  evidence  of  the  witnesses  was  concurrent 
from  several  moments  in  the  last  months  of  the  life  of  the  de- 
ceased and  not  from  one  and  the  same  moment ;  nor  had  there 
been  the  solemnity  of  a  distinct  call  from  the  deceased  to  the 
witnesses  to  hear  his  words  and  remember  them  as  his  last 
will.  "  On  these  principles,"  says  Warton,  "  we  may  presume 
Sir  Leoline  Jenkins  to  have  acted  in  the  rejection  of  Milton's 
will."  Sir  Leoline  Jenkins,  afterwards  Ambassador  and  Se- 
cretary of  State,  was  then  the  chief  judge  of  the  Prerogative 
Court,  and  had  a  high  reputation  for  uprightness;  but  I  do 
not  find  the  proof  of  any  such  definite  decision  by  him  as  is 
here  assumed.  All  that  appears  is  that  the  widow  came  out 
of  Court  without  the  probate  of  the  will  which  she  had  applied 
for,  but  with  letters  of  administration  granted  to  her  instead. 
They  were  granted  on  the  25th  of  February  1674<-5,  and  the 
register  of  the  Court  bears  that  they  were  granted,  "  the 
"  nuncupative  will  of  the  said  defunct,  otherwise  alleged  by 
"  the  aforesaid  Elizabeth  Milton,  having  not  yet  been  proved 
"  (nondum  probata)"  My  construction  is  that  the  various 
parties  had  by  this  time  come  together,  Christopher  Milton 
advising  the  widow,  while  the  three  girls  were  represented,  as 
they  had  probably  been  from  the  beginning  of  the  suit,  by 
their  grandmother  Mrs.  Powell  and  their  uncle  Mr.  Richard 
Powell,  and  that,  to  save  farther  trouble,  the  widow  had 
abandoned  her  claim  for  probate  of  the  will  and  agreed  to  be 
content  with  that  administration  of  the  effects  of  the  deceased 
which  the  Court  was  willing  to  assign  her.  The  grant  of 
administration  constituted  her  the  officer  of  Court  for  realising 
all  the  effects,  and  distributing  the  surplus,  after  payment  of 
the  debts  of  the  deceased,  among  all  entitled  to  share,  accord- 

3  B  3 


740  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ing  to  the  proportions  fixed  by  the  law  and  custom  of  that 
time ;  and  the  difference  for  herself  was  that,  whereas  probate 
of  the  will  would  have  given  her  all,  administration  gave  her 
two-thirds,  one  third  as  widow,  another  as  administratrix, 
the  remaining  third  to  be  distributed  equally  among  the 
daughters1. 

The  widow  was  most  prompt  and  business-like  in  her 
arrangements.  She  was  entitled  to  take  time  in  settling  with 
the  daughters  ;  but,  even  before  the  letters  of  administra- 
tion had  been  granted,  she  had  virtually  settled  all.  The 
proof  exists  in  the  form  of  the  three  releases  or  receipts  given 
to  her  by  the  three  girls.  NThose  of  Anne  and  Mary  Milton 
are  both  dated  Feb.  22,  1674-5,  or  three  days  before  the  date 
of  the  letters  of  administration.  They  are  in  identical  terms, 
and  are  signed  by  the  same  four  witnesses,  one  of  whom  is 
a  "Richard  Milton;"  and  the  only  difference  is  that  Aane's 
release  is  signed  by  her  mark  merely  over  the  seal,  her  name 
"  Anne  Milton "  being  written  for  her  by  this  Richard 
Milton,  while  Mary's  release  bears  her  own  signature,  "  Mary 
Million, "  spelt  so.  Each  states  that  "  before  the  ensealing 
and  delivery  hereof"  the  sum  of  ^100  has  been  "  secured  to 
be  payd"  by  the  widow,  "to  the  end  the  said  one  hundred 
pounds  may,  by  and  with  the  consent  and  approbation  of 
Christopher  Milton  and  Richard  Powell,  both  of  the  Inner 
Temple.  London,  Esqrs.,  be  layd  out  and  disposed  off  for  and 
in  purchasing  of  a  rent  charge  or  annuity  "  for  the  giver  of 
the  receipt  during  her  life,  "  or  otherwise  as  they  shall  judge 
to  be  for  the  best  benefitt  and  advantage  ;"  and,  in  considera- 
tion of  this  security,  each  "  doth  hereby  acknowledge  herselfe 
fully  sattisfyed  of  her  share  and  distribucion  of  her  said  late 
father's  estate."  The  release  of  the  third  and  youngest 
daughter,  Deborah,  does  not  come  till  about  a  month  later, 
i.e.  on  the  27th  of  March  1675,  and  then  with  some  interest- 
ing peculiarities.     In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  granted  by 

1  The  documents  relating  to  the  pro-  by  Todd,  with  Warton's  notes  (Todd's 

cedure   in  the  Nuncupative  Will  were  Milton,  edit.  1852, 1.  167 — 183),  and  by 

first  printed  by  Warton  in  his  second  Mr.  Johu  Fitehett  Marsh  (Appendix  to 

edition   of  Milton's    Minor    Poems   iu  Milton  Papers,  printed  for  the  Chethani 

1791,  aud  have  been  reprinted  in  full  Society,  1851). 


milton's  nuncupative  will.  741 

"  Deborah  Milton,"  but  jointly  by  "  Abraham  Clarke,  of  the 
Citty  of   Dublin  in  ye  Kingdome  of  Ireland,   weavor,    and 
Deborah,  his  wife,"  and  is  signed  and  sealed  accordingly  by 
both,  the  signature  "  Deboroh  Clarke  "  having  an  o  for  the  a 
in  the  christian  name,  and  a  correction  in  the  last  letter  of  the 
surname,  as  if  the  writer  were  hardly  yet  accustomed  to  it. 
The  four  witnesses  to  this  receipt  are  different  from  those  who 
had  witnessed  the  other  two ;  two  of  the  names  seem  Irish  ; 
and,  though  the  receipt  does  not  positively  bear  to  have  been 
signed    in  Dublin  and    sent  over   thence,    that    seems    self- 
evident.     Now,  as  it  was  under  her  maiden  name  of  "  Deborah 
Milton  "  that  Deborah  had  appeared  as  one  of  the  parties  to 
the  suit  against  the  widow  in  November  1674,  and  as  she 
retains  that  name  in  the  documents  of  the  suit  till  the  5th  of 
December,  there  seem  to  be  only  two  ways  of  accounting  for 
her  appearance  as  "  Deborah  Clarke  "  on  the  27th  of  March 
1675.     Having   gone  to   Dublin,   we  ai'e    told,    some   years 
before  her  father's  death,    as    companion   to    a   lady  named 
Merian,    and  having  there   met   the    Abraham    Clarke    who 
describes  himself  as  a  "  weaver,"  but  whose  business  Aubrey 
explains  further  by  the  words  "  a  mercer,  sells  silk,"  she  may 
have  been  married  to   him   for  some  time,    without  having 
taken  the  trouble  of  informing  her  father  or  her  sisters  ;  and 
so,  when  her  sisters  did  look  after  her  interests  as   well  as 
their  own  in   the   suit,  they  may  have  entered  her  as  still 
Deborah  Milton,  and  only  on  correspondence  with  her  in  eon- 
sequence  of  the  suit  may  it  have  emerged  that  she  was  now  Mrs. 
Clarke.     It  is  more  probable,  however,  that  she  was  still  only 
Deborah  Milton  when  the  suit  began,  was  then  in  Dublin,  and 
remained  there  through  the  whole  progress  of  the  suit,  and 
that  her  marriage  with  Abraham  Clarke  occurred  in  Dublin 
between  the  5th  of  December  1674,  when  the  paper  of  inter- 
rogatories to  the  widow's  witnesses,  tendered  in  the  Prero- 
gative Court  in  London,  purported  to  be  from  "Anne,  Mary, 
and  Deborah  Milton,"  and  the  27th  of  March  1675,  when  she 
and  her  husband  signed  their  joint  release  to  the  wTidow.     In 
that  case  the  signing  of  the  release  must  have  been  one  of  the 
earliest  incidents  of  her  married  life  ;  and   in  either  case  the 


742  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

widow    must    have    settled    with     her    by   correspondence. 
Whether  because  the  husband,   Abraham  Clarke,   took  care 
to    exact  from   the   widow  all    he    could    before   giving"   the 
release,  or  because  the  widow  recollected  the  young-  Deborah 
with    kindlier    feelings    than    she    could    own    to    the    two 
elder  sisters,  the  settlement  with  the  Clarkes  yielded  some- 
thing more  to  Deborah  than  had  been  yielded  to  Anne  and 
Mary.     The  release  from    Deborah    and    her   husband  is    as 
complete  as  the  others  had  been,  but  is  "  in  consideracion  of 
"  the  full  and  just  summe  of  one  hundred  pounds  sterling  paid 
"by  Elizabeth  Milton,  relict  and  also  administratrix  of  the 
"  goods  and  chatties  of  the  said  John  Milton,    unto    John 
"  Burrough  of  Cornehill,  London,  cabinet-maker,  for  the  use 
"  and  by  the  appointment  of  the  said  Abraham  Clarke  and 
"  Deborah  his    said   wife,  and  of  the  delivery  unto  ye   said 
"  John  Burrough,  for  the  [like]  use    and    by   the   like    ap- 
pointment, of  severall  goods  late  of  ye  said  John  Milton, 
"  deceased,   by  ye  said  Elizabeth  Milton."     The  goods  thus 
entrusted    to   the  cabinet-maker   of  Cornhill  to  be  sent  to 
Dublin  with  the  ^100  may  have  included  articles  of  furni- 
ture that  would  be  useful  to  a  newly  married  couple  ;  but  we 
chance  to  know  independently  that  they  included  one  or  two 
little  articles  that  a  daughter  might  like  to  have  as  relics  of 
her  father.     One  was  a  silver  seal  which  Milton  had  used, 
bearing  the  family  arms. 

One  point  more  in  the  widow's  settlement  with  the  three 
daughters.  All  the  three  releases  contained  an  excepting 
clause.  That  of  the  Clarkes  discharges  the  widow  of  all 
further  claims  on  her  on  account  of  the  estate  of  the  deceased, 
realized  or  to  be  realized,  "  except  such  share  thereof  as  ye 
"  said  Deborah,  or  as  ye  said  Abraham  Clarke  in  right  of 
"  ye  said  Deborah,  doth  or  may  claim  or  demaund  by  force  or 
"  colour  of  one  bond  or  obligacion,  dated  ye  two  and  twentieth 
"  day  of  February  now  last  past,  of  ye  penall  summe  of  Two 
"  Hundred  Pounds,  entred  into  by  Christopher  Milton  of  ye 
"  Inner  Temple,  London,  Esqr.,  unto  Richard  Powell,  of  the 
"same  Inner  Temple,  London,  Esqr.,  or  of  ye  condition  there 
"  under- written."     The  exception  had  been  totidem  verbis  in 


milton's  nuncupative  will.  743 

the  two  previous  releases.  The  bond  given  by  Christopher 
Milton,  the  paternal  uncle  of  the  three  girls,  to  Mr.  Powell, 
their  maternal  uncle,  has  not  come  down  to  us  ;  but  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  it  referr  xl  to  the  unpaid  marriage-portion 
of  Milton's  first  wife.  By  the  very  act  of  quashing-  the  nun- 
cupative will  that  debt  of  ^1000,  with  twenty-one  years  of 
interest,  belonged  no  longer,  as  by  the  will,  to  the  three 
daughters,  but  to  the  widow,  as  administratrix  for  herself  and 
for  them  ;  and,  whatever  the  debt  might  turn  out  to  be  worth, 
two  thirds  of  it,  as  of  the  rest  of  the  estate,  would  be  legally 
the  widow's,  and  only  the  other  third  would  be  divisible 
among  the  daughters.  Is  it  too  much  to  suppose  that  Mr. 
Powell,  on  the  one  hand,  was  anxious  to  guard  himself  against 
a  claim  of  the  widow  which  might  be  very  inconvenient  to 
him,  and  that  the  widow,  on  the  other  hand,  having  made  up 
her  mind  that  the  three  daughters  were  the  proper  persons  to 
benefit  by  their  mother's  marriage-portion,  if  it  should  ever 
be  recovered,  was  willing  to  leave  that  debt  as  a  family  matter 
to  be  settled  between  Mr.  Powell  and  his  nieces  without  her 
interference  ?  If  so,  her  good  friend  Christopher  Milton 
ao-reeins"  with  her  and  willing'  to  be  her  securitv,  the  bond  to 
Mr.  Powell  may  have  been  to  the  effect  that  Mr.  Powell 
should  have  no  further  trouble  from  her  in  that  matter,  and 
that,  whenever  he  should  see  fit  to  pay  up  anything  of  the 
long  due  marriage-portion,  as  enjoined  by  his  father's  will  of 
December  1646,  it  should  all  go  to  the  daughters1. 

Mrs.  Milton  having  paid  Deborah's  share  of  ^100  by  the 
27th  of  March  1675,  it  may  be  assumed  that  she  had  by  that 
time  paid  also  the  other  two  shares  of  ^100  each,  and  so  was 
then  clear  of  all  her  liabilities.  What  she  had  retained  for 
herself  can  have  been  about  ^'600  only,  with  the  greater 
portion  of  her  deceased  husband's  household  goods.  Phillips's 
report  from  hearsay,  that  his  uncle  had  died  worth  ^1500  in 
money  besides  household  goods,  must,  therefore,  be  consider- 

1  My  chief  authority  for  the  transac-  with   facsimiles   of   the   signatures  to 

tions    between    the    widow     and    the  them,  and  excellenl  annotations  by  Mr. 

daughters  is  the  little  volume  of  Milton  Marsh.     Hut   see  also  Vol.  I.  pp.  3 — 4, 

ers  edited  for  the  Chetham  Society  footnote,   Vol.  III.  pp.  635 — 637,  ami 

by  Mr.  John   Fitchett  Marsh  in  1851.  ante,  p.  449— 451. 
The  volume  contains  the  three  releases, 


744  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

ably  abated.  Milton  bad  estimated  his  own  estate  just  before 
his  death  at  c^PlOOO  or  perhaps  a  little  more,  and  his  estimate 
had  turned  out  tolerably  con\ct.  He  had  wanted  to  leave  his 
widow  ^1000,  and  what  had  actually  come  to  her  was  about 
two- thirds  of  that  sum.  It  was  as  if  now  a  widow  were  left 
about  ^2000,  to  be  invested  in  an  annuity  for  her  life  or 
otherwise. 


THE    WIDOW,    THE    THREE    DAUGHTERS,    AND    MILTON  S    DIRECT 

DESCENDANTS. 

At  Milton's  death  his  widow  was  just  thirty-six  years  of 
age.  Though  she  might  have  married  again,  one  hears  of 
no  such  intention.  She  lived  on  in  London,  for  six  or  seven 
years  longer,  still  apparently  in  the  house  in  Artillery  Walk, 
Bunhill.  One  of  her  most  frequent  visitors,  and  her  most 
intimate  friend  all  in  all  in  London,  was  her  relative  Dr. 
Nathan  Paget,  who  had  first  introduced  her  to  Milton.  He 
died  in  January  1678-9  ;  and  in  his  will,  dated  the  7th  of 
that  month  and  proved  the  15th,  while  leaving  a  sum  of 
money  to  the  College  of  Physicians,  and  other  sums  to  his 
brother  the  Rev.  Thomas  Paget,  his  widowed  sister  Elizabeth 
Johnson,  and  her  children,  he  expressly  marks  his  regard  for 
his  '•'  cosen  "  Elizabeth  Milton  by  a  bequest  to  her  of  ^'20. 
An  occasional  visitor  of  Mrs.  Milton,  especially  about  1680, 
was  the  inquisitive  Aubrey,  some  of  whose  particles  of  in- 
formation about  Milton,  jotted  down  about  that  year,  are 
authenticated  by  him  by  the  repeated  phrase  "  vidua  affirmat" 
"  his  widowe  assures  me,"  &c.  Aubrey  was  particularly  in- 
terested by  finding  that  she  had  a  great  many  letters  by  her 
that  Milton  had  received  "from  learned  men  of  his  ac- 
quaintance, both  of  England  and  beyond  sea,"  and  also  that 
she  had  still  in  her  possession  the  portrait  of  Milton  he 
thought  the  best,  viz.  that  taken  when  he  was  twenty-one 
years  of  age  and  a  Cambridge  scholar.  As  Aubrey  liked  this 
portrait  better  than  the  later  one  prefixed  to  some  of  Milton's 
books,  he  thought  it  "  ought  to  be  engraven,"  and  he  pro- 


milton's  widow.  7-15 

posed  to  write  Milton's  name  upon  it  in  "  red  letters  "  for  its 
safer  preservation 1. 

It  seems  to  have  been  in  or  about  1681  that  the  widow, 
then  in  her  forty-third  year,  made  up  her  mind  to  leave 
London  and  retire  to  her  native  Cheshire.  Preparation  had 
been  made  by  an  arrangement  with  her  brother,  Richard 
Minshull,  rather  more  than  two  years  younger  than  herself, 
and  still  living  in  the  parish  of  Wistaston,  near  Nantwich, 
where  they  had  both  been  born  and  baptized.  On  the  4th 
of  June  1680  this  Richard  Minshull  of  Wistaston,  describing 
himself  as  a  "frame-work  knitter,"  had  given  a  bond  in  i£J30 
to  "Elizabeth  Milton  of  the  city  of  London,  widow,"  to  the 
effect  that,  in  consideration  of  the  sum  of  ^150  "payd  or 
secured  to  be  payd  "  by  her  to  him  for  her  use,  he  surrendered 
to  Sir  Thomas  Wilbraham,  baronet,  a  lease  of  "  a  messuage 
and  tenement,  with  the  appurtenances  and  diverse  lands 
thereunto  belonging,"  held  by  him  from  the  said  baronet, 
and  situated  in  Brindley,  in  the  county  of  Chester,  in  order 
that  a  new  lease  of  the  same  should  be  made  to  the  said 
Elizabeth  Milton.  As  the  new  lease  was  to  be  for  the 
widow's  life,  conjointly  with  that  of  Mary  Minshull,  the  wife 
of  the  Richard  Minshull  who  gives  the  bond,  and  with  that 
of  a  son  of  his,  also  named  Richard  Minshull,  for  the  benefit 
of  whichever  of  the  three  should  live  longest,  it  is  evident 
that  the  arrangement  was  one  for  the  common  interests  of 
the  family,  with  the  help  of  the  widow's  money.  When 
Mrs.  Milton  did  retire  to  Cheshire,  it  was  not  to  the  messuage 
at  Brindley,  which  is  about  six  miles  west  from  Nantwich, 
but  to  Nantwich  itself,  much  closer  to  her  brother  and  his 
family.  Wistaston  was  the  place  where  he  carried  on  his 
trade  of  frame-work  knitter,  and  the  lease  at  Brindley  was 
a  mere  farming  investment,  sublet  to  undertenants. 

Having  arrived  in  Nantwich,  some  time  in  1681,  the 
widow  took  up  her  abode  either  in  some  very  small  house  in 
the  town  by  herself,  or  more  probably  in  a  portion   of  the 

1  Munk's  Roll  of  the  Royal  College  if      notes,  by  Miss  Thomasin  E.  Sbarpe,re- 
Thysicians,  I.  224     225;  Milton,  Min-       printed  from   The  <■■  >  of  April 

ahull,  and  Gouldsmytb  pedigree,  with       1878  ;  Aubrey's  Lives,  Milton. 


746  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

house  of  some   friend,  where  she  placed  her  furniture,   and 
where  she  could  have  all  the  attendance  she  wanted  without 
keeping-  her  own  servant.     There,  among-  her  relatives  and 
old  acquaintances  once  more,  and  near  her  native  spot,  she 
grew    older    and    older,    utterly    forgotten    in    London,    but 
gradually  more    and   more    known    to    all    Nantwich    as    an 
eminently  respectable  and  pious  person,  widow  of  the  famous 
Mr.  Milton,  and  living  frugally  on  what  he  had  left   her. 
So  well  known  were  her  habits  and  circumstances  among  her 
neighbours  that  it  became  a  saying  among  the  Nantwich 
people,  when  they  would  describe  the  hospitalities  of  persons 
of  straitened  means,   "They  have  had    Mrs.  Milton's   feast, 
enough  and  no  more."     This  must  have  been  late  in  her  life, 
when  she  was  also  known  as  the   member  of  a  small  con- 
gregation or  chapel    of  General  Baptists   in  Nantwich,  the 
pastor   of  which  was   a  Mr.  Samuel  Acton.     Phillips,  while 
writing  his  memoir  of  Milton  in  1694,  was  not  quite  sure 
that  she  was  still  alive  in  her  Cheshire  retirement ;  and,  save 
that  Toland,   when   preparing  his  Life   of  Milton  in  1698, 
caused  a  friend  to  write  to  her  for  information,  who  received 
a  letter  in  reply,   admirers  of  Milton  do  not  seem  to  have 
troubled  her  with  any  inquiries  about  him  till  in   her  very 
last   years.     It   was  from    some  one  who   had    seen    her   in 
Nantwich  that  Bishop  Newton  heard  that  her  hair  had  been 
originally  of  a  golden  hue  ;    and  there  is   another  tradition 
that,  on  being  asked  by  some  visitors  whether  her  husband 
had  not  been  a  great  reader  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  she  resented 
the  question,  thinking  it  implied  plagiarism,  and  answered 
with  some  eagerness  that  her  husband  stole  from  nobody  but 
the  muse  that  inspired  him,  and  that  muse  was  God's  Holy 
Spirit.     One  or  two  more  documents  are  extant  relating  to 
her  money-affairs.     On  the  11th  of  April  1713,  or  the  last 
year  but  one  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  she  became  bound 
jointly  with  Mr.  Samuel  Acton  in  ^20  for  the  payment  six 
months  afterwards  of  a  debt  of  j^IO,  with  interest,  to  a  Randal 
Timmis,  of  Greasty,  co.  Chester,  yeoman  ;    and,   though  the 
nature  of  the  debt  is  not  stated,  one  imagines  it  to  have  been 
connected  somehow  with  the  Baptist  chapel.     On  the  22nd 


milton's  widow.  7&7 

of  October  1720,  when  George  I.  had  been  six  years  on  the 
throne,  and  she  was  in  her  eighty-second  year,  she  signed 
an  agreement  with  John  Darlington,  yeoman,  letting"  to  him 
her  farm  and  premises  at  Brindley  at  a  rent  of  j£30  yearly 
on  certain  carefully  stated  mutual  conditions.  On  the  16th 
of  June  1725,  when  she  was  in  her  eighty-seventh  year,  there 
was  a  farther  transaction  between  her  and  the  same  John 
Darlington,  relating  to  the  same  premises  and  farm  at 
Brindley.  She  lived  more  than  two  years  after  that,  for  her 
last  will  is  dated  Aug.  22,  1727,  in  the  first  year  of  the  reign 
of  George  II.,  and  it  was  proved  on  the  10th  of  October  in 
that  year.  She  died,  therefore,  between  these  two  dates,  near 
the  age  of  eighty-nine.  Hers  had  been  an  unusually  long 
widowhood,  for  she  had  outlived  her  husband  fifty-three 
years.  A  funeral  sermon  said  to  have  been  preached  on  her 
in  the  Baptist  chapel,  Nantwich,  by  the  Rev.  Isaac  Kimber, 
assistant  to  Mr.  Acton,  was  published  in  1756  by  the  preacher's 
son,  Mr.  Edward  Kimber,  but  with  a  mistake  as  to  the  date 
of  her  death.  It  contains  no  allusion  whatever  to  Milton, 
and  next  to  nothing  about  herself. 

Most  of  Mrs.  Milton's  small  property  having  terminated 
with  her  life  or  been  already  settled  beyond  that,  her  will 
was  a  very  simple  one.  It  constituted  her  "  loving  friends  " 
Samuel  Acton  and  John  Allecock,  both  of  Nantwich,  her 
executors,  and  gave  all  her  effects,  after  payment  of  her  debts, 
to  her  "  nephews  and  nieces  in  Namptwich  "  equally,  without 
naming  them.  Allecock  alone  took  out  letters  of  administra- 
tion, and  there  was  very  little  to  administer.  The  goods  and 
chattels  she  had  left  were  sworn  under  ^40 ;  and  the  "  true 
and  perfect  inventory "  of  them,  made  for  the  purpose  of 
the  oath,  still  exists,  and  exhibits  the  total  as  exactly  j^'38 
8s.  4d.  It  is  a  most  touching  document.  The  total,  small 
though  it  is,  comprises  108  different  items.  First  comes  "  a 
pair  bedsteads  and  hangings,"  valued  at  18*.,  then  "a  feather 
bed  and  bolster,"  valued  at  J&2  7s.,  then  "  2  quilts  and  pair 
of  blanketts,  old  patched  ones,"  valued  at  10,?.,  then  "  2  tea- 
spoons and  1  silver  spoon,  with  a  seal  and  stopper  and  bitts 
of  silver,"  valued  together  at  12s.,  then  a  ';  chest  of  drawers 


748  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  frame,"  valued  at  13,?.,  then  "one  dress-box,  bottles,  and 
things  belonging,"  valued  at  12*.,  then  "  one  pencil-case," 
valued  at  3*.;  and  so  on  the  document  goes,  through  a  miscel- 
lany of  pewter  dishes,  other  dishes,  pails  and  small  barrels,  a 
brass  fender,  fire-irons,  cooking  utensils,  trunks,  old  tin  candle- 
sticks, "  a  totershell  knife  and  fork  with  other  old  ones/'  an 
old  looking-glass,  two  old  pairs  of  scissors,  a  tobacco-box, 
"  one  mask  and  fan,"  "  one  old  muff  and  case,"  "  a  fine  cloak 
and  hood,"  "  a  Norwich  gown  and  pettycoat,"  "  a  calimancoe 
gown,"  "  an  old  Norwich  gown  and  coat/'  handkerchiefs 
and  other  articles  of  body  attire,  "  three  pair  old  gloves,"  <;  a 
pair  shoes  and  two  pair  cloggs,"  "  two  pair  of  spectables/' 
&c,  &c.  The  majority  of  the  items  range  from  two  or  three 
shillings  to  threepence  or  lower  in  value,  and  there  are  in- 
cluded 17*.  in  money  and  sixpence  worth  of  coals  that  had 
been  left  unburnt.  The  highest  item  by  far  in  the  inventory 
is  "  Mr.  Milton's  pictures  and  coat  of  arms,"  valued  at  ^10 
10*. ;  the  next  in  value  is  the  above-named  feather-bed  and 
bolster  at^02  7*.,  the  next  the  Norwich  gown  and  petticoat  at 
sSl  5*.,  the  next  the  bedstead  and  hangings  at  18*.,  the  next 
the  "fine  cloak  and  hood"  at  17*.  6^/.,  and  the  next  "two  cane 
chairs  and  two  velvet  cushions  "  at  17*.  Under  the  name 
of  "  2  Books  of  Paradise,"  valued  at  10*.,  one  recognises  bound 
copies  of  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Regained ;  "  some  old 
books  and  few  old  pictures  "  go  together  for  12*. ;  and  there 
is  Ci  a  larg-e  Bible  "  valued  at  8*.  To  assist  myself  in  inferring 
the  domestic  accommodations  of  Mrs.  Milton  at  the  close  of 
her  life,  I  have  submitted  the  inventory  to  practised  feminine 
judgment ;  and  the  report  is  that  her  part  of  whatever  house 
she  lived  in  consisted  probably  of  a  single  chamber,  with  a 
small  attached  scullery,  but  that  the  chamber,  though  uncar- 
peted,  and  serving  as  sitting-room,  kitchen,  and  bed-room  in 
one,  may  have  been  of  good  size,  and  bright  and  tidy  enough, 
with  its  fire-place  and  brass  fender,  its  old  chest  of  drawers, 
its  two  old  tables,  its  two  cane  chairs  with  velvet  cushions, 
and  two  or  three  sedge-bottomed  chairs  and  stools  beside  , 
and  with  Mr.  Milton's  pictures  and  coat  of  arms  on  the  walls, 
and  the  two  Books  of  Paradise  and  the  large  Bible  as  the 


milton's  widow.  749 

conspicuous  table-ornaments.  I  am  informed  also  that  the 
venerable  old  lady's  wardrobe,  though  it  included  curious 
little  articles  of  fashion,  like  the  mask  and  fan,  that  must 
have  been  carefully  conserved  from  the  days  of  the  Restora- 
tion, and  also  handsome  enough  changes  of  more  lately  pur- 
chased apparel,  in  which  to  walk  out  or  receive  visitors,  was 
deficient  in  woollen  and  linen  under-com forts,  and  that  her 
tastes  were  evidently  much  less  in  the  direction  of  needle- 
work or  knitting  than  of  cookery  and  pastry.  The  proportion 
of  saucepans,  mortars  and  pestles,  and  other  little  articles  of 
cooking  apparatus,  to  the  rest  of  her  scullery  effects  is,  I  am 
told,  remarkable ;  and  some  of  these  articles,  it  appears, 
indicate  a  certain  preference  for  minces,  stews,  made  dishes, 
and  generally  for  the  daintier  style  of  cookery.  One  re- 
members Milton's  compliment  to  her,  "  God  have  mercy,  Betty" 
&c.  (ante,  p.  728).  On  the  whole,  the  ascendancy  of  Milton  in 
the  widow's  memory  and  surroundings  to  the  last  is  a  thing 
most  manifest.  Besides  the  relics  of  him  in  the  old  furniture, 
such  as  it  was,  in  the  two  portraits  of  him  and  his  coat  of 
arms,  in  the  bound  copies  of  his  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise 
Regained,  and  in  the  few  silver  trinkets,  it  seems  probable 
that  she  had  retained  more  familiar  mementoes  in  the  articles 
entered  in  the  inventory  as  "  the  best  suit  of  twad  cloaths," 
"  the  worser  do,"  and  "  2  pair  of  ruffles."  The  two  suits  of 
"  twad,"  possibly  Milton's  old  suits  of  grey  in  Bunhill  fifty- 
three  years  before,  were  valued  at  3^.  and  1*.  6s.  respectively, 
and  the  ruffles  at  2*.  If  they  were  Milton's,  they  ought  to 
have  fetched  higher  prices  even  from  Nantwich  antiquaries. 
The  two  portraits  of  him,  the  one  his  sweet  round-headed  little 
boy-portrait,  the  other  that  graceful  portrait  of  him  in  his 
Cambridge  days  which  Aubrey  had  wanted  to  mark,  were  to 
be  sold  ere  long  for  considerable  sums,  and  were  to  find  their 
way  southward  1. 

1  Tin'   facts   in  this  account  of  the  Papers  for  the  Chetham  Society,  and 

later  life  of  Milton's  widow,  so  far  as  from  a  subsequent  paper   of  his  read 

they  are  not  incidentally  from  Toland,  before  the  Historic  Society  of  Lanca- 

Newton,    or   previous    information    in  shire  and  Cheshire  in  Feb.  22,  1855. 

these  volumes  (e.g.  in  footnotes  at  p.  This  last  contains  the  inventory  of  Mrs. 

50  and  pp.  278—279  of  Vol.   1.1   are  Milton's  effects  at  her  decease,  with  Mr. 

from  Mr.  J.    Pitchett  Marsh's    Milton  Marsh's  notice  of  the  same. 


750         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

At  Milton's  death,  his  eldest  daughter,  Anne,  was  twenty- 
eight  years  of  age,  Mary  was  twenty-six  years  of  age,  and 
Deborah  was  in  her  twenty-third  year.  They  had  each  the 
^100  of  their  father's  money  that  had  been  surrendered  by 
the  widow,  besides  their  dependency  on  the  Powells  and  the 
chances  of  their  own  exertions.  The  dependency  on  the 
Powells  can  have  been  worth  little  ;  but,  for  one  of  them, 
it  hardly  mattered.  Anne  Milton,  the  eldest  daughter,  the 
handsome-faced  but  deformed  one,  with  an  impediment  in  her 
speech,  found  a  husband  very  soon,  it  seems,  in  a  person 
whose  name  has  not  come  down  to  us,  and  of  whom  nothing- 
more  is  known  than  that  he  was  a  "  master-builder/'  or  archi- 
tect of  some  kind  ;  and  she  died  in  giving  birth  to  her  first 
child,  the  child  dying  with  her.  This  must  have  been  before 
the  24th  of  October  1678  ;  on  which  day  Mrs.  Powell,  mak- 
ing her  will,  mentions  her  two  grandchildren,  "  Mary  Milton, 

spinster,"    and  "  Deborah  Clarke,  wife  of Clarke  

of  — —  in  Ireland,"  as  "  the  two  surviving  daughters  "  of 
her  late  daughter  "  Mary  Milton,  deceased,"  and  leaves  them 
^10  each.  The  bequest  shows  that  the  grandmother  had  still 
some  kindly  feeling  for  the  two  ;  but  the  other  items  of  the 
will  indicate  that  her  main  regards  were  elsewhere.  To  her 
son  Richard  Powell  of  the  Inner  Temple,  Esq.,  she  bequeathes 
discharge  of  a  bond  of  his  for  ^120,  dated  July  8,  1665, 
together  with  a  gold  ring,  "  which  was  his  grandmother 
Archdale's,"  and  all  goods  left  in  the  house  at  Forest  Hill ; 
to  Anne,  the  wife  of  her  said  son,  she  leaves  the  said  son's 
picture  in  a  case  of  gold  or  enamel ;  and  to  her  grandchild, 
Richard  Powell,  son  of  the  said  son,  she  leaves  20s.  for  a  ring. 
The  other  principal  legatees  are  her  four  living  daughters, 
Anne  Kinaston,  wife  of  Thomas  Kinaston  of  London,  merchant, 
Sarah  Pearson,  wife  of  Richard  Pearson,  gent.,  Elizabeth 
Howell,  wife  of  Thomas  Howell,  gent.,  and  Elizabeth  Hol- 
loway,  wife  of  Christmas  Holloway,  gent., — to  each  of  whom 
she  leaves  ^50,  the  said  Anne  Kinaston  to  have  the  residue 
of  her  goods  besides,  and  to  be  executrix.  As  the  will  was 
not  proved  till  Nov.  6,  1682,  Mrs.  Powell  must  have  lived 
about  four  years  after  making  it,  and  not  till  after  those  four 


FORTUNES   OF   MILTON'S   DAUGHTERS.  751 

years  can  Mary  Milton  and  Mrs.  Clarke  have  received  their 
j£10  each.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  last  benefit  to  them 
from  their  Powell  connexion  ;  for,  though  their  uncle  Richard 
Powell  lived  till  1695,  a  prosperous  man,  one  of  the  Readers 
of  the  Inner  Temple,  &c,  and  all  his  forementioned  sisters 
were  then  still  alive,  there  seems  to  have  been  no  farther 
recollection  among-  them  of  any  obligation  or  relationship  to 
their  Milton  nieces.  At  the  time  of  the  uncle's  death,  indeed, 
only  one  of  these  nieces  was  left.  Milton's  second  daughter, 
Mary,  the  likest  to  her  mother,  and  the  most  disagreeably 
remembered  of  the  three,  had  died,  still  unmarried,  at  some 
uncertain  date  before  1694  ;  in  which  year  Phillips,  in  his 
memoir  of  Milton,  speaks  of  Deborah  as  the  sole  daughter 
then  surviving  \ 

Deborah  Milton  and  her  husband,  Abraham  Clarke,  after 
they  had  been  a  good  number  of  years  in  Dublin,  came  over  to 
London  ''during  the  troubles  in  Ireland  under  King  James  II," 
or  some  time  between  1684  and  1688,  the  husband  continuing 
his  Irish  business  of  weaving  and  silk-dealing  by  becoming 
"  a  weaver  in  Spitalfields."  They  had  ten  children  in  all, 
seven  sons  and  three  daughters,  born  either  in  Ireland  between 
1676  and  the  date  of  their  migration  to  Spitalfields  or  after- 
wards in  Spitalfields  itself.  Most  of  these  died  in  infancy ; 
the  husband,  Abraham  Clarke,  died  at  some  unknown  date 
after  1688;  but  Deborah  did  not  die  till  the  24th  of  August 
1727,  when  she  was  in  her  seventy-sixth  year.  Her  death 
was  almost  contemporaneous  with  that  of  Milton's  widow  at 
Nantwich,  thirteen  years  her  senior.  Her  only  surviving 
son,  Urban  Clarke,  was  then  a  Spitalfields  weaver,  as  his 
father  had  been,  and  unmarried  ;  her  only  surviving  daughter 
had  changed  her  name,  a  good  many  years  before,  from 
Elizabeth  Clarke  to  Elizabeth  Foster,  by  her  marriage  with  a 
Thomas  Foster,  also  "  a  weaver  in  Spitalfields  ; "  and  Deborahs 

1  Milton    Pedigree    by   Sir    Charles  — It  will  be  noted  that  there  were  two 

Young,  Garter  King  at  Arms  ;  ami  ab-  living  sisters  in  tin-  Powell  family  bear- 

stracts  of  the  wills  of  Mrs.  Powell  and  ing   the    same    name,    Elizabeth.      See 

her  son  Richard   Powell,  kindly  com-  Vol.  II.  p.  4!»9;  where  I  gave  the  baptism 

municated  to  me  by  Miss  Thoniasin  E.  dates  of  both  the  Elizabeths,  but  as- 

Sharpe.      Mr.    Powell's    will    is    dated  sunied,   wrongly  it  DOW   appears,   that 

Dec.  29, 1693,  and  proved  Feb.  3,  lG95-o\  one  of  them  had  died  in  infancy. 


752         LIFE   OF   MILTON    A.ND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

abode  in  her  widowhood,  for  some  years  before  her  death, 
seems  to  have  been  in  the  house  in  Spitalfields  occupied  by 
the  Fosters  and  their  family,  where  her  son  Urban  was  also 
a  lodger.  Her  eldest  son,  Caleb  Clarke,  had  emigrated  to 
Madras  long  ago,  had  married  there,  and  had  children  before 
his  death  in  1719.  She  remembered  that  dead  son  well,  and 
could  think  vaguely  of  her  grandchildren  in  India  whom  that 
son  had.  left ;  but  the  home  of  her  immediate  interests  and 
anxieties  was  in  the  little  weaving  world  of  Spitalfields. 

Even  in  this  little  weaving  world  Mrs.  Clarke  had  been 
always  pursued  by  some  recollection  that  she  was  Milton's 
youngest  daughter,  and  for  some  years  before  her  death,  in 
her  old  age  and  widowhood,  she  had  been  publicly  redis- 
covered and  made  a  celebrity  on  that  account.  "  I  was  in 
London,"  says  Voltaire,  "  when  it  became  known  that  a 
daughter  of  blind  Milton  was  still  alive,  old  and  in  poverty, 
and  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  she  was  rich."  This  would 
make  the  excitement  about  her  a  sudden  thing,  and  refer  it 
to  the  year  1726  or  to  the  beginning  of  1727,  the  year  of 
her  death.  But  it  is  certain  that  for  at  least  seven  or  eight 
years  before  that  date  she  had  been  an  object  of  considerable 
interest  and  curiosity  to  eminent  persons  in  London.  Addison 
died  on  the  17th  of  June  1719  ;  and  the  credit  of  first  inquir- 
ing after  Milton's  daughter,  or  at  least  of  calling  attention  to 
her  circumstances,  seems  to  belong  to  him.  Hearing  that 
there  was  such  a  person  living  in  Spitalfields,  he  sent  for  her, 
asking  her  to  bring  with  her  any  papers  or  other  evidences 
that  could  prove  her  Milton  birth.  When  she  came  into  his 
presence,  with  or  without  papers,  and  was  about  to  explain 
herself,  "  Madam,"  he  said,  "  you  need  no  other  voucher  ;  your 
face  is  a  sufficient  testimonial  whose  daughter  you  are."  The 
good  Addison  then  conversed  with  her,  said  he  hoped  he  might 
be  able  to  procure  a  small  annual  pension  for  her,  and  gave  her 
some  guineas  from  himself.  Addison's  death  prevented  the 
proposal  of  a  pension  from  taking  effect ;  but  from  that  time 
Mrs.  Clarke  was  very  well  known,  and  visits  to  her  for  her 
father's  sake  were  not  unusual.  The  engraver,  George  Vertue, 
visited  her  on  Thursday  the  10th  of  August   1721,   for  the 


MRS.    DEBORAH   CLARKE.  753 

purpose  of  taking  her  advice  as  to  the  authenticity  of  a 
picture  of  Milton  that  had  been  put  into  his  hands  to  be 
engraved.  He  carried  this  picture  with  him,  and  also  two 
or  three  different  prints  of  Milton  s  portrait  as  already  en- 
graved, i.  e.  from  or  after  the  Faithorne  crayon-drawing  of 
1670.  She  rejected  the  picture  which  Vertue  had  brought, 
as  being  dark-complexioned  and  dark-haired,  and  therefore 
quite  unlike  her  father ;  but  she  immediately  recognised  the 
likeness  in  the  prints,  explaining  that,  having  been  in  Ireland 
some  time  before  her  father's  death,  she  had  not  been  aware 
of  any  such  portrait  of  him  in  his  later  life,  and  knew  of  no 
other  pictures  of  him  than  the  boy-portrait  and  the  student- 
portrait  which  her  step-mother  then  had  in  Cheshire.  These 
facts  are  from  a  letter  of  Vertue's  own,  dated  Aug.  12,  1721  ; 
but  either  that  letter  omits  some  of  the  particulars,  or  there 
must  have  been  a  subsequent  experiment  of  Mrs.  Clarke's  dis- 
crimination in  the  matter  of  portraits  of  her  father.  The  sight 
of  one  portrait  of  her  father,  we  are  told,  greatly  moved  her. 
Richardson,  who  was  then  the  possessor  of  that  portrait,  but 
who  expressly  tells  us  that  an  accident  prevented  him  from 
seeing  Mrs.  Clarke  himself,  is  our  authority  for  this  interest- 
ing addition.  "  The  picture  in  crayons  I  have  of  him,"  says 
Richardson,  "  was  shown  her  after  several  others,  or  which 
"  were  pretended  to  be  his.  When  those  were  shown,  and 
"  she  was  asked  if  she  could  recollect  if  she  had  ever  seen  such 
"  a  face,  No,  No  ;  but,  when  this  was  produced,  in  a  transport, 
"  'Tis  my father ;  'Tis  my  dear  father,  I  see  him,  'tis  him,  and  then 
"  she  put  her  hands  to  several  parts  of  her  face,  'Tis  the  very 
"  man  !  here,  here  !  "  All  who  saw  Mrs.  Clarke  observed  this 
tone  of  reverence  and  fondness  in  her  reminiscences  of  her 
father,  though  there  seems  to  have  been  some  natural  aspe- 
rity in  her  references  to  her  step-mother,  the  old  lady  at  Nant- 
wich.  One  of  her  visitors  was  Professor  Ward,  of  Gresham 
College ;  and  to  him  she  confirmed  the  accounts  given  by 
Aubrey  and  Phillips  of  her  father's  domestic  methods  with 
herself  and  her  two  sisters.  Their  father  in  his  blindness  had 
employed  them  all  in  reading  to  him  "in  eight  languages  " 
which  they  did  not  themselves  understand,  his  frequent  joke  in 
vol.  vi.  3  c 


754  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

their  hearing-,  when  there  was  remark  on  that  anomaly,  being 
that  "one  tongue  was  enough  for  a  woman."  To  test  her 
memory  of  her  readings,  Professor  Ward  asked  her  whether 
she  could  repeat  anything  from  Homer  and  Ovid,  two  authors 
she  mentioned  as  having  been  often  in  request.  "  At  my 
desire,"  he  says,  "  she  repeated  a  considerable  number  of  verses 
from  the  beginning  of  both  these  poets  with  great  readiness." 
Some  one  else  seems  to  have  tested  her  in  Euripides,  with 
like  effect.  She  spoke  to  Mr.  Ward  with  much  gratitude  of 
Addison's  kindness  to  her,  and  altogether  she  appeared  to  Mr. 
Ward  "  to  be  a  woman  of  good  sense  and  a  genteel  behaviour, 
and  to  bear  the  inconveniences  of  a  low  fortune  with  decency 
anl  prudence."  His  visit  to  her  would  therefore  seem  to 
have  been  before  that  burst  of  bounty  of  which  Voltaire 
speaks,  and  the  date  of  which  may  be  fixed  by  the  appearance 
of  an  article  on  her  case,  and  an  appeal  in  her  behalf,  in  Mist's 
Weekly  Journal  of  April  29,  1727.  That  there  was  then,  or 
about  that  time,  some  such  burst  of  bounty  is  proved  by 
Richardson's  words  in  1734.  "  She  that  died  a  few  years 
"  since,  and  was  so  much  spoke  of  and  visited,  and  so  nobly 
"  relieved  for  his  sake,"  Richardson  then  wrote  of  Milton's 
daughter ;  and  he  repeats  the  word  "  relieved  "  emphatically 
in  two  other  passages,  as  if  a  fund  had  been  raised  which 
satisfied  even  his  notion  of  what  was  fitting.  He  had  the 
satisfaction,  he  modestly  hints,  of  contributing  to  the  fund 
himself.  Another  contributor  must  have  been  the  Princess 
Caroline  of  Wales,  then  about  to  become  Queen  Caroline  by  the 
accession  of  her  husband  to  the  throne  as  George  II.,  if  indeed 
the  fifty  guineas  which  that  liberal-minded  princess  is  known 
to  have  sent  to  Milton's  daughter  had  not  already  been  sent 
independently.  And  so,  not  in  utter  neglect,  but  in  some 
comfort  and  honour  at  last,  came  the  sunset  of  life  in  Spital- 
fields  for  our  poor  motherless,  misguided,  but  never  unlikeable 
little  Deborah  of  Petty  France  and  Jewin  Street,  more  than 
sixty  years  ago  K 

1  Vertue's  Letter  of  Aug.  12, 1721,  in  xcvi,  and  xcix  ;  Birch's  Life  of  Milton 

Add.  MS  5016*  in  British  Museum  (see  (1753),   p.   lxxvi ;   Note  of  Mr.   J.    F. 

ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  277,  footnote,  where  it  is  Marsh  in  his  Milton  Papers,  pp.  29 — 30  ; 

quoted) ;  Eichardson,  pp.  xxxii,  xxxvi,  Todd's  Life,  I.  148 — 149  (mainly  quota- 


MILTON  S   GRANDSON,    CALEB   CLARKE. 


755 


Caleb    Clarke,    Deborah's  eldest    son    and  Milton's    eldest 
grandson,   had   gone   out  to  Madras,  then  better  known  as 


tion  from  Warton)  ;  Letter  of  Voltaire 
as  quoted  in  Mitford's  Life  of  Milton 
(1851),  p.  cxxxix,  footnote. — That  there 
was  a  second  visit  to  Mrs.  Clarke  to 
consult  her  about  portraits  of  her  father, 
and  tli at  it  was  in  this  second  visit  that 
she  testified  so  strongly  to  one  "picture 
in  crayons "  that  was  shown  her,  is 
suggested  by  a  passage  in  the  Memoirs 
of  Thomas  Hollis  (p.  620),  where  it  is 
said  that  "about  the  year  1725"  Mr. 
George  Vertue  found  her  "  lodged  in  a 
mean  little  street  near  Moorfields,"  where 
she  then  "kept  a  school  for  children 
for  her  support,"  and  where  the  result 
is  stated  to  have  been  just  such  a 
transport  of  excitement  over  one  "  draw- 
ing in  crayons  "  as  that  which  Richard- 
son reports.  Thus,  if  there  were  two 
separate  experiments  of  her  discern- 
ment in  the  matter  of  her  father's  por- 
traits, one  in  1721,  as  Vertue  himself 
records,  and  another  about  four  years 
later,  it  was  still  Vertue,  according  to 
this  account,  that  was  the  experimenter 
in  the  second  case.  The  experiment, 
whether  in  one  visit  or  in  two,  is  of 
much  importance  in  connexion  with  the 
subject  of  the  portraits  of  Milton  ;  and 
this  may  be  the  place  for  some  in- 
formation on  that  subject,  additional  to 
what  has  been  already  given  in  Vol.  I., 
p.  50  and  footnote,  and  footnote  to  pp. 
277—278. — The  two  portraits  there  dis- 
cussed were  the  two  that  remained  in 
possession  of  Milton's  widow  till  her 
death  at  Nantwich  in  1727  :  viz.  the 
boy-portrait  and  the  student-portrait. 
About  the  authenticity  of  these  there 
is  no  doubt  whatever.  But  they  are 
juvenile  portraits;  and  the  question  now 
is  as  to  portraits  of  Milton  in  more  ad- 
vanced life.— (1)  Absolutely  and  indu- 
bitably authentic  is  the  Faithorne  of 
1670,  drawn  from  the  life  in  Milton's 
sixty-second  year,  and  engraved,  with 
his  own  sanction,  for  the  first  edition  of 
his  History  of  Britain.  See  ante,  pp. 
647 — 649.  Faithorne's  original  crayon- 
drawing  of  this  portrait  was  certainly 
in  existence,  in  possession  of  the  Tonson 
publishing  family,  as  late  as  1760,  when 
an  etching  from  it  was  made  by  Cipriani 
for  the  Milton  enthusiast  Mr.  Thomas 
Hollis.  See  Memoirs  of  Hollis,  p.  529, 
where  a  copy  of  the  etching  is  given, 
and  p.  620,  where  the  original  is  ex- 
pressly described  as  "a  drawing  in 
crayons  by  William  Faithorne,  now  in 
the  hands  of  Messrs.  Tonson,  booksellers, 
inLondon."  This  crayon-drawing  having 


now  disappeared,  however,  and  Cipri- 
ani's etching  from  it  being  of  little 
worth,  the  only  true  remaining  Faithorne 
is  Faithorne's  own  engraving  from  the 
drawing,  as  published  in  1670.  All  in 
all,  for  certainty  and  impressiveness,  I 
prefer  this  to  any  other  portrait  of 
Milton.  It  has  been  repeatedly  repro- 
duced, more  or  less  truthfully,  and  is 
therefore  tolerably  familiar.  The  por- 
trait prefixed  to  the  present  volume  is 
a  careful  reduction  from  it  by  the  late 
Mr.  Jeens ;  but  I  would  also  recom- 
mend a  very  fine  and  striking  enlarge- 
ment of  it  done  recently  by  Mr.  \V.  J. 
Alais  for  Dr.  Grosart,  and  issued  by 
Dr.  Grosart  as  a  companion  to  a  portrait 
of  Spenser  engraved  for  him  by  the 
same  artist.  (2)  A  number  of  the  en- 
graved portraits  of  Milton  from  1734  to 
the  present  time,  while  presenting  un- 
mistakeably  the  same  Milton  face  as 
the  Faithorne,  differ  from  the  true 
Faithorne  of  1670  in  having  the  lace 
posed  to  the  left  instead  of  to  the  right, 
and  also  in  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
collar  and  in  the  folds  of  the  costume. 
These,  it  seems  now  to  have  been 
ascertained,  have  all  been  derived  from 
that  "picture  in  crayons"  which  was 
in  possession  of  Richardson  in  1734,  and 
which,  as  he  tells  us,  had  been  shown 
to  Mrs.  Clarke  and  verified  by  her  so 
remarkably.  After  Richardson's  death 
in  1745,  this  crayon-drawing  was  ac- 
quired by  Jacob  Tonson,  tertius,  the 
last  of  the  Tonson  publishing  family ; 
who  must  thus  have  had  in  his  posses- 
sion, till  his  death  in  1767,  two  crayon- 
drawings  of  Milton, — the  Faithorne  and 
this.  Most  of  the  heir-looms  of  the 
Tonson  family  descended  to  their  rela- 
tives, the  Bakers  of  Bay fordbury,  Herts ; 
but,  only  the  Richardson  crayon-draw- 
ing having  been  preserved  in  this  family, 
confusion  has  arisen.  It  had  been  for- 
gotten that  there  were  two  drawings, 
and  the  preserved  one  has  been  repro- 
duced and  referred  to  for  eighty  years 
or  more  as  the  original  Faithorne.  The 
mistake  had  just  been  pointed  out  by 
Mr.  J.  Fitchett  Marsh  in  his  learned 
tract  of  1860  on  the  engraved  portraits 
of  Milton  when  the  late  Mr.  Leigh 
Sotheby  threw  new  light  on  the  sub- 
ject by  a  reproduction  of  the  preserved 
drawing  far  more  exact  and  effective 
than  any  of  the  previous  derivatives 
from  it.  Prefixed  to  his  sumptuous 
volume  of  Milton  Bamblings,  published 
in  1861,  appeared  a  photograph  with 


3C3 


756 


LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 


Fort  George,  when  lie  was  a  very  young"  man.     He  is  found 
there  as  a  married  man  in  1703,  his  wife's  Christian  name 


this  inscription,  "  This  portrait  is  taken 
from,  the  drawing  in  crayons  formerly 
in  2)ossession  of  J.  Richardson,  sen.,  and 
Jacob    Tonson,   .now    the    property  of 
William  Baker,  Esq ,  of  Bayfordbury, 
Herts,  by  whose  kind  permission  it  is 
photographed."     To  my  mind  the  most 
remarkable  thing  about  this  beautiful 
photograph    is    the    extraordinary   re- 
semblance of  the  face  altogether  to  that 
in  the   Faithorne.     Though   there   are 
the  differences  of  position  and  costume 
already    mentioned,    and    though    the 
photograph  conveys  a  somewhat  softer 
look,  less  worn  and  aged  in  its  sadness, 
the  features  are,  in  every  point,  wonder- 
fully the  same.     If  the  preserved  draw- 
ing at  Bayfordbury  was  an  independent 
original   from  the  life,  it  corroborates 
the    Faithorne    signally,   and    receives 
corroboration   in   return.     But   is   the 
drawing  at  Bayfordbury  an  independent 
original  ?    Granted   that   it   is,  as  Mr. 
Leigh    Sotheby   assured    himself,    the 
actual    "picture    in    crayons"    which 
Richardson   owned   in  1734,   and  not, 
as  Mr.  Marsh  was  inclined  to  think  in 
I860,    a    mere    derivative    which    the 
Tonsons  had  caused  to  be  made  about 
1758,  we  have  still  to  inquire  as  to  its 
origin.   "  A  picture  which  I  have  reason 
to  believe  he  sate  for  not  long  before 
his  death  "  are  Richardson's  somewhat 
vague  words  about  it  in  1734.   Mr.  Leigh 
Sotheby,  from  his  careful   inspections 
of  the  drawing,  was  "  led  to  consider 
whether  it  could  have  been  an  earlier 
drawing  by  Faithorne,  from  which,  when 
he  made  the  engraving  in  1670,  he  took 
another  copy  for  that  purpose,  altering 
the  form  of  the  dress,"  &e.     Were  this 
hypothesis    correct,   the  two  drawings 
once  in  possession  of  the  Tonsons  must 
have  been  both  Faithornes  ;   and  it  is 
at  least   curious,  though   not  very  ex- 
plicable, that  in  the  version  given  in 
the    Hollis   Memoirs    of  the    story   of 
Vertue's  visit  to  Mrs.  Clarke   "about 
the  year  1725,"  it  is  the  now  missing 
Faithorne    drawing,   and  not  the   pre- 
served  drawing  now   at   Bayfordbury, 
that    is    credited    with    such    instant- 
effects    on   Mrs.  Clarke.     "When    she 
perceived  the  drawing,"  say  the  Hollis 
Memoirs,  p.  620,"  she  cried  out, '  0  Lord! 
that  is  the  picture  of  my  father :  how 
came  you   by  it  ? '    and,  stroaking  the 
hair  of  his    forehead,  added,  'Just  so 
m,y  father  wore    his  hair.' "     If    the 
Richardson    cannot    be   thus    resolved 
into  identity  with  the  Faithorne  on  the 


supposition  of  two  Faithornes,  may  it 
not  have  been  an  early  derivative  from 
the  Faithorne  by  an  artist  who  kept  to 
the  face  of  the  original,  but  altered  the 
pose  and  the  costume  ?  (3)  One  hears  of 
a  third  drawing  as  possibly  an  original : 
viz.  one   by  Robert  White,   a   London 
line  and  mezzotint  engraver,  who  also 
"drew  portraits  in  black  chalk,"  and 
who,  having   been   born    in  1645,  was 
considerably    Faithorne's    junior,    and 
about  twenty-nine  years  of  age  when 
Milton  died.     The  sole  evidence,  how- 
ever, for  the  existence  of  such  an  original 
is,  I  believe,  a  rare  "  folio  mezzotint " 
of  Milton,  inscribed  "  R.  White  ad  vivum 
delin.  J.  Simon  fecit."   It  bears  no  date, 
but  must  have  been  executed  between 
1704,    when  White  himself   died,   and 
1753,  when    Simon,    the    engraver    of 
White's  supposed  original,  died.     The 
probable  date   may    be    between  1730 
and   1740.     But   why,  if  White   drew 
Milton  from  the  life  some  time  before 
1674,   did  he    leave   his   drawing   un- 
engraved  by  himself;   and  why,  espe- 
cially, does  the  portrait  of  Milton  which 
White  did  engrave, — that  for  the  Somers 
or  subscription  folio  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost  published  by  the  first  Jacob  Ton- 
son  in  1688, — bear  only  the  words  "  B. 
White,  sculp.,"  with  no  hint  of  the  en- 
graver's  previous  ad  vivum  drawing  ? 
Coupling  this  difficulty  with  the  fact, 
vouched   by  Mr.  Leigh   Sotheby,  that 
"there   is   most   undoubtedly   a  great 
similarity  between  the   design  of  the 
Richardson  and  White  portraits,"  I  am 
disposed    to    doubt    the    independent 
originality  of  any  portrait  by  White. — 
On  the  whole,  without  concluding  posi- 
tively that  Milton  in  his  later  life  sat 
to  no  other  artist  than  Faithorne,  we 
shall  be  safe  in  making  the  Faithorne 
of  1670  the  standard  by  which  to  judge 
of  all  professed  portraits  of  the  veteran 
Milton.     Several    oil-portraits   of  him, 
extant  in  various  places,  of  small  merit 
as  pictures,  recommend  themselves  as 
obvious  derivatives  from  the  Faithorne 
or  the  Richardson  ;  but  others  must  be 
rejected.     Most   of  the  engraved  por- 
traits being  also,  as  we  have  said,  deri- 
vatives   from   the     Faithorne    or    the 
Richardson,  though  with  more  or  less 
of  phantasy  and  variation,  the  general 
idea  of  the  Milton  face  which  they  have 
fixed   in   the   English   mind    is    sound 
enough.    In  not  a  few  of  them,  how- 
ever,  one    traces    a   specific    influence 
from  an  alleged  bust  of  Milton  taken 


milton's  grandson,  caleb  clarke. 


757 


being  Mary,   but  her  surname  unknown.     They   had  three 
children,    commemorated    in    the    Parish    Register  of    Fort 


from  the  life  about  1654,  when  he  was  six- 
teen years  younger  than  intheFaitliorne. 
This  bust,  the  face  of  which  is  supposed 
to  be  a  unique  plaster  cast  from  the 
original  mould,  while  the  hair  and  the 
rest  of  the  head  have  been  added  in 
modelling,  was  long  in  the  possession 
of  the  engraver  Vertue  ;  who  "believed 
it  was  doue  by  one  Pierce,  a  sculptor 
of  good  reputation  in  those  times,  the 
same  who  made  the  bust  in  marble  of 
Sir  Christopher  Wren  which  is  in  the 
Bodleian  library."  An  engraving  after 
it  by  Vertue  himself  was  prefixed  to 
Birch's  edition  of  Milton's  Prose  Works 
in  1753.  On  Vertue's  death  in  1756  the 
bust  was  purchased  by  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  for  £9  12s. ;  Sir  Joshua  after- 
wards parted  with  it,  for  <£12,  to  Mr. 
Thomas  Hollis,  who  had  it  engraved 
again  twice  by  Cipriani  (Hollis  Memoirs, 
p.  3S3  and  p.  513) ;  and,  from  among 
Mr.  Hollis's  effects,  it  passed  at  length, 
by  gift,  to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
— where  it  now  is.  A  photograph  from 
it,  giving  a  more  exact  idea  of  its  look 
than  the  engravings  by  Vertue  and 
Cipriani, appearedin  Mr.  LeighSotheby's 
Milton  Rumblings  in  1861  ;  and  a  still 
more  correct  copy  of  it,  with  an  ac- 
companying account  and  criticism,  was 
given  a  year  or  two  ago  in  Scribner's 
Illustrated  Magazine.  The  head  in  the 
bust  is  certainly  a  noble  one,  very 
handsome  and  stately,  and  yet  almost 
Cromwellian  in  its  expression  of  bold 
courage  and  magnanimity ;  and,  though 
the  pedigree  of  the  relic  is  far  from 
perfect,  and  one  has  some  difficulty  in 
imagining  Milton  submitting  to  a  plaster 
cast  from  his  face  in  the  first  years  of 
his  blindness,  yet  the  opinion  of  such 
experts  as  Vertue,  and  the  sensation  one 
has  that  the  manly  countenance  here 
represented  at  the  age  of  about  forty-six- 
is  not  irreconcileable  with  the  Faithorne 
of  Milton  sixteen  years  later,  lend  a 
probability  to  the  conjecture  that  this 
may  be  a  genuine  bust  of  Milton  in 
the  lime  of  his  Latin  Secretaryship  and 
European  celebrity  as  the  conqueror  of 
Salmasius.  At  all  events,  an  influence 
from  this  bust,  through  the  engravings 
from  it  in  the  last  century,  may  be 
detected  in  a  <jood  many  of  the  engraved 
portraits  of  Milton,  from  Vertue's  own 
downwards.  Better,  I  think,  leave  the 
bust  by  itself,  or  engrave  from  it 
avowedly  and  separately,  and  adhere, 
for  the  sexagenarian  Milton,  strictly  to 
the   Faithorne  and  the  Richardson. — 


One  professed  portrait  of  Milton,  which 
has  attained  some  celebrity,  must  be 
absolutely  rejected.  It  is  the  supposed 
miniature  of  him,  at  the  age  of  between 
forty-five  and  fifty,  by  Samuel  Coop  ;r. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  having  purchased 
this  miniature  from  a  dealer,  became  so 
fond  of  it,  so  sure  that  it  was  Milton, 
that  he  caused  it  to  be  engraved,  and 
published  in  beautiful  form,  by  Miss 
Caroline  Watson,  in  1786.  It  is  "doubt- 
less a  genuine  Cooper,  and  a  very  fine 
miniature  of  some  one  ;  but  it  is  cer- 
tainly, conspicuously,  not  Milton.  It 
is  utterly  irreconcileable  with  the 
Faithorne,  the  Richardson,  or  the  bust, 
— a  wholly  different  face,  which  some 
have  thought  might  be  Seidell's.  More- 
over, the  pedigree  breaks  down  hope- 
lessly. For  a  skirmish  on  the  subject, 
in  Sir  Joshua's  last  years,  between  him 
and  the  Scottish  judge,  Lord  Hailes, 
see  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  May,  July, 
and  October  1791.  Lord  Hailes  pointed 
out  that  the  manuscript  placard  on  the 
back  of  the  picture,  on  the  faith  of 
which  Sir  Joshua  had  bought  it,  was 
a  clot  of  historical  incongruities  and 
absurdities, — a  mere  dealer's  concoction 
to  sell  the  picture  as  a  Milton  ;  and 
Sir  Joshua  could  answer  but  lamely. 
But  the  external  evidence  against  was 
stronger  than  even  Lord  Hailes  could 
then  know.  "This  picture  belong'd  to 
Deborah  Milton,"  was  the  main  state- 
ment of  the  placard,  before  it  went  on 
to  tell,  in  that  jumble  of  impossible 
datings  which  Lord  Hailes  exposed,  how 
it  had  passed  from  her  into  the.  family 
of  Sir  William  Daveuant,  and  had  been 
competed  for  by  many  persons  of  dis- 
tinction, including  Lord  Dorset,  Dryden, 
and  Sir  John  Denham.  Now,  not  only 
did  Deborah  Milton  never  possess  a 
picture  of  her  father,  but  one  of  her 
definite  pieces  of  information  to  Vertue, 
when  he  called  on  her  on  the  10th  of 
August  1721,  was  that  till  that  moment 
she  was  unaware  of  the  existence  of 
any  picture  of  her  father  besides  the 
schoolboy  picture  and  the  student  pic- 
ture which  her  step-mother,  Milton's 
widow,  then  had  with  her  at  Nantwich. 
Nay.  as  I  read  Vertue's  letter  describing 
the  interview  (see  ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  277), 
it  seems  possible  that  this  very  minia- 
ture founding  its  claim  to  be  Milton  on 
the  statement  that  it  had  belonged  to 
his  daughter  was  the  actual  picture 
which  Vertue  submitted  to  her  for 
verification  before  he  would  engrave  it, 


758  LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

George, — Abraham,  baptized  on  the  2nd  of  June  1703;  Mary, 
baptized  on  the  17th  of  March  1706,  and  buried  on  the  15th 
of  December  in  the  same  year  ;  Isaac,  baptized  on  the  13th  of 
February  1711.  It  is  at  least  a  coincidence  that,  during 
those  first  years  of  the  fortunes  or  misfortunes  of  Milton's 
grandson  in  Madras,  and  till  the  first  two  of  Milton's 
Madras  great-grandchildren  were  born,  the  Governor  of  the 
settlement  was  Addison's  elder  brother,  the  Hon.  Galston 
Addison.  He  died  in  1709  ;  and  it  was  under  another  go- 
vernorship that  Caleb  Clarke  rose  to  what  seems  to  have  been 
his  highest  position  in  life,  that  of  parish-clerk  of  Madras 
or  Fort  George.  He  was  in  this  post  in  1717 ;  and  the  same 
register  which  records  the  baptism  of  his  three  children  and 
the  burial  of  one  of  them  records  his  own  burial  on  the  26th 
of  October  1719.  He  cannot  then  have  been  more  than  forty- 
three  years  of  age.  His  eldest  son,  Abraham,  a  lad  of  sixteen, 
was  not  in  Madras  at  the  time,  having  gone  to  England  with 
"  Governor  Harrison."  But,  on  the  news  of  his  father's  death, 
he  returned  to  Madras  ;  in  September  1725  he  married  there 

an  Anna ;    and  the  baptism  of  a  child  of  theirs,  Mary 

Clarke,  is  registered  on  the  2nd  of  April  1727.  With  this 
registration  in  the  parish  books  of  Madras  all  trace  of  Milton's 
posterity  in  India  ceases.  We  do  not  know  whether  Abraham 
Clarke,  then  not  quite  four-and-twenty  years  of  age,  had  any 
other  children,  or  when  or  where  he  died ;  we  do  not  know 
what  had  become  of  his  younger  brother  Isaac,  who,  if  then 
alive,  was  but  a  boy,  or  whether,  if  then  alive,  he  married 
afterwards  or  remained  unmarried ;  we  do  not  know  what 
became  of  the  infant  Mary  Clarke.  Our  last  glimpse  is  that 
of  this  infant,  Milton's  indubitable  great-great-grandchild, 
born  in  Madras,  strange  to  say,  while  her  great-grandmother, 
Milton's  daughter,  was  still  alive  in  Spitalfields,  and  her 
step-great-great-grandmother,  Milton's  widow,  was  still  alive 
in  Nantwich.     The  rest  is  mere  oblivion,  with   thoughts  of 

and  which  she  at  once  rejected  as  quite  17S6,  where  the  complexion  and  colour 

unlike  her  father.     On  this  last  point,  of  the   hair  are    not   apparent.     Any- 

however,  I  would  not  be  too  sure,  know-  how,   the   portrait   ought   never  again 

ing  the   miniature   only  through  Miss  to  be  named  or  thought  of  as  one  of 

Watson's   fine    engraving    from    it   in  Milton. 


LAST  DESCENDANTS   OF   MILTON.  759 

the  jungle  fever,  and  of  the  long"  uncertainties  of  the 
struggle  of  whites  with  natives  and  of  whites  with  other 
whites  in  India  before  the  Presidencies  became  British  \ 

The  descent  from  Milton  through  Deborah's  eldest  son, 
Caleb  Clarke,  thus  coming  to  a  stop  in  India  precisely  in 
the  year  of  Deborah's  death,  attention  is  fastened  on  Caleb's 
brother  and  sister,  Urban  Clarke  and  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Foster, 
then  remaining  in  Spitalfields.  They  must  have  benefited 
by  the  fund  raised  for  their  mother,  but  the  benefit  was  not 
permanent.  The  silk-weaving  seems  to  have  been  given 
up,  or  to  have  become  precarious  and  intermittent,  before 
February  1737-8  ;  at  which  time  the  Fosters  are  found  keep- 
ing a  small  grocer's  or  chandler's  shop  in  Pelham  Street, 
Spitalfields,  with  Urban  Clarke  still  staying  with  them, 
There,  on  the  11th  of  that  month,  they  were  visited  by 
Mr.  Thomas  Birch,  then  writing  his  memoir  of  Milton  to 
be  prefixed  to  his  1738  edition  of  Milton's  Prose  Works. 
Mrs.  Foster  gave  him  some  information  about  her  mother, 
and  about  Milton,  derived  from  her  mother,  accurate  in 
the  main  points,  but  with  some  confusion  and  inaccuracy, 
and  with  nothing  of  novelty  after  what  we  already  know, 
except  that  she  had  heard  that  one  of  Milton's  losses  after 
the  Restoration  had  been  an  estate  of  <§£Q6Q  a  year,  reclaimed 
by  the  Dean  and  Chapter  of  Westminster.  From  Pelham 
Street,  Spitalfields,  the  Fosters  removed,  in  or  about  1742, 
to  Lower  Holloway,  between  Highgate  and  London  ;  where 
they  remained  for  about  seven  years,  still  apparently  keeping 
a  chandler's  shop,  and  where  Urban  Clarke,  who  had  accom- 
panied them,  died  in  their  house,  still  unmarried.  About 
the  beginning  of  1749  the  Fosters  transferred  themselves 
from  Holloway  to  a  small  chandler's  shop  in  Cock  Lane, 
Shoreditch.  Of  seven  children  that  had  been  born  to  them, 
three  sons  and  four  daughters  by  one  account,  five  sons  and 
two  daughters  by  another,  not  one  was  then  alive,  most 
having    died    long    ago,    and   all   without  issue,    if  not   all 

1  Edinburgh  Review  Article  of  Oct.  results  of  researches  about  the  Madras 

1815  on  Godwin's  Lives  of  the  PhiUipsea,  Clarkes  ;  Birch's  Life  of  Milton  (1753), 

containing  about  a  page  of  information  p.  lxxvi. 
(from  Sir  James  Mackintosh  ?)  as  to  the 


760         LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

unmarried.      The  childless  couple,    keeping-  their  chandler's 
shop  in  Cock  Lane,  received  a  visit  in  1749  from  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Thomas  Newton,  afterwards  Bishop  Newton,  then  at  press 
with    the    first   volume  of  his    edition    of  Milton.     To  him 
Mrs.  Foster,   whom  he   found  "weak  and  infirm,"   but  who 
struck  him  as  "  a  good,  plain,  sensible  woman,"  told  her  story 
over  again,   furnishing  nothing  new,  save  that  her  mother 
had  inherited   Milton's  weakness  of  the  eyes,  having   been 
obliged   to    use    spectacles    from    the   time   of  her  going  to 
Ireland,   and  that   she  herself  had  inherited   the  same,  and 
had    "not  been  able   to  read   a  chapter  in  the  Bible  these 
twenty  years."     One  hears  of  other  visits  ;  but  the  last  of  any 
importance  was  a  second  by  Birch  on  the  6th  of  January 
1749-50.     He  carried  her  five  guineas  from  a  Mr.  Yorke  ; 
and  it  was  on   this  occasion  that  Mrs.  Foster  showed  him 
her  grandmother's  Bible,  with  the  dates  of  the  births  of  her 
children  entered  on   the  blank  leaf  in    Milton's  own  hand. 
These,  as  we  know,  Birch  transcribed  (ante,  IV.  p.  335,  foot- 
note).    One  consequence   of  the   visits  of  Dr.  Newton   and 
Birch  was  a  public  effort  in  Mrs.  Foster's  behalf,  like  that  for 
her  mother  three-and-twenty  years  before.     It  took  the  shape 
of  a  performance  of  Comus  for  her  benefit  at  Drury  Lane  on 
the  5th  of  April  1750.     "  She  had  so  little  acquaintance  with 
diversion  or  gaiety,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  "that  she  did  not  know 
what  was  intended  when  a  benefit  was  offered  her."     Johnson 
bestirred  himself  vigorously  in  the  affair,  and  wrote  the  Pro- 
logue ;  Dr.  Newton  also  exerted  himself ;  and  so  did  others. 
"The  profits  of  the  night  were  only  ^130,"  we  are  told  by 
Dr.  Johnson.     In  reality,  the  receipts    at  the  theatre  were 
^147  14*.  6d,  leaving  but  j£67  Us.  6d.  of  profits  after  de- 
duction of  ^80  for  expenses ;  and  the  sum  was  made  up  to 
^130  for  Mrs.  Foster  by  contributions  from  various  persons. 
Of  this  sum,  Dr.  Johnson  tells  us,  ^100  was  placed  in  the 
funds,  "  after  some  debate  between  her  and  her  husband  in 
whose  name  it  should  be  entered  "  ;  and  the  rest,  he  adds, 
"  augmented  their  little  stock,  with  which  they  removed  to 
Islington."    Mrs.  Foster  lived  four  years  more.    "  On  Thursday 
"last,  May  9,  1754,"  says  a  contemporary  newspaper,  "died 


LAST   DESCENDANTS   OP   MILTON.  761 

"at  Islington,  in  the  66th  year  of  her  age,  after  a  long  and 
"  painful  illness,  which  she  sustained  with  Christian  fortitude 
"  and  patience,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Foster,  granddaughter  of  John 
"Milton."  With  her  Milton's  line  became  extinct,  unless 
any  of  the  Clarkes  still  lived  in  India.  Mrs.  Foster's  own 
account  to  Newton  in  1749  was  that  she  doubted  whether 
any  of  them  then  survived,  as  she  had  used  to  hear  from 
them  sometimes,  but  had  then  heard  nothing  of  them  for 
several  years  1. 


OTHEK    SURVIVING    RELATIVES    OF    MILTON,    AND    THEIR 
DESCENDANTS. 

Christopher  Milton  was  near  the  end  of  his  fifty-ninth  year 
when  his  brother  died.  His  practice  in  law,  to  which  he  had 
returned  after  the  First  Civil  War  in  1646,  burdened  with  the 
difficulties  of  his  previous  Royalist  delinquency,  had  never 
amounted  to  much.  "Chamber  practice  every  term  "  is  Phil- 
lips's description  of  it,  with  the  addition  that  "  he  came  to  no 
advancement  in  the  world  in  a  long  time,  except  some  small 
employ  in  the  town  of  Ipswich,"  and  that  he  did  not  take  this 
greatly  to  heart,  being  "  a  person  of  a  modest,  quiet  temper, 
preferring  justice  and  virtue  before  all  worldly  pleasure  and 
grandeur."  Through  the  rest  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 
there  was  no  great  change  in  his  fortunes.  He  was  still 
merely  Bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple  and  Deputy-Recorder 
of  Ipswich,  alternating  between  London  and  Ipswich,  but 
having  a  house  at  Ipswich  and  liking  to  be  there  as  much 
as  he  could.  The  reign  of  James  II.  brought  a  differ- 
ence. "  Wanting  a  set  of  judges  that  would  declare  his 
will  to  be  superior  to  our  legal  constitution,"  says  Toland, 
King  James  thought  Christopher  Milton  would  suit  for  one. 
It  was  an  additional  recommendation  that  he  was  by  this 
time  of  the  King's  own  religion,  a  professed  Roman  Catholic. 

1  Birch,  Life  of  Milton,  pp.  Ixxvi —  ton,  prefixed  to  his  edition  of  Paradise 

Ixxvii,  with  a  note  of  Birch  of  date  Jan.  Lost;  Johnson's   Life   of  Milton,  with 

6',  1749-50,  quoted  in  Hunter's  Milton  Cunningham's  notes;  newspaper  para- 

Notes  (p.  34)  from  Add.  MSS.  4244  in  graph   quoted  in  the   Ilullis  Memoirs 

British  Museum  :  Newton's  Life  of  Mil-  (p.  114). 


762         LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF  HIS  TIME. 

Accordingly,  having"  received  the  coif  at  a  call  of  sergeants 
on  the  21st  of  April  1686,  he  was  sworn  as  one  of  the  Barons 
of  the  Exchequer  on  the  24th  of  that  month,  and  knighted 
at  Whitehall  the  next  day.  On  the  18th  of  April  1687  he 
was  transferred  from  the  Exchequer  and  became  Chief  Justice 
of  the  Common  Pleas.  All  this,  according  to  Phillips,  was 
for  "  his  known  integrity  and  ability  in  the  law,"  while 
Toland's  character  of  him  is  that  "  he  was  of  a  very  supersti- 
tious nature  and  a  man  of  no  parts  or  ability."  One  inclines 
to  a  middle  opinion,  and  to  picture  Sir  Christopher  as  a  mild, 
gentlemanly  Roman  Catholic  judge,  of  no  particular  ability, 
who  would  not  purposely  or  daringly  invent  harm,  but  might 
do  a  great  deal  of  harm  by  compliance  with  what  was  ex- 
pected. His  term  of  judgeship,  however,  was  brief.  "  His 
"  years  and  indisposition  not  well  brooking  the  fatigue  of 
"  public  employment,"  says  Phillips,  "  he  continued  not  long 
"  in  either  of  his  stations,  but,  having  his  quietus  est,  retired 
"  to  a  country  life,  his  study,  and  devotion."  This  is  a 
euphemism  for  the  fact  that,  on  the  3rd  of  July  1688,  he  was 
dismissed.  As  the  Revolution  was  at  hand,  which  would  have 
dismissed  him  at  any  rate,  it  was  of  little  consequence.  His 
last  days  were  spent  in  retirement  in  a  mansion  called  the 
White  House  in  the  village  of  Rushmere,  close  to  Ipswich, 
where,  as  in  his  previous  house  in  Ipswich  itself,  he  is  said  to 
have  had  a  chapel  fitted  up  for  Roman  Catholic  worship. 
The  parish  registers  of  St.  Nicholas,  Ipswich,  bear  that  Sir 
Christopher  Milton  of  Rushmere  was  buried  in  the  church 
of  that  parish  on  the  22nd  of  March  1692-3.  He  had  lived 
eleven  years  longer  than  his  brother,  having  attained  the  age 
of  seventy-seven.  His  wife,  the  Thomasine  Webber,  of  London, 
whom  we  saw  married  to  him  in  1638,  before  he  and  she  went 
to  keep  house  for  his  old  father,  the  ex-scrivener,  at  Horton, 
during  Milton's  absence  on  his  Italian  tour,  had  predeceased 
him  and  been  buried  in  the  same  church  at  Ipswich,  without 
having  lived  long  enough  to  be  Lady  Milton  \ 

1  Phillips,  Toland,  Birch,  and  Todd  ;  Arms,    prefixed    to    Pickering's    1851 

Pedigree  of  Christopher  Milton  in  Harl.  edition   of  Milton's  Works  ;  and  ante, 

MS.  5802  fol.  196  ;  Milton  Pedigree  by  Vol.  I.  p.  685. 

Sir  Charles  Young,   Garter    King    at  i 


SIR   CHRISTOPHER   MILTON   AND   HIS   FAMILY.  763 

The  three  children  of  whom  we  had  to  take  note  as 
born  to  Christopher  Milton  and  his  wife  before  1642,  two  of 
them  at  Horton  and  one  at  Reading,  had  died  long  ago ; 
and  the  surviving  children  at  the  death  of  Sir  Christopher 
were  a  son,  Thomas,  and  three  daughters.  Thomas  Milton 
was  already  a  person  of  some  consequence.  Having  been 
taken  into  the  Crown  Office  in  Chancery  under  his  uncle 
Mr.  Thomas  Agar,  Deputy  Clerk  of  the  Crown,  he  had,  on 
Mr.  Agar's  death  in  1673,  succeeded  him  in  the  Deputy- 
Clerkship.  He  was  still  in  that  offiee  in  1694,  "  with  great 
reputation  and  ability,"  says  Phillips.  The  date  of  his  death 
has  not  been  ascertained.  By  his  wife,  Martha,  daughter 
of  Charles  Fleetwood  of  Northampton  (who  found  a  second 
husband  in  William  Coward,  M.D.,  of  London  and  Ipswich), 
he  left  one  daughter,  who  is  heard  of  in  1749  as  "  Mrs.  Milton 
of  Grosvenor  Street,"  a  maiden  lady,  housekeeper  to  Dr.  Seeker, 
and  who  died  July  26,  1769.  She  seems  to  have  been  the 
last  living  descendant  of  Sir  Christopher  Milton.  Of  her  three 
aunts  two,  Mary  and  Catherine,  had  remained  unmarried, 
and  had  lived  long  together  at  Highgate,  till,  one  of  them 
dying,  the  other  took  up  her  abode  with  the  Fosters,  at  their 
little  chandler's  house  and  shop  in  Holloway,  and  died  there 
at  a  great  age  some  time  after  1742.  The  other  aunt  had 
married  a  Mr.  Pendlebury,  a  clergyman,  and  nothing  more 
is  known  of  her.  The  descent  from  Christopher  Milton  seems 
to  have  stopped  about  the  same  time  as  that  from  his  brother  1. 

At  the  death  of  Milton,  his  elder  nephew  and  pupil, 
Edward  Phillips,  was  forty-four  years  of  age,  and  the  other, 
John  Phillips,  was  a  year  younger.  Of  their  careers  and 
characters  in  Milton's  life-time  we  have  had  to  take  account 
already.    It  is  necessary  only  to  sketch  their  remaining  lives. 

Edward  Phillips  retains  his  character  of  being  by  far  the 
more  likeable  and  respectable  of  the  two.  His  profession 
was  still  that  of  pedagogy  combined  with  hack-authorship. 

1  Ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  685  and  Vol.  II.  p.  Museum    (quoted   by   Hunter,   p.  34); 

489;  Phillips;  Birch's   Life   of  Milton  Milton   Pedigree,  as  in   last  note;  and 

(1753),  pp.  lxxvi— lxxvii,  and  additional  Addenda  to  Mittbrd's  Lite  of  Milton  in 

note    by  Birch  from    MS.   in   British  Pickering's  Milton  (p.  clxxxiv). 


764         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY  OF   HIS  TIME.' 

From  his  tutorship,  with  a  salary  of  about  ^20  a  year,  to 
the  young-  son  of  John  Evelyn  of  Sayes  Court,  near  Deptford, 
from  October  1663  to  February  1664-5,  he  had  gone  direct, 
as  we  saw,  to  a  similar  tutorship,  with  a  higher  salary,  in 
the  family  of  Philip,  fifth   Earl  of  Pembroke.     It  is  uncer- 
tain how  long  he  continued  in  this  tutorship,  which  must 
have  kept  him  a  good  deal  at  Wilton,  the  seat  of  the  Pem- 
brokes  in  Wiltshire;   but    he    is    mentioned   in   a    letter   of 
Evelyn's  as  still  at  Wilton  in  the  year  1667,  "  where  my  lord 
makes  use  of  him,"  says  Evelyn,  "  to  interpret  some  of  the 
Teutonic  Philosophy,  to  whose  mystic  theology  his  lordship, 
you  know,   is  much  addicted."     In  the  same  letter   Evelyn 
adds,   "As   to   Mr.   Phillips'  more  express   character,    he    is 
"  a  sober,  silent,  and  most  harmless  person,  a  little  versatile 
"  in  his  studies,  understanding   many   languages,    especially 
"  the   modern."     Phillips's    principal    pupil   at    Wilton    was 
Philip  Herbert,  one  of  the  younger  sons  of  the  Earl.    On  his 
father's  death  in  1669  this  young  man  became  heir-apparent 
to  the  earldom,  his  elder  half-brother  William  having  then 
succeeded  as  sixth  earl ;  in  July  1674  he  became  seventh  Earl 
of  Pembroke   himself,    by  the    death   of  this  elder    brother 
without  issue  ;  and  in   May  1675   he  married  Henrietta  de 
Querouaille,  sister  of  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  the  mistress 
of  Charles  II.     Phillips's  connexion  with  him  and  with  the 
Pembroke  family  may  be  supposed,  therefore,  to  have  ceased 
about  1670  or  1671.     We  do  not  encounter  him  again  dis- 
tinctly till  the  14th  of  September  1674,  or  two  months  before 
Milton's  death.     On  that  day  there  was  licensed  by  Roger 
LTEstrano-e,  and  in  1675,  a  month  or  two  after  Milton's  death, 
there  was  published  by  "  Charles  Smith,  at  the  Angel,  near 
the  Inner  Temple  Gate  in  Fleet  Street,"  a  little  book  called 
Theatrum.  Poetarutn,  which  is  remembered  now  as  one  of  the 
most  interesting  of  Phillips's  literary  attempts.    It  is  interest- 
ing on  its  own  account,  being  "  a  brief,  roving,  and  cursory 
account,"  as  Wood  well  calls  it,  of  the  poets  of  all  ages  and 
nations,  but  chiefly  of  the  English,  arranged  alphabetically, 
with  rapid  characters  and  criticisms  of  a  good  many  of  them, 
and  a  prefixed  Discourse  on  Poets  and  Poetry  in  general.     It 


LATER   LIFE   OF   EDWARD   PHILLIPS.  765 

was  one  of  the  first  books  of  that  kind  in  English  and  has 
been  a  basis  for  later  compilations.     It  is  farther  interesting1, 
however,  as  conveying-  opinions  about  poets  which  Phillips 
must  have  imbibed  from  Milton,   with  sometimes,  perhaps, 
as  in  the  sketches  of  Euripides,  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  Ben 
Jonson,  Drummond,  Waller,  Cowley,  and  Dryden,  a  phrase 
lent  by  Milton  or  recollected  from  his  talk.     The  Prefatory 
Discourse    opens    with    a  strain    of  expression    so    Miltonic, 
so  much  above  Phillips's  usual  range,  that  one  is  obliged  to 
fancy  either  that  Milton  actually  dictated  some  of  the  sen- 
tences, or  that  Phillips  had  Milton's  ideas  and  voice  in  his 
mind  and  was  trying  to  echo  them.     Less  interesting  than 
the  Theatrum  Poetarum,  but  creditable  to  Phillips's  industry, 
was  his  Supplement  to  the  Book  of  John  Speed,  called  the  Theatre 
of  the  Empire  of  Great  Britain,  published  in  1676,  and  con- 
sisting of  geographical  and  topographical  extensions  of  the 
previous   editions    of   Speed's   work,   originally   published  in 
1611.    This  must  have  been  a  bookseller's  commission,  as  was 
also  an  enlargement  of  his  Continuation  of  Baker's  Chronicle 
for  the  sixth  edition  of  that  popular  book  in  1674.     It  seems 
to  have  been  a  relief  to  Phillips  from  such  drudgery  when, 
in    1677,   he    received  another  appointment    of  the   tutorial 
or  secretarial  kind  in  a  family  of  distinction.     "  I  preferred 
Mr.  Phillips,  nephew  of  Milton."  Evelyn  writes  in  his  Diary 
under  date  Sept.  18  in  that  year,  "to  the  service  of  my  Lord 
Chamberlain,  who  wanted  a  scholar  to  read  to  and  entertain 
him  sometimes."     The  Lord  Chamberlain  so  mentioned  was 
still  the  same  Henry  Bennet,  Earl  of  Arlington,  of  whom  we 
have  heard  so  much  through  the  Clarendon  and  Cabal  Ad- 
ministrations,  and  whom  we  left  honourably  shelved  in  that 
dignity  in  1674,  when  his  real  power  was  gone  and  the  Pre- 
miership  of  Danby  had  begun.     Evelyn  had  just   been    on 
a  visit  of  three  weeks  to  this  noble  courtier  and  ex-statesman, 
now  apparently  a    Roman  Catholic  no  longer,  at  his  great 
place   of  Euston  in  Suffolk,   and  had  been   wondering  how, 
on  his  dilapidated  fortunes,  he  could  support  such  a  magni- 
ficent establishment,  with  its  vast  halls  and  numerous  apart- 
ments, its  picture-gallery,   its  bathrooms,   its   conservatories 


766         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  gardens,  its  cascades  and  canals  in  the  grounds,  its  stables 
and  outhouses,   the  one  hundred  domestic  servants  running 
about  on  the  premises,  and  the  thousand  red  and  fallow  deer 
twinkling  among  the  trees  in  the  nine  miles  of  park.     He 
could  not  account  for  it,  but  found  the  Earl  and  his  lady  quite 
at   ease,  and  most  hospitable  and  kind.     "  My  lord  himself 
"  is  given  to  no  expensive  vice  but  building,  and  to  have  all 
"  things  rich,  polite,  and  princely.    He  never  plays,  but  reads 
"  much,  having  the  Latin,  French,  and  Spanish  tongues  in 
"  perfection."     Evelyn's  words  would  lead  us  to  suppose  that 
Phillips's  duties  were  to  be  those  ouly  of  secretary  and  reader 
to  the  Earl ;  but  we  learn  otherwise  that  these  were  not  all. 
On  the  1st  of  August,  1672,  Arlington's  only  daughter  and 
heiress,  Isabella,  then  a  child  of  five  years  old,  had  been  mar- 
ried, "  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  officiating,  and  the  King 
and  all  the  grandees  being  present,"  to  Henry  Fitzroy,  the 
King's  second  natural  son  by  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  then 
a  boy  in  his  ninth  year,  created  Earl  of  Euston  that  same 
month,  and  Duke  of  Grafton  in  1675.     Till  the  very  young 
couple  should  be  old  enough  to  live  together,  Arlington  was 
retaining  his  daughter  under  his  charge ;  and  the  engagement 
of  Phillips  had  been  partly  for  the  sake  of  this  little  lady,  the 
Duchess  of  Grafton,  now  ten  years  of  age,   the  pet  of  her 
father  and  mother  at  Euston,  and  described  by  Evelyn  as  a 
"  charming  young  creature,"  worthy  of  the  greatest  prince  in 
Christendom.     She  needed  a  tutor  in  languages ;  and,  as  the 
Earl's  nephew,  Henry  Bennet,  was  also  one  of  the  household,  and 
needed  instruction,  Phillips,  whatever  his  other  services,  was 
a  convenient  tutor  for  both.     There  is  a  commemoration  of 
this  tutorship  in  a   dedication  to  the  young  Duchess  of  a 
fourth  and  enlarged  edition  of  Phillips's  English  Dictionary, 
The    World  of   Words,   published   in  1678.     But  the   tutor- 
ship, whether  at  Euston   or   elsewhere,    cannot  have   lasted 
beyond  November  1679.     On  the  6th  of  that  month  Evelyn, 
who  had  witnessed  the  marriage    of  the  little   Duchess  to 
the  little  Duke  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  seven  years 
before,  witnessed  their  re-marriage,  in  the  Earl  of  Arling- 
ton's lodgings  at  Whitehall,  by  the  Bishop  of  Rochester,  in 


LATEK   LIFE   OF   JOHN    PHILLIPS.  767 

the  presence  of  the  King",  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  and  a 
large  company,  the  bridegroom   being*  then  sixteen  years  of 
age  and  the  bride  twelve.     Phillips  must  have  been  then  once 
more  adrift,   at  the  age  of  nearly  fifty,  and   what  we  next 
hear  of  him  is  a  sad  descent  from  the  palatial  splendours  of 
Euston.    "  He  married  a  woman  with  several  children,  taught 
"  school  in  the  Strand  near  the  May-Pole,  lived  in  poor  con- 
"  dition   (tho'   a  good  master),  wrote  and  translated  several 
"  things  meerly  to  get  a  bare  lively  hood,  was  out  of  employment 
"  in  1684  and  1685/'     This  is  Anthony  Wood's  pithy  sum- 
mary ;  and  nothing  can  be  added,  except  a  list  of  the  "  several 
things  "  of  a  literary  kind  by  which  Phillips,  in  his  last  years, 
tried  to  eke  out  his  failing  pedagogy.     In  1679  appeared  the 
seventh  edition  of  Baker  s  Chronicle  with  his  revised  Continua- 
tion; in  1682  his  Tractatulus  cle  modo  formandi  voces  derivativas 
Lingua  Latino. ;  in  1684  his  eighth  and  last  edition  of  Bakers 
Chronicle,   his  Enchiridion  Linguae  Latince,    and  his  Speculum 
Lingua  Latincs, — these  two  last,  according  to  Wood,  being  "  all 
or  mostly"  taken  from  his  uncle  Milton's  papers  in  preparation 
for  a  Latin  Dictionary;  and  in  1685  a  Poem  on  the  Corona- 
tion of  his  Most  Sacred  Majesty  King  James  JL.  and  his  Boyal 
Consort.      There  may  have  been  other  things  anonymously; 
but  these,  with  a  translation  or  two  from  the  Greek  and  the 
French,  are  all  that  are  known  of  Phillips  in  his  later  years, 
till    1694,    when    he    published    his   English    translation    of 
Milton's  Letters  of  State,  with  the  valuable  prefixed  Memoir. 
That  was  a  good  and  affectionate  piece  of  service,  and  it  was 
Phillips's   last  in  the  world,   with  the  exception  of  a  fifth 
edition  of  his  World  of  Words  in  1696.     He  was  dead  before 
1698,  having  lived  to  the  age  of  about  sixty-seven.     Whether 
he  left  children  or  step-children  only  is  unknown  *. 

The  coarser,  though  perhaps  stronger,  John  Phillips  lived 
longer  than  Edward.  He  seems  to  have  contrived  at  last  to 
live    by   literary    hackwork    without   pedagogy.      His    chief 

1   Godwin's  Lives  of  the  Phillipses  ;  Peerage,  Dukes  of  Grafton  ;  also  a  letter 

Wood's  Ath.  IV.   760—769,  in  Bliss's  of  Evelyn's  (edit,  of  Diary  and  Corres- 

edition  of  1820 ;  Evelyn's  Diary,  under  pondence  in  1852,  Vol.  III.  pp.  196— 

dates  Aug.  1,  1672,  Aug.  28-Sept.  18,  198). 
1677,   and  Nov.   6,  1779;    De  Brett's 


768         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

productions  before  his  uncle's  death  had  been  his  Satyr  against 
Hypocrites   of  1655,   reprinted    in  1661   and  1671,    and   his 
Maronides,  or  Virgil  Travesty,  a  low  Hudibrastic  burlesque  of 
the  fifth  and  sixth  iEneids,  published  in  two  parts  in  1672 
and  1673.     As  these  were  in  some  demand,  there  were  later 
editions  of  each, — of  the  Maronides,  both  parts  together,  in 
1678,   and  of  the  Satyr  in  1680;    but  the  main  activity  of 
John  Phillips  from  the  date  of  Milton's  death  is  represented 
by  a  long  succession   of  new  publications  of  various   sorts, 
anonymous  or  with  his  name.     Of  these  the  more  important, 
as  far  as  to  the  death  of  Charles  II.,  were  the  following : — 
A  Continuation  of  Heath's  Chronicle,  in  1676;    translations  of 
the  French  romance  of  Pharamond  by  Calprenede  and  M.  de 
Scuderi's  romance  of  Almahide,  in  1677  ;  part  of  a  folio  trans- 
lation in  the  same  year  of  Taverniers   Voyages  in  the  East ; 
a  controversial  book  in  1680  called  Dr.  Oates' s  Narrative  of  the 
Popish  Plot  Vindicated ;  another  in  1681,  called  Character  of 
a  Popish  Successor,  professing  to  be  the  second  part  of  a  book 
under  that  title  by  Elkanah  Settle;  Speculum   Crape-Gown- 
orurn,  or  An   Old  Looking-glass  for  the   Young  Academicks,  in 
1882;  History  of  Ethiopia  from  the  Latin  of  Ludolphus,  in  the 
same  year ;  and  Treatises  in  Plutarch 's  Morals  from  the  Greek,  in 
1684.  To  the  reign  of  James  II.  belong  these,  among  others: — 
a  handsomely  printed  poem,  in  sixteen  pages  of  Pindarics,  To 
the  Sacred  Memory  of  the  late  most  serene  and  potent  monarch 
Charles  II.,  published  in  1685,  and  concluding  vast  eulogies  of 
Charles  with  a  prostration  before  James;  The  History  of  Don 
Quixote,  in  1687,  the  second  English  translation  of  the  great 
Spanish  novel,  and  a  work  of  "power  and  spirit,"  Godwin  ad- 
mits, though  debauching  the  original  by  incredible  interpola- 
tions of  slang  and  obscenity;  and  a  pamphlet  in  1688  against 
Marvell's  old  enemy,  Samuel  Parker,  now  bishop  of  Oxford. 
The  most  dangerous  part  of  Phillips's  Bohemian  career  through 
those  fourteen  years  had  been  his  connexion  from  1678  to  1681 
with  the  infamous  Titus  Oates.     Phillips,  it  has  been  proved, 
was  in  the  closest  intercourse  with  Oates ;   from  which  fact, 
as  Phillips,  a  man  of  "little  or  no  religion"   himself,  can 
hardly  have  been  a  dupe  in  the  Popish  Plot  business,  Godwin 


LATER   LIFE   OF  JOHN    PHILLIPS.  769 

thinks  we  may  better  infer  "  the  debasement  of  his  mind  and 
the  impurity  of  his  tastes"  than    even  from  his   writings. 
When    the    revenge   upon  Oates  and  his  associates  came  in 
the  reign  of  James,  Phillips  escaped  :  and  after  the  Revolution 
of  1688  he  conformed  his  politics  to  the  ordinary  Whiggism 
then    in    fashion.     His  main   dependence    from  1690    seems 
to   have   been  on    what  Wood   calls    his   Monthly  Accounts, 
a  political  periodical   containing  a  history  of  contemporary 
affairs  from   month   to  month,   chiefly,  but  not  exclusively, 
translated  from  a  French  journal  in  high  repute  published  in 
Holland.     These  Monthly  Accounts,  entitled    more  fully   The 
Present  State  of  Europe,  or  A  Historical  and  Political  Mercury, 
were  edited  regularly  by  Phillips,  from  August  1690  onwards, 
as  long  as  he  lived.     Additional  trifles  from  his  pen  in  prose 
and  verse  have  been  discovered  in  the  years  1693,  1694,  and 
1695 ;  in  which  last  year  Anthony  Wood,  then  dying,  leaves 
him   still  alive  in  the  world  with   this   farewell  character : 
"  A  man  of  very  loose  principles,  atheistical,  forsakes  his  wife 
"and  children,  makes  no  provision  for  them."    After  an  Elegy 
on  Queen  Mary  by  Phillips  in  1695,  poems  and  other  things 
of  his  are  found  in  1697  and  1700  ;    and  in  1703   he  sent 
forth,  with  his  initials  only,  under  the  title  of  The  English 
Fortune-Tellers,  a  thin  whimsical   quarto,   enabling   persons, 
"  for  harmless  mirth  and  recreation "  merely,  to   tell  their 
own  fortunes  by  means  of  astrological  diagrams,  a  table  of 
questions,  and  a  large  quantity  of  provided  verses.     In   the 
memoirs   of  the  London  bookseller  John  Dunton,  published 
in  1705,  John  Phillips  is  mentioned  as  still  alive,  "a  gentle- 
man  of  good    learning  and  well-born,"   with   the   addition, 
"  He  '11  write  you  a  design  off  in  a  very  little  time,  if  the 
"  gout  or  claret  don't  stop  him."     In  one  of  the  numbers  of 
the  Monthly  Mercury  there  is  an  apology  by  Phillips  himself 
for  the  deficiency  of  the  previous  number,  on  the  ground  that 
"  the  author  was  then   so  violently  afflicted  with  the  gout, 
"  both  in  hands  and  feet,  that  it  was  as  much  as  he  could  do 
"  to  continue  the  series."     The  last  known  thing  of  Phillips 
is  a  poem,  published  May  6,  1706,  with  the  title  The  Vision 
of  Mons.  Chamillarcl  concerning  the  Battle  of  Ramilies.     It  does 

VOL.  VI.  3  D 


770         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

not  bear  the  author's  name,  but  it  is  "  humbly  inscribed  "  on 
the  title-page  to  Lord  Somers  "  by  a  Nephew  of  the  late 
Mr.  John  Milton."  One  or  two  sulky  references  to  Milton, 
I  believe,  have  been  detected  in  the  preceding  series  of 
Phillips's  performances  since  Milton's  death  ;  but  here  Phillips 
reverts  to  the  relationship  openly.  His  career  of  Bohemianism 
seems  to  have  ended  in  or  about  that  year,  when  he  was 
seventy-five  years  of  age.    Of  his  children  we  know  nothing  K 

One  little  inquiry  more,  to  complete  this  posthumous 
Milton  genealogy.  The  two  Phillipses,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, were  the  only  surviving  children  of  Milton's  sister, 
Anne  Milton,  by  her  first  marriage.  But,  after  the  death 
of  her  first  husband,  Edward  Phillips  of  the  Crown  Office,  in 
1631,  this  only  remaining  sister  of  the  poet  and  of  Christopher 
Milton  had  married  that  first  husband's  friend  and  successor 
in  the  Crown  Office,  Thomas  Agar.  By  this  second  marriage, 
which  cannot  have  been  till  after  1633,  when  Agar's  first 
wife,  Mary  Rugeley,  was  still  alive,  the  issue  had  been  two 
daughters,  Mary  and  Ann  Agar,  half-sisters  to  the  Phillipses, 
and  nieces  of  the  poet  and  his  brother  (see  ante,  Vol.  II. 
pp.  98-101).  What  had  become  of  this  line,  the  Agar  line, 
of  the  general  Milton  descent  ? 

Though  the  two  Phillipses  had  been  resigned  almost  wholly 
to  Milton's  charge  from  their  early  boyhood,  there  is  no  need 
to  suppose  any  break  between  Milton  and  his  sister  during 
her  second  marriage,  or  that  there  was  not  much  more  of 
continued  communication  between  the  Miltons  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Agars  on  the  other,  from  that  date  forward, 
than  has  left  itself  recorded.  Mr.  Agar,  indeed,  had  been  a 
Royalist  through  the  great  struggle,  as  might  have  been 
expected  from  his  official  position  as  Deputy  Clerk  of  the 
Crown,  and  had  been  ejected  from  his  office  sometime  before 
the  establishment  of  the  Commonwealth.  Difference  of  politics 
about  that  time  may  have  occasioned  a  coolness  between  him 

1  Godwin's  Lives  of  the  Phillipses,  the  Stationers'  Books  under  date  April 
and  Wood's  Ath.  as  before.  I  find  the  18,  1676.  The  licencer  was  "  Henry- 
registration  of  Phillips's  Continuation  of  Oldenburgh,  Esq.,"  Milton's  friend,  who 
Heath's  Chronicle  from  1662  to  1675  in  licensed  occasionally  about  that  time. 


THE  AGAR  BRANCH  OF  THE  MILTONS.       771 

and  Milton,  but  not  necessarily  more  than  there  may  have 
been  between  Milton  and  his  Royalist  brother  Christopher  on 
the  same  ground ;  and,  at  all  events,  after  the  Commonwealth 
had  confirmed  itself  and  passed  into  the  Protectorate,  and  the 
Stuart  monarchy  had  begun  to  seem  a  thing-  of  the  past,  and 
Milton  was  a  man  of  influence  with  the  new  powers,  ani- 
mosities among-  the  Miltons  on  account  of  political  differences 
must  have  died  out  as  in  other  families,  and  more  easily  than 
in  most.  Milton  and  his  brother-in-law  Mr.  Agar,  the  ex- 
Deputy  Clerk  of  the  Crown,  may  have  been  very  good  friends 
during  the  years  immediately  before  the  Restoration,  when 
Milton  was  residing  in  Petty  France  as  the  blind  Foreign 
Secretary  for  Oliver  and  Richard.  When  the  Restoration  did 
unexpectedly  come,  Agar  may  have  been  one  of  those  who 
were  most  anxious  about  Milton's  fate,  and  most  relieved  by 
his  marvellous  escape.  For  Agar  himself  the  event  was 
heaven.  It  brought  back  distinction  and  prosperity.  He  was 
reinstated  in  his  important  and  valuable  office  as  Deputy  Clerk 
of  the  Crown ;  and,  if  it  were  necessary,  mentions  of  him  in 
his  official  capacity  might  easily  be  recovered,  I  doubt  not, 
from  the  State  papers  and  Parliamentary  records  of  Charles's 
reign  through  the  Clarendon  and  Cabal  administrations. 
Enough  for  us  here  to  pass  on  to  the  10th  of  June  1671. 
On  that  day,  "  being  in  good  health  of  body  and  of  perfect 
mind  and  memory,"  but  considering  "  the  approaching  cer- 
tainty "  of  his  departure,  and  the  propriety  of  disposing  of 
such  "  goods  and  chattels  "  as  "  with  much  industry  "  he  had 
"  scrambled  for  amongst  others  in  this  wicked  world,"  Mr. 
Agar,  styling  himself  "  Thomas  Agar,  of  London,  gentleman," 
made  his  will.  This  will  gives  us  a  very  clear  glimpse  of  the 
state  of  his  family  and  circumstances  at  that  time. 

Mr.  Agar's  second  wife,  Milton's  sister,  was  then  dead. 
The  date  of  her  death  is  unknown,  and  it  may  have  been  any 
time  between  1637  and  1671,  though  it  seems  probable  that 
it  was  nearer  the  latter  term  than  the  former.  Her  elder 
child,  Mary,  had  "  died  very  young,"  as  we  learn  inde- 
pendently from  Phillips.  Mr.  Agar's  only  child  by  his 
former  marriage  to  Mary  Rugeley  being  also  dead,  his  natural 

3D2 


772  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

heir  was  the  only  remaining-  daughter  of  the  second  marriage, 
Ann  Agar,  Milton's  niece  and  the  half-sister  of  the  two 
Phillipses.  She  was  no  longer  Ann  Agar,  however,  but  Ann 
Moore,  the  wife  of  a  David  Moore,  and  with  an  infant  son, 
Thomas  Moore.  There  was  also  a  nephew  and  namesake  of 
Mr.  Agar's,  in  a  grown  up  Thomas  Agar,  much  about  his 
uncle  and  much  regarded  by  him.  In  the  will,  accordingly, 
the  three  principal  legatees  are  Mr.  Agar's  daughter  Ann 
Moore,  his  infant  grandson  Thomas  Moore,  and  this  nephew 
Thomas  Agar.  But  very  kindly  mention  is  made  in  the  will 
of  Dr.  Luke  Rugeley,  Mr.  Agar's  brother-in-law  by  his  first 
wife,  and  also  of  one  of  the  two  Phillipses,  his  stepsons  by  his 
second  wife.  The  stepson  so  mentioned  is  Edward  Phillips ; 
and  from  the  absence  of  all  mention  of  the  other  stepson, 
John  Phillips,  one  infers  that  Mr.  Agar  had  long  ceased  to 
concern  himself  about  that  gentleman.  As  the  wording  of 
the  will  is  more  than  usually  characteristic,  the  main  parts 
may  be  given  textually  : — 

"...  And  first  I  give  and  bequeathe  unto  Edward  Phillipps,  my 
son-in-law,  £200,  to  be  laid  out  in  the  purchase  of  an  annuity  for 
his  life,  or  some  place  of  employment  for  his  better  subsistence, 
which  shall  seem  most  for  his  benefit ;  wherein  I  desire  my  dearly  and 
entirely  beloved  and  most  deserving  nephew  Mr.  Thomas  Agar,  whom 
I  declare,  nominate,  and  appoint  my  executor  of  this  my  last  will 
and  testament,  to  be  assistant  to  him,  my  said  son-in-law,  re- 
quiring and  enjoining  him,  my  said  son-in-law,  to  be  ordered  and 
governed  herein  by  him,  my  said  nephew,  who,  I  am  assured,  hath 
much  love  and  kindness  for  him  :  provided  that,  if  before  my 
decease  I  procure  the  King's  Majesty's  grant  of  my  office  of  en- 
grossing of  appeals  to  be  made  and  passed  under  the  great  seal 
of  England  to  him,  then  this  my  bequest  to  him  before-mentioned 
to  cease  and  be  utterly  void. — Item,  I  give  and  bequeathe  unto  my 
grandson  Thomas  Moore,  to  be  paid  him  by  my  executor  at  his 
full  age  of  one  and  twenty  years,  £500  of  lawful  English  money. — 
And  my  intent,  will,  and  meaning  is  that  one  full  moiety  of  such 
my  estate  as  shall  remain,  besides  debts,  burial  expenses,  and  what 
I  have  and  shall  bequeathe  by  this  my  last  Avill  otherwise,  upon 
a  clear  and  just  account  thereof,  to  be  made  by  my  executor 
within  one  year  next  after  my  decease,  shall  be  paid  and  disposed 
to  such  trustee  or  trustees  as  my  dear  daughter  Mrs.  Ann  Moore 
shall  direct  and  appoint,  to  remain  in  his  or  their  hands  for  the 
intents  and  purposes  following, — that  is  to  say,  for  her  sole  and 


THE   AGAR   BRANCH   OF   THE   MILTONS.  773 

separate  use,  notwithstanding  her  present  coverture  with  her  pre- 
sent or  any  other  husband,  wherein  her  said  husband  shall  not  any 
way  intermeddle  nor  have  to  do,  nor  any  other  with  whom  she 
shall  happen  to  intermarry.  [This  precaution  for  the  independent 
use  and  management  of  the  property  by  his  daughter,  to  the 
exclusion  of  interference  by  her  present  husband  Mr.  David  Moore, 
or  by  any  other  husband,  is  drawn  out  farther  at  great  length, 
and  with  much  studied  strictness  in  the  phraseology,  as  if  it  were  a 
point  on  which  Mr.  Agar  felt  himself  bound  to  be  careful.  Mrs. 
Moore  is  not  only  to  have  the  sole  use  and  management  of  the  pro- 
perty during  her  life,  huz  may  devise  it  by  will  as  she  chooses  after 
her  death ;  failing  which  settlement  of  it  by  her  will  and  appoint- 
ment, it  is  to  go  at  her  death  to  her  son  Thomas  Moore,  or, 
should  he  be  dead,  then  to  Mr.  Thomas  Agar,  the  executor  of  the 
present  will].  .  .  . — The  other  moiety  of  my  said  estate  I  do  hereby 
give  and  bequeathe  to  my  said  executor,  to  retain  to  his  own 
proj:>er  use  and  benefit. — Lastly,  I  may  not  forget  the  long-con- 
continued  love  and  kindness  of  my  dear  brother  Doctor  Kugeley, 
not  only  to  myself,  but  also  to  my  relations  :  to  whom  it  never 
was  nor  yet  is  in  my  power  to  make  a  due  and  suitable  return.  I 
desire  the  continuance  of  his  brotherly  kindness  in'  acceptance  of  a 
petty  legacy  from  me  of  twenty  pieces  of  broad  gold,  which  I 
hereby  bequeathe  to  him,  to  bestow  in  a  ring  or  any  other  thing 
which  may  be  best  to  his  liking  and  may  remind  him  of  his  poor 
brother  who  did  truly  love  and  honour  him  for  his  great  good- 
ness.— In  witness  whereof,"  &c. 

To  this  will  of  June  10,  1671  there  was  a  codicil,  dated 
Oct.  27,  1673,  somewhat  modifying  its  provisions.  Instead 
of  the  full  moiety  of  the  property  remaining  after  payment 
of  debts  and  other  legacies,  Mrs.  Moore  is  now  to  receive 
"the  sum  of  j£1000  and  no  more  in  money,"  together  with  the 
rents  and  profits  of  "  two  houses  in  London/'  all  Mr.  Agar's 
estate  and  interest  in  which  is  bequeathed  to  the  executor, 
Mr.  Thomas  Agar,  in  strict  "  trust  and  confidence  "  that  he 
will  pay  such  rents  and  profits  of  them  to  her  or  her  order 
only,  and  "not  unto  the  said  David  Moore,"  and  that,  failing 
any  will  of  hers,  he  will  pay  them  to  such  issue  of  hers  as 
shall  be  alive  at  her  decease,  payment  wholly  to  cease  should 
there  be  no  surviving  issue.  It  is  also  provided  that  the 
legacy  of  j£j500  to  the  grandson  Thomas  Moore  shall  lapse 
and  not  be  payable  to  any  representatives  of  his  if  he  should 
die  before  coming  of  age.  The  daughter's  husband,  Mr.  David 
Moore,  does  now  receive  something ;  but  it  is  only  ^20,  to 


774         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

be  paid  him  within  one  year  after  the  testator's  decease. 
The  legacy  of  ^200  to  Edward  Phillips  is  undisturbed  ;  and, 
for  the  rest,  the  nephew  Mr.  Thomas  Agar  is  constituted,  in 
the  amplest  manner,  executor,  administrator,  and  residuary 
legatee. 

Mr.  Agar  must  have  died  immediately  after  having  made 
this  codicil,  for  the  will  and  codicil  together  were  proved  by 
the  nephew  on  the  5th  of  November  1673.  Before  Milton's 
death,  in  the  following  November,  he  must  not  only  have  been 
aware,  therefore,  that  one  of  his  nephews,  Thomas  Milton, 
the  son  of  his  brother  Christopher,  had  succeeded  Mr.  Agar 
in  his  Deputy  Clerkship  in  the  Crown  Office,  but  must  also 
have  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  ^?200  of  Mr.  Agar's 
money  had  come  to  his  other  and  needier  nephew,  Edward 
Phillips.  It  must  have  come  very  acceptably,  for  it  came 
in  that  blank  of  Phillips's  life  which  we  have  noted  as  occur- 
ring between  his  tutorship  in  the  Pembroke  family  at  Wilton 
and  the  publication  of  his  Theatrum  Poetarum.  Mr.  Agar, 
regretting  the  precariousness  of  Phillips's  means  about  this 
time,  and  evidently  thinking  he  was  a  rather  shiftless  person, 
had  been  trying  to  secure  for  him  the  succession  to  one  of  his 
own  minor  offices  in  connexion  with  his  Clerkship,  but,  that 
failing,  had  left  him  enough  to  be  of  some  permanent  use 
to  him,  if  he  would  be  guided  by  the  good  sense  of  the 
younger  Agar  in  the  mode  of  its  investment  \ 

The  David  Moore  whom  Mr.  Agar's  one  surviving  daughter 
had  married,  and  in  whom  Mr.  Agar  had  shown  so  little 
confidence,  is  known  otherwise  as  David  Moore,  of  Sayes 
House,  Chertsey,  co.  Surrey,  Esq.,  a  country  gentleman  of 
some  means,  descended  from  a  Robert  Moore,  who  had  been 
Secretary  to  Queen  Ann  Boleyn.  He  died  on  the  12th  of 
January  1693-4,  aetat.  74,  and  was  buried  in  Chertsey  church. 
His  wife  Ann  Moore  was  then  still  alive,  but  renounced 
administration  of  his  effects  in  favour  of  her  son  Thomas 
Moore,    the  grandson    to  whom   Mr.  Agar   had  left  ^500. 

1  Will  and  codicil  of  Mr.  Agar,  as  some  particulars  from  Phillips, — who, 
seen  and  copied  by  me  long  ago  (see  though  speaking  well  of  Mr.  Agar,  does 
ante.  Vol.  II.  p.  101,  footnote) ;  with       not  mention  the  wdl  or  the  legacy. 


THE    AGAR  BRANCH    OF   THE    MILTONS.  775 

This  Thomas  Moore,  Milton's  grandnephew,  and  who  may- 
have  seen  Milton,  was  thenceforward  the  squire  of  Saves 
House  ;  and,  as  he  was  doubtless  the  heir  of  his  mother  at 
her  death  at  some  unknown  date  after  1694,  he  must  have 
been  a  man  of  very  considerable  estate  altogether.  In  1715, 
at  all  events,  he  received  the  honour  of  knighthood  and 
became  Sir  Thomas  Moore;  and  he  died  in  1735,  leaving 
at  least  two  children  by  his  wife,  Elizabeth,  sister  of  William 
Blunden  of  Basingstoke.  From  the  elder  of  these,  Edmund 
Moore  of  Sayes,  who  was  born  in  1696  and  died  in  1756, 
have  descended  a  number  of  persons,  Moores,  Fitzmoores, 
Dashwoods,  &c,  of  high  respectability,  I  believe,  to  the 
present  day,  chiefly  in  the  southern  English  counties,  and  all 
having  the  Milton  blood  in  them,  not  indeed  directly  from 
Milton  himself,  but  from  his  sister  Anne,  the  mother  of  the 
"  fair  infant "  whose  death  he  lamented  in  his  juvenile  elegy 
in  the  winter  of  1625-6.  At  the  date  of  the  elegy,  and  for 
some  years  after,  that  sister  was  Mrs.  Phillips  ;  and  it  was 
the  accident  of  her  second  marriage  with  an  Agar  that  sent 
on  the  Milton  pedigree  in  a  stock  capable  of  maintaining 
itself  in  the  world  while  the  Miltons  proper  and  the  Phillipses 
showed  their  faculty  of  sinking  *. 


INCREASE    OF    MILTON  S    POETICAL    CELEBRITY  AND    MULTIPLICATION 
OF    EDITIONS    OF    HIS    POEMS. 

With  the  exception  of  the  sonnets  to  Fairfax,  Cromwell, 
and  Vane,  and  the  second  of  the  two  to  Cyriack  Skinner,  and 
with  the  exception  also  of  the  scraps  of  verse  dispersed 
through  the  prose-writings,  all  Milton's  poetry  as  we  now 
have  it  had  been  left  by  him  before  the  world  in  three  small 
separate  volumes.  There  was  the  second  or  1674  edition  of 
Paradise  Lost,  in  place  of  the  first  edition  of  1667,  which  had 
been  exhausted  in  the  beginning  of  1669;  there  was  the  little 
volume    of  1671   containing    Paradise  Regained   and   Samson 


1  Manning's  History  and  Antiquities       Sir  Charles  Young,  Garter  Kingat  Arms  ; 
of  Surrey,  III.  229  ;  Milton  Pedigree  by       and  ante,  Vol.  I.  pp.  143—145. 


776  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Agonistes  ;    and  there  was  the  second  or  1673  edition  of  the 
Minor  Poems,  superseding  the  original  edition  of  1645. 

By  these  publications,  but  especially  by  the  Paradise  Lost, 
the  reputation  of  Milton  as  a  great  English  poet  had  been 
established  while  he  was   still    alive.     The    statement,    once 
customary,  and  not  out  of  fashion  yet,  that  his  poetical  fame 
did  not  begin  till  after  his  death,  is  wholly  against  the  evi- 
dence.   Within  eighteen  months  of  the  publication  of  Paradise 
Lost,  as  we  have  seen,  the  impression  made  by  that  poem 
on  the  leaders   of  critical  opinion  in  London  had  been  such 
as  not  only  to  startle  them  into  fresh  recognition  of  an  author 
they  had  thought  defunct,  but  even  to  draw  some  of  them 
round  him  personally,  Dryden  himself  for  one,  in  resumed  or 
newly-formed  relations  of  reverence.     Nor  even  in  those  days 
of  scanty  apparatus  in  the  form  of  critical  journals  had  the 
admiration  of  Milton's  extraordinary  reappearance  remained 
unrecorded.      Edward  Phillips's  passage  about  his  uncle  in 
one  of  the  essays  subjoined  to  his  edition  of  Buchlerus  in 
1669  was  the  expression  indeed  of  the  enthusiasm  of  a  re- 
lative, but  of  one  who  squared  his  words  to  already  formed 
public  opinion ;    and,  with    all  deduction  for  the  licence  of 
eulogy  allowed   to  the  writers  of  commendatory  verses  to  be 
prefixed  to  books,  no  one  can  read  Dr.  Barrow's  and  MarvelFs 
verses  prefixed  to  the  second  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1674 
without  feeling  that  the  writers  were  all  the  more  in  earnest 
with  their  superlatives  because  they  were  sure  of  the  general 
adherence.    But,  should  farther  proof  be  wanted,  it  is  at  hand 
in  two  testimonies  to  Milton's  greatness  that  were  deposited, 
one  may  say,  on  his  grave  just  after  his  funeral. — One  was 
from  Dryden,  in  his  preface  to  that  heroic  opera  of  his,  The 
State  of  Innocence  and  Fall  of  Man,  which  had  been  registered 
for  publication  seven  months  before  Milton's  death,  had  been 
in   circulation  in  manuscript  copies  since  then,  but  was  not 
published,  with   its  dedication  to  Mary  of  Modena,  Duchess 
of  York,   till   1675.      "  I  cannot,  without  injury  to  the  de- 
"  ceased  author  of  Paradise  Lost,  but  acknowledge,"  Dryden 
there  writes,  "  that  this  poem  has  received  its  entire  founda- 
"  tion,  part  of  the  design,  and  many  of  the  ornaments,  from 


DRYDEN    AND    PHILLIPS   ON    MILTON   IN    1675.         777 

"  him.  What  I  have  borrowed  will  be  so  easily  discerned  from 
"  my  mean  productions  that  I  shall  not  need  to  point  the  reader 
"  to  the  places  ;  and  truly  I  should  be  sorry,  for  my  own  sake, 
"  that  any  one  should  take  the  pains  to  compare  them  to- 
"  gether  :  the  original  being-  undoubtedly  one  of  the  greatest, 
"  most  noble,  and  most  sublime  poems  which  either  this  age 
"  or  nation  has  produced."  These  words,  from  one  who  con- 
fessed to  the  critic  Dennis  twenty  years  afterwards  that  at  the 
time  he  wrote  them  he  "  knew  not  half  the  extent  of  Milton's 
excellence,"  are  sufficiently  strong,  and  their  effect  is  not 
diminished  by  his  half-ironical  reference,  in  the  very  next 
sentences,  to  the  lines  of  compliment  that  had  been  furnished 
him  by  his  young  friend  Nat.  Lee,  to  be  prefixed  to  the 
published  opera.  Milton  had  disclosed  "  the  wealthy  mine  " 
and  furnished  "  the  golden  ore,"  Lee  there  told  Dryden,  but 
it  had  been  left  "  a  chaos  "  till  Dryden's  "  mighty  genius " 
shone  through  the  heap  ;  and  Dryden,  while  thanking  his 
young  friend  profusely  for  his  kindness,  has  no  doubt  he  will 
"  hear  of  it "  from  many  of  his  contemporaries. — Almost 
simultaneous  with  the  publication  of  Dryden's  opera  in  1675 
was  that  of  Edward  Phillips's  Theatrum  Poetarum,  where  this 
is  the  little  article  on  his  uncle  : — "  John  Milton  :  the  author 
"  (not  to  mention  his  other  works,  both  in  Latin  and  English, 
"  both  in  strict  and  solute  oration,  by  which  his  fame  is  suf- 
"  ficiently  known  to  all  the  learned  of  Europe)  of  two  Heroic 
"  poems  and  a  Tragedy,  namely Paradice Lost,  Paradice  Begaind, 
"and  Sampson  Agonista  ;  in  which  how  far  he  hath  revived 
"  the  majesty  and  true  decorum  of  Heroic  Poetry  and  Tragedy 
"  it  will  better  become  a  person  less  related  than  myself  to 
"deliver  his  judgment."  This  must  have  been  written  while 
Milton  was  alive,  and  is  amended  in  a  subsequent  article, 
which  the  kindliness  of  Phillips  leads  him  to  give  to  his 
brother  John,  as  entitled  to  a  place  among  the  English  poets 
by  "his  vein  of  burlesque  and  facetious  poetry"  and  other 
things  then  less  known.  In  that  article  John  Phillips  is 
expressly  introduced  as  "  the  maternal  nephew  and  disciple  of 
"  an  author  of  most  deserved  fame,  late  deceased,  being  the 
"  exactest  of  Heroic  Poets  (if  the  truth  were  well  examined, 


778  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"  and  it  is  the  opinion  of  many  both  learned  and  judicious 
"persons)  either  of  the  ancients  or  moderns,  either  of  our  own 
"  or  whatever  nation  else."  Again  one  feels  that  Edward 
Phillips  was  expressing*  a  common  opinion  and  using  words 
that  were  already  stereotyped  *. 

It  was  on  the  12th  of  January  1674-75,  before  these  first 
posthumous  tributes  to  Milton  had  appeared,  that  the  gossip 
Aubrey  was  promising  Anthony  Wood  his  notes  about  Milton, 
among  others,  for  Wood's  great  forthcoming  Athena  et  Fasti 
Oxonienses.  In  his  letter  to  Wood  of  that  date  he  had 
promised  to  go  to  the  church  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  to  see 
Milton's  grave  ;  and  it  was  in  a  later  letter,  of  May  18,  1675, 
that  he  sent  Wood  the  interesting  intelligence,  "  Mr.  Marvell 
has  promised  me  to  write  minutes  for  you  of  Mr.  Jo.  Milton." 
These  minutes  were  never  written  ;  and  Marvell,  who  might 
have  been  the  first  biographer  of  Milton,  was  dead  in  August 
1678.  The  three  intervening  years  had  but  confirmed  Mil- 
ton's reputed  place  among  English  poets,  while  perhaps  bring- 
ing out  more  strongly  in  certain  quarters  the  two  forms  of 
opposition  which  grudged  him  his  full  celebrity.  One  con- 
sisted, of  course,  in  the  recollection  of  his  dreadful  previous 
character  and  career  as  Revolutionist,  Republican,  arid  partisan 
of  the  Regicide  ;  and  the  other  consisted  in  repugnance  to 
that  theory  of  unrhymed  verse  which  he  had  so  daringly 
propounded  and  exemplified  in  his  two  epics.  The  Rhymed 
Drama  of  the  Restoration  had  by  this  time  been  laughed  out 
of  favour ;  but  poetry  in  general  without  rhyme  was  still  a 
stumbling-block.  Of  the  opposition  to  Milton's  growing 
poetical  fame,  on  these  or  on  other  grounds,  there  had  ap- 
peared at  least  one  bold  spokesman.  He  was  Thomas  Rymer, 
immortal  afterwards  for  his  great  historical  collection,  Rymer's 
Foedera,  but  as  yet  known  only  as  a  lawyer  of  Gray's  Inn  and 
a  dabbler  in  polite  literature.  In  1677,  at  the  age  of  about 
thirty-nine,  he  had  published  a  play  ;  and  in  1678  he  pub- 
lished a  critical  essay,  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  Fleetwood 
Shepherd,  entitled  The  Tragedies  of  the  last  age  Considered  and 

1  Scott's  Edition  of  Dryden's  Works,       arum, ;  and  a  note  in  Godwin's  Lives  of 
V.  103—106  ;  Phillips's  fheatrum  Poet-       the  Phillipses,  p.  143. 


THIRD   EDITION    OF   PARADISE  LOST.  779 

Examined.  In  this  essay  he  threatened  an  attack  on  Milton, 
to  appear  shortly  in  "  some  reflections  on  that  Paradise  Lost 
of  Milton's  which  some  are  pleased  to  call  a  poem."  It  never 
did  appear ;  and,  as  in  his  next  critical  essay,  in  1693,  the 
attack  was  transferred  to  Shakespeare,  with  ludicrous  conse- 
quences to  Mr.  Rymer  himself,  it  is  not  probable  that  Milton 
would  have  suffered  much  from  his  expositions1. 

It  was  in  1678,  when  Mr.  Rymer  was  threatening-  to  blast 
Milton  into  extinction,  that  there  appeared  the  Third  Edition 
of  Paradise  Lost,  printed,  as  the  two  former  had  been,  "  by  S. 
Simmons,  next  door  to  the  Golden  Lion  in  Aldersgate  Street." 
It  is  a  small  octavo,  printed  on  the  model  of  the  Second 
Edition,  with  the  same  arrangement  of  the  poem  into  twelve 
Books,  but  is  hardly  so  good-looking-,  and  is  of  no  independent 
value.  It  is  interesting  chiefly  as  marking  the  fact  that  2600, 
or  perhaps  3000,  copies  of  the  poem  were  by  that  time  disposed 
of,  and  1300  or  1500  copies  more  were  required.  Milton's 
widow,  still  in  London,  was  then  entitled,  therefore,  by  her 
husband's  original  agreement  with  Simmons,  to  the  £§  due 
on  the  complete  sale  of  the  Second  Edition.  For  some  reason 
or  other,  Simmons  was  in  no  hurry,  and  it  was  not  till  the 
end  of  1680  that  he  settled  with  the  widow  in  the  manner 
explained  in  the  following  receipt : — 

"  I  do  hereby  acknowledge  to  have  received  of  Samuel  Symonds, 
<  'ittizen  and  Stationer  of  London,  the  Sum  of  Eight  pounds  : 
which  is  in  full  payment  of  all  my  right,  Title,  or  Interest,  which  I 
have  or  ever  had  in  the  Coppy  of  a  Poem  Intitled  Paradise  Lost  in 
Twelve  Bookes  in  8vo.  By  John  Milton,  gent.,  my  late  husband. 
AVittness  my  hand  this  21st  day  of  December  1680. 

Witness,  William  Yapp. 
Ann  Yapp." 

From  this  receipt  it  appears  that    Simmons's  settlement 

1  Ante,  Vol.  I.  p.  ix  ;    and  Godwin,       only  at  second  hand,  and  I  take  the  phrase 
p.  143.    Rymer's  Essay  is  known  to  me       from  it  about  Milton  l'roni  Godwin. 


780         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

with  the  widow  was  not  retrospective  only,  but  prospective 
and  for  ever.  He  owed  her  s£J5  for  the  Second  Edition  ;  but 
the  Third  Edition  had  been  already  out  for  some  time,  and  for 
that  edition,  when  1300  copies  of  it  had  been  sold,  he  would 
owe  her,  by  the  original  agreement,  another  MJ5.  As  she 
was  then  about  to  remove  from  London  to  Nantwich,  and 
anxious  therefore  to  wind  up  all  her  concerns  in  London,  it 
was  convenient  for  her  to  compound  for  the  second  ^5,  not 
yet  due,  by  accepting  ^'3  instead  ;  and  hence  her  complete 
acquittance  to  Simmons  for  ^8  in  one  sum.  There  is  indeed 
a  subsequent  document,  dated  April  29,  1681,  probably  just 
before  her  actual  departure  for  Nantwich,  in  which,  in  the 
most  formal  manner,  and  with  extraordinary  surplus  of  legal 
phraseology,  she  grants  Simmons  a  renewed  release  from  all 
obligations  to  her  in  the  matter  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  from 
all  actions  or  demands  in  her  interest,  or  that  of  her  heirs, 
executors,  and  administrators,  on  that  account,  "  from  the 
beginning  of  the  world  unto  the  date  of  these  presents." 
Perhaps  she  regretted  having  let  Simmons  have  the  j£2  off, 
and  he  feared  having  farther  trouble  from  her.  In  any  case, 
by  the  original  agreement  with  Milton,  Simmons  was  to  be 
absolute  proprietor  of  the  copyright  after  the  sale  of  the  then 
current  or  third  edition.  The  stipulation  of  Milton,  for  him- 
self, his  heirs,  and  assigns,  had  been  for  j6j20  only  in  all,  the 
first  jf  5  paid  down,  and  the  rest  to  come  in  instalments  of 
^J5  for  each  of  the  first  three  editions  when  sold  out,  at  the 
rate  of  1300  copies  for  each  edition;  after  which  the  book  was 
to  be  Simmons's  own.  Milton  had  received  ^10  of  the  total 
price  in  his  life-time ;  and  the  payment  of  the  ^8  to  the 
widow  in  1680  discharged  the  rest.  The  composition  with 
the  widow,  reducing  the  stipulated  j^20  for  the  entire  copy- 
right of  Paradise  Lost  to  an  actual  payment  of  ^18,  was  as  if 
nowadays  £70  had  been  the  sum  agreed  for  and  it  had  been 
reduced  to  <^63  by  composition.  The  balance  of  j£J8  which 
the  widow  took  with  her  to  Nantwich  was  worth  what  ^28 
would  be  worth  now1. 

1  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  July  1822;       Cambridge  Edition  of  Milton's  Poems 
and  Introduction  to  Paradise  Lost  in       (1874),  I.  15 — 17. 


BKABAZON   AYLMEB    AND   JACOB   TONSON.  781 

For  ten  years  from  1678  there  was  no  new  edition  of 
Paradise  Lost.  There  are  various  traces,  however,  of  the 
growth  of  the  interest  in  Milton's  poetry  through  those  ten 
years. 

In  1680  there  was  a  second  edition  of  Paradise  Regained 
and  Samson  Agonistes  together,  published  by  the  same  John 
Starkey  who  had  published  the  first.  Whether  the  widow 
derived  any  benefit  from  this  re-issue  does  not  appear  ;  nor  is 
it  known  what  copyright  Milton  had  retained  in  these  poems, 
or  whether  any.  In  the  same  year  1680,  or  in  1681,  the 
printer  Simmons,  having  just  acquired  the  entire  copyright  of 
Paradise  Lost,  and  either  thinking  he  had  made  as  much  by 
his  three  editions  of  the  book  as  he  was  likely  to  make,  or  else 
having  reasons  for  converting  his  property  in  it  into  cash, 
sold  the  future  copyright  for  ^J25  to  Brabazon  Aylmer  of  the 
Three  Pigeons  in  Cornhill,  the  bookseller  who  had  published 
the  little  volume  of  Milton's  Lpisiolce  Familiar es  and  Pro- 
lusiones  Oratoria  in  1674  and  his  translation  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  the  Election  of  John  LI1  of  Poland  in  the  same  year. 
His  acquisition  of  Paradise  Lost  may  have  been  agreeable  to 
him  on  personal  grounds  ;  and  the  book  might  have  fared 
well  in  his  hands  had  it  remained  there.  But  there  was  a 
young  fellow  then  in  London  whose  enterprise  in  bookselling 
and  publishing  was  to  beat  all  slower  tradesmen  out  of  the 
field,  and  who  was  already  on  the  alert  for  all  promising 
speculations.  This  was  Jacob  Tonson,  the  third  man  after 
Humphrey  Moseley  and  Henry  Herringman  in  the  true 
apostolical  succession  of  London  publishers.  He  had  begun 
business  in  1677,  when  hardly  one-and-twenty  years  of  age, 
at  the  sign  of  the  Judge's  Head  near  the  Fleet  Street  end  of 
Chancery  Lane.  He  was  an  ungainly  enough  figure,  if  we 
may  trust  Dryden's  wicked  description  of  him  twenty  years 
afterwards, — 

"  "With  leering  looks,  bull-faced,  and  freckled  fair, 
AVith  two  left  legs,  and  Judas-coloured  hair, 
And  frowsy  pores  that  taint  the  ambient  air." 

But  he  had  an  able  head  on  his  shoulders,  and  a  faculty  of 
money-making,  for  authors  and  himself,   of  which  Dryden, 


782  LIFE  OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

thralled  to  Herring-man  hitherto,  had  already  taken  good 
advantage.  On  the  17th  of  August  1683,  it  appears,  this 
Jacob  Tonson  bought  from  Brabazon  Aylmer  one  half  of  the 
copyright  in  Paradise  Lost,  at  a  higher  price  than  Aylmer 
had  given  to  Simmons  for  the  whole  three  years  before. 
Dryden  may  have  advised  him  in  the  transaction ;  but  there 
was  no  immediate  result.  The  other  half  of  the  copyright 
remained  with  Aylmer,  or  went  elsewhither  ;  and  there  was 
silence  deep  as  death  for  a  time1. 

Not  among  readers  and  critics.  With  the  remaining-  copies 
of  the  third  edition  of  Paradise  Lost,  the  copies  of  the  second 
edition  of  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes,  and  the 
copies  of  the  collected  Minor  Poems  in  the  edition  of  1673, 
the  interest  in  Milton  was  going  about  like  a  gad-fly. 
Mentions  of  Milton  and  his  poetry  are  frequent  in  books 
between  1678  and  1688,  and  some  of  them  have  been  col- 
lected. Todd  refers  to  an  examination  of  the  blank  verse  of 
Paradise  Lost  and  a  tribute  to  the  language  of  the  same  in  a 
Paraphrase  upon  Canticles,  by  Samuel  Woodford,  D.D.,  pub- 
lished in  1679,  and  to  a  curious  commendation  of  Milton  in 
religious  poems  by  a  Samuel  Slater,  published  in  the  same 
year.  He  also  quotes  from  the  preface  to  an  anonymous 
translation  in  1680  of  a  poem  of  the  Dutch  Jacob  Cats,  in 
which  the  translator  hopes  his  readers  will  not  reject  the 
counsel  of  the  book,  "  though  not  sung  by  a  Cowley  or  a 
Milton  "  ;  and  he  adds  a  quotation  from  a  poetical  tribute  to 
Milton  in  the  same  year  by  an  F.  C,  whom  he  supposes  to 
have  been  Francis  Cradock,  formerly  one  of  the  Rota  Club. 
It  begins — 

"  0  thou,  the  wonder  of  the  present  age, 
An  age  immersed  in  luxury  and  vice, 
A  race  of  triflers  ! " 

In  1682  appeared  the  first  edition  of  the  Essay  on  Poetry  by 
Sheffield,  Earl  of  Mulgrave,  afterwards   Duke  of  Bucking- 


1  Introduction  to  Paradise  Lost  in       Christie's  Globe  edition  of  Dryden,  p. 
Cambridge  Milton,  I.  17—18,  with  re-       653,  and  prefixed  Memoir,  p.  xli. 
i'erences  there  to  Newton  and  Nichols  : 


MENTIONS  OF  MILTON  PROM  1678  TO  1688.     783 

hamshire,  ending"  with  the  delineation  of  that  impossible 
poet  who 

"  Must  above  Cowley,  nay,  and  Milton  too,  prevail, — 
Succeed  where  great  Torquato  and  our  greater  Spenser  fail." 

In  an  anonymous  book  of  1683,  The  Situation  of  Paradise, 
Milton,  Todd  says,  is  "the  admired  theme,"  and  is  quoted 
"  with  taste  and  judgment  "  ;  and  in  the  second  edition  of  the 
metrical  Essay  on  Translated  Terse  by  the  Earl  of  Roscommon, 
who  died  in  1684,  there  is  the  strange  compliment  to  Milton 
of  the  insertion  amid  the  rhyming  couplets  of  twenty  seven 
lines  of  blank  verse,  ostentatiously  adapted  from  the  6th  book 
of  Paradise  Lost  and  offered  as  a  specimen  of  the  true  sublime. 
By  this  time  not  only  had  Milton's  doctrine  of  blank  verse 
gained  adherents  and  his  example  in  that  respect  been  fol- 
lowed, but,  possibly  on  account  of  the  drift  of  affairs  to  the 
Revolution  of  1688,  the  recollection  of  his  political  offences 
had  become  weaker.  It  is  still  rank  indeed  in  the  article  on 
him  in  the  Lives  of  the  most  famous  English  Poets  published  in 
1687  by  a  William  Winstanley.  He  had  been  a  barber,  had 
pillaged  Edward  Phillips's  Theatrum  Poetarum  for  the  purposes 
of  his  book,  and  dismisses  Milton  thus,  in  words  stolen  from 
Phillips,  with  an  addition  of  his  own: — "John  Milton  was 
"  one  whose  natural  parts  might  deservedly  give  him  a  place 
"amongst  the  principal  of  our  English  poets,  having  written 
"two  heroic  poems  and  a  tragedy,  namely  Paradice  Lost, 
"  Paradice  Regained,  and  Sampson  Agonista  ;  but  his  fame  is 
"gone  out  like  a  candle  in  a  snuff,  and  his  memory  wrill 
"  always  stink,  which  might  have  ever  lived  in  honourable 
"  repute,  had  he  not  been  a  notorious  traytor  and  most 
"  impiously  and  villanously  bely'd  that  blessed  martyr  King 
"  Charles  the  First."  Winstanley  was  but  a  straw  against 
the  stream.  There  had  already  been  a  German  translation  of 
Paradise  Lost,  by  an  Ernst  Gottlieb  vom  Berge,  published  at 
Zerbst  in  1682  at  the  translator's  own  expense;  even  before 
that  year  Milton's  old  friend  Theodore  Haak,  the  original 
founder  of  that  London  club  of  which  the  Royal  Society  was 
a  development,  and  now  an  aged  Fellow  of  that  Society,  had 


784  LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND    HISTOEY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

translated  half  the  poem  on  his  own  account  into  German 
blank  verse,  with  much  approbation  from  the  continental 
friends  to  whom  he  had  sent  specimens  of  it  in  manuscript ; 
and  a  Latin  translation  of  the  first  book  of  the  poem,  done 
by  several  hands,  had  been  published  in  London  in  1686  by- 
Thomas  Dring,  the  proprietor  of  the  current  edition  of  Mil- 
ton's Minor  Poems.  Then,  as  we  near  the  Revolution  of 
1688,  the  supremacy  of  Milton  seems  an  article  of  universal 
belief.  From  a  poem  in  a  collection  by  various  hands  pub- 
lished that  year  in  honour  of  Waller,  who  had  died  the  year 
before,  Todd  quotes  the  lines  : — 

"  Speak  of  adventurous  deeds  in  such  a  strain 
As  all  but  Milton  would  attempt  iii  vain  ; " 

and  he  quotes  also  from  a  tribute  to  Milton  entitled  "  A  pro- 
pitiator!/ sacrifice  to  the  ghost  of  J.  31.  by  way  of  Pastoral,  in  a 
dialogue  between  Thy  r  sis  and  Cory  don,"  which  appeared  in  1689 
in  a  volume  of  pieces  "by  a  late  scholar  of  Eton,"  but  bears 
marks  of  having-  been  written  soon  after  Milton's  death. 
Milton  in  his  blindness  is  compared  to  Homer  and  Tiresias, 
and  is  apostrophised  thus  : — 

"  DaphniSj  the  great  reformer  of  our  isle  ! 
Daphnis,  the  patron  of  the  Roman  style  ! 
Who  first  to  sense  converted  doggrel  rhymes, 
The  Muses'  bells  took  off  and  stopt  their  chimes; 
On  surer  Avings,  with  an  immortal  flight, 
Tauaht  us  how  to  believe  and  how  to  write1." 


'&■ 


Into  this  state  of  sentiment  about  Milton,  fully  formed  four- 
teen years  after  his  death,  came  the  sumptuous  folio  volume  en- 
titled Paradise  Lost.  A  Poem  in  Twelve  Books.  The  Authour  John 
Milton.  The  Fourth  Edition,  Adom'd  ivith  sculptures.  London, 
Printed  by  Miles  Flesher,for  Jacob  Tonson,  at  the  Judge's  Head 
in  Chancery  Lane  near  Fleet-street.  31DCLXXXVIII."  Ton  son 
must  have  been  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  this  volume 
for  some  time,  and  must  have  bestowed  much  pains  upon  it. 
Not  only  is  the  size  folio  and  the  type  large  and  open ;  but 

1  Todd's  Milton  (edit.  18r2\  T.  124—  stanlev's  Lives  :  Wood's   Ath    TV.  2C0 

127,  with  his  bibliographical  list  at  the  and    763  ;    Godwin's   Phillipses,    144  ; 

end  of  Vol.  IV. ;  Bohn's  Lowndes,  Art.  Johnson's   Lives    of    Roscommon   and 

Milton ;  Aubrey's  Milton  Notes ;  Win-  Sheffield,  with  Cunningham's  Notes. 


FOURTH   EDITION    OF   PABADISE  LOST.  785 

the  so-called  "  sculptures,"  consisting  of  twelve  plates  designed 
by  John  Medina  in  illustration  of  the  text,  a  plate  for  each 
of  the  twelve  books,  are,  though  in  a  bad  and  gaudy  style 
of  art,  elaborate  enough.  There  is  also  a  prefixed  portrait 
of  Milton,  inscribed  "  R.  White,  sculp.,'"  a  modification  of 
Faithorne's  original  of  1670  by  the  well  known  line  and 
mezzotint  engraver  Robert  White  of  London,  who  was  born 
in  1645  and  died  in  1704.  The  most  remarkable  thing  about 
the  volume,  however,  is  that  it  had  been  published  by  sub- 
scription, or  that,  at  all  events,  a  large  number  of  subscrip- 
tions had  been  obtained  to  secure  the  venture  and  add  to 
Tonson's  profits  by  ordinary  sale.  The  tradition  is  that  the 
Whig  lawyer  and  statesman,  Mr.  Somers,  afterwards  Lord 
Somers,  exerted  himself  greatly  for  the  success  of  the  edition  ; 
and  it  is  accordingly  called  sometimes  "  the  Somers  edition.'' 
Among  others  who  exerted  themselves  were  Dryden  and 
young  Francis  Atterbury,  afterwards  Bishop  Atterbury.  At 
the  end  of  the  volume  are  printed  "  the  names  of  the  nobility 
and  gentry  that  encourag'd,  by  subscription,  the  printing  of 
this  edition."  Thev  are  over  500  in  number,  and  are  arranged 
alphabetically  in  six  pages  of  double  columns.  Among  the 
nobility  one  notes  Lord  Abergavenny,  Viscountess  Brouncker, 
Lord  Cavendish,  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  the  Earl  of  Drumlanrick, 
Lord  Dungannon,  Lord  Grey  of  Ruthen,  the  Earl  of  Kent, 
the  Earl  of  Kingston,  Lord  Lexington,  Lord  Mordaunt,  the 
Earl  of  Middleton,  the  Earl  of  Ossory,  the  Eaid  of  Pembroke, 
the  Earl  of  Perth,  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  and  the  Marquis  of 
Worcester.  Among  the  rest  are  Atterbury,  Brabazon  Aylmer, 
Betterton,  three  of  Davenant's  sons,  Dryden,  Dr.  Eachard, 
Flatman,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  Sir  Paul 
Rycaut,  Thomas  Southerne,  Stillingfleet,  and  "Edmund  Waller, 
Esq.,"  the  last  of  whom  had  died  before  the  volume  was 
ready.  Dryden,  besides  subscribing  to  the  volume  and  stimu- 
lating subscriptions  to  it,  had  furnished  his  famous,  but  some- 
what clumsy  and  indiscriminating,  six  lines  on  Milton  to  be 
engraved  under  the  portrait : — 

"  Three  Poets,  in  three  distant  ages  born, 
Greece,  Italy,  and  England  did  adorn. 

VOL.  VI.  3   E 


786         LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

The  first  in  loftiness  of  thought  surpass'd ; 
The  next  in  majesty ;  in  both  the  last. 
The  force  of  Nature  cou'd  no  farther  goe : 
To  make  a  Third  she  joynd  the  former  two1." 

Together  with  this  fourth  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1688, 
and  in  the  same  folio  size  and  the  same  style  of  type,  as  if  to 
match  it  and  be  bound  up  with  it  if  desired,  but  without 
"sculptures/'  appeared  a  third  edition  of  Paradise  Regained 
and  Samson  Agonistes,  "printed  by  R.  E.,  and  are  to  be  sold 
by  Randal  Taylor  near  Stationers'-Hall."  This  Randal  Taylor, 
therefore,  had  succeeded  John  Starkey  in  the  proprietorship 
of  these  two  poems,  while  the  Minor  Poems  in  their  small 
octavo  form  still  belonged  to  Thomas  Dring.  Thus  Tonson's 
property  in  Milton's  poetry  was  by  no  means  complete  in 
1688;  and,  indeed,  in  some  copies  of  his  folio  edition  of 
Paradise  Lost  of  that  year  he  figures  in  the  title-page  as  only 
joint-publisher  with  a  "  Richard  Bently,  at  the  Post  Office 
in  Russell  Street,"  who  perhaps  represented  the  half- copy  right 
which  had  been  left  in  the  hands  of  Brabazon  Aylmer.  But 
on  March  24,  1690  (1690-1  ?),  as  we  are  informed,  Tonson 
acquired  from  Brabazon  Aylmer  the  other  half  of  the  copy- 
right of  Paradise  Lost,  "  at  an  advanced  price ; "  and  from 
about  that  date,  though  we  do  not  know  the  means,  we  find 
Jacob  Tonson  in  possession  of  the  whole  of  the  poetry,  or  at 
least  in  the  sole  management  of  it.  Nor  did  he  let  the 
property  sleep.  In  1692  there  was  a  fifth  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost,  still  in  folio,  bound  up  with  a  fourth  of  Paradise  Re- 
gained. In  1695  there  was  a  sixth  edition  of  Paradise  Lost, 
still  in  folio,  with  a  uniform  issue  of  Paradise  Regained, 
Samson  Agonistes,  and  the  Minor  Poems,  so  that  all  might  be 
bound  together  and  constitute  the  first  collective  edition  of 

1  From  inspection  of  a  copy  of  the  the  subscription  had  begun  nine  years 

edition  ;  with  information  from  Mitf ord,  before    the    publication.       L'Estrange. 

p.    cviii,   footnote,    and   p.   clxxv,   and  among   the   subscribers   is    Satan   also 

reference  to  the  Cambridge  Edition  of  come    to   worship.     There   is   a   "  Mr. 

Milton,  I.  19.     Among  the  subscribers  Stephen  Marshall "  among  them,  and  a 

to  the  Somers  folio  of  168S  is  a  "  Thomas  "  Mr.    Thomas   Woodcock."     Was    the 

Hobbs,    Esq."      As    the     philosopher  first   a   son   or   other    relative    of    the 

Hobbes  had  died  in  1679,  in  his  ninety-  Smectymnuan,  and  the  second  a  rela- 

second  year,  this  must  have  been  some  tive  of  Milton's  second  wife  ? 
one  else,  unless  we   can   suppose  that 


THE  TONSON  COPYKIGHT  IN  MILTON'S  POETKY.   787 

Milton's  Poetical  Works ;  and  a  peculiar  accompaniment  of 
this  edition,  testifying-  the  extraordinary  dimensions  of  Milton's 
fame  by  this  time,  was  an  elaborate  commentary,  or  body  of 
learned  annotations  on  Paradise  Lost,  in  321  folio  pages,  by 
"  P.  H.,  0tAoTTot^r/js,"  i.  e.  Patrick  Hume,  a  Scotsman,  settled 
as  a  schoolmaster  somewhere  near  London,  whom  Tonson  had 
employed  in  the  business,  or  who  had  undertaken  it  as  a 
labour  of  love.  All  subsequent  commentators  have  been  in- 
debted to  this  commentary  of  Hume's,  and  often  with  far  too 
little  acknowledgment.  The  folio  edition  of  Milton's  Poetical 
Works  to  which  it  was  affixed  was  undoubtedly  the  best  that 
had  yet  appeared,  and  sufficed  for  a  while.  But  Tonson, 
having*  removed  in  1697  from  the  Judge's  Head  in  Chancery 
Lane  to  a  shop  at  Gray's  Inn  Gate,  till  then  Occupied  by  his 
brother,  and  having-  assumed  that  brother's  son,  Jacob  Tonson 
junior,  as  his  partner,  did  not  cease,  amid  all  his  other  under- 
taking's, to  trade  in  Milton.  He  published  a  new  edition  of 
the  Poetical  Works  in  1703  in  two  volumes  larg-e  octavo, 
another  in  1707  in  two  volumes  smaller  octavo,  and  a  pocket 
duodecimo  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1711,  completed  by  an 
issue  of  the  other  poems  in  a  similar  volume  in  1713.  This 
edition  of  1711-13  may  be  called  the  ninth  of  Paradise  Lost, 
the  eighth  of  Paradise  Regained,  the  seventh  of  Samson 
Affonistes,  and  the  sixth  of  the  Minor  Poems.  It  was  while 
these  more  handy  editions  were  running  that  there  appeared 
Addison's  celebrated  series  of  papers  on  Paradise  Lost  in  the 
Spectator.  They  beg-an  on  Jan.  5,  1711-12  and  were  con- 
cluded on  May  3,  1712.  The  statement  that  it  was  these 
criticisms  of  Addison  that  first  awoke  the  English  nation  to 
a  sense  of  Milton's  greatness  ought  to  have  been  exploded 
long  ago,  and  owes  its  continued  vitality  only  to  that  inherent 
sheepishness  of  human  nature  which  will  persist  in  repeating 
anything  whatever  that  has  once  been  strongly  said.  The 
criticisms  had  no  appreciable  effect  at  the  time  on  the  demand 
for  Milton's  poetry.  It  was  not,  indeed,  till  1719  that  the 
Tonsons,  who  had  meanwhile  removed  from  Gray's  Inn  Gate 
to  their  last  and  most  famous  shop,  the  Shakespeare's  Head 
in  the  Strand,  speculated  again  in  Milton,  and  then  only  in 


788  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

another  duodecimo  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  by  itself.  But  in 
1720  they  published  the  fine  new  edition  of  the  Poetical 
Works  known  as  Tickell's,  in  2  vols,  quarto,  with  Addison's 
critique  reprinted,  and  a  list  of  300  subscribers;  in  1721 
another  of  the  same  in  2  vols.  12mo. ;  in  1725  the  first  of 
the  so-called  Fenton  editions  in  2  vols.  8vo. ;  and  in  1727  and 
1730  repetitions  of  the  same.  The  Tonsons  were  also  part 
publishers  of  Bentley's  eccentric  edition  or  mutilation  of  the 
Paradise  Lost  in  1732.  That  edition  may  be  called  the  sixteenth 
English  edition  of  Paradise  Lost,  while  Paradise  Regained  was 
in  its  thirteenth,  Samson  Agonistes  in  its  twelfth,  and  the 
Minor  Poems  in  their  eleventh.  There  had,  however,  been 
a  Dublin  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1724,  and  one  hears  of  a 
London  edition  of  the  Poetical  Works  in  1731,  not  by  the 
Tonsons.  On  the  whole  the  Tonsons  had  then  had  a  virtual 
monopoly  of  Milton's  poetry  for  forty  years.  It  had  been  very 
profitable  to  them  ;  and  no  wonder  that,  when  old  Jacob 
Tonson  had  his  portrait  painted  by  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller,  as 
one  of  the  portraits  of  the  Kit-Cat  Club  of  which  he  was 
secretary,  it  was  with  a  copy  of  Paradise  Lost  in  his  hand. 
He  died,  at  the  age  of  about  eighty,  on  the  18th  of  March 
1735-6,  a  very  wealthy  man,  with  landed  estates.  His  nephew, 
Jacob  Tonson  the  younger,  had  predeceased  him  about  four 
months.  It  might  be  a  consideration  in  any  study  of  the 
law  of  copyright  that  in  1727,  when  these  Tonsons  were 
rolling  in  wealth,  a  goodly  portion  of  it  derived  from  traffic  in 
Milton's  poetry,  Milton's  widow  was  alive  in  very  straitened 
gentility  at  Nantwich,  and  Milton's  youngest  daugher  and 
her  children  were  in  penury  in  Spitalfields 1. 

The  old  notion  being  that  copyright  was  perpetual  in  the 
author,  his  heirs  or  assigns,  and  Milton  having  assigned  away 
to  Simmons  all  his  copyright  in  Paradise  Lost  after  the  third 
edition,  and  the  copyrights  of  the  other  poems  having  ap- 
parently gone  in  the  same  way  to  the  booksellers  Starkey 
and  Dring,  the  Tonsons,  as  successors  by  purchase  to  the 
property  of  the  whole,  may  have  hoped  to  enjoy  it  for  ever. 

1  CambridgeMilton,I.18—  28,  with  re-       and  Todd's  Bibliographical  List  at  the 
ferences  there, including  Bohn'sZowmtfcs       end  of  Vol.  IV.  of  his  Milton. 


THE   TONSON    COPYRIGHT    IN   MILTON'S    POETRY.        789 

But  in  1709,  just  when  they  had  begun  to  adapt  their 
editions  to  the  popular  market  by  dropping  from  the  folio 
size  to  smaller  sizes,  there  had  been  passed  the  Copyright 
Act  of  Queen  Anne,  the  first  general  Copyright  Act  of  this 
country.  By  this  Act  the  old  notion  of  perpetual  copyright 
in  books  was  annulled,  and  holders  of  existing  copyrights  in 
England  and  Scotland  were  secured  undisturbed  possession  of 
them  only  for  twenty-one  years  after  the  10th  of  April  1710. 
Thus  the  monopoly  of  the  Tonsons  in  Milton's  poetry  had 
come  legally  to  an  end  in  April  1731.  But,  though  from  that 
date  we  do  find  their  monopoly  interfered  with  by  the  publi- 
cation of  independent  editions,  not  only  from  Dublin  but  soon 
also  from  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh,  English  trade-custom  still 
kept  Milton's  poetry  for  another  generation  substantially  in 
the  possession  of  the  Tonson  family.  The  head  of  the  firm 
after  the  deaths  of  old  Jacob  and  Jacob  secundus,  was  Dr. 
Johnson's  friend,  Jacob  Tonson  tertius,  the  son  of  Jacob 
secundus  and  the  grand-nephew  of  old  Jacob  ;  and,  to  the 
death  of  this  Jacob  Tonson  tertius  in  1767,  the  Tonson  firm 
continued  to  send  forth  editions  of  Milton  in  various  forms, 
with  hardly  any  competition  except  from  Scotland  and  Ireland. 
The  most  important  of  these  wTas  Dr.  Newton's  edition  of 
Paradise  Lost  in  two  large  quarto  volumes,  with  variorum 
notes  in  1749,  completed  by  his  similar  edition  of  Paradise 
Regained,  Samson  Agonistes,  and  the  Minor  Poems  in  another 
volume  in  1752.  This  variorum  edition  of  all  Milton's  poems 
by  Newton,  which  became  the  standard  library  edition  for 
a  long  while,  was  in  its  fifth  issue  in  1763,  when  Newton 
had  just  become  bishop  of  Bristol.  In  that  year,  I  calculate, 
taking  all  editions  whatever  into  account,  Paradise  Lost  was 
in  its  forty-sixth  edition,  Paradise  Regained  in  its  thirty- 
second,  Samson  Agonistes  in  its  thirty-first,  and  the  Minor 
Poems  in  their  thirtieth.  From  that  year  the  number  and 
variety  of  editions,  with  the  number  and  variety  of  the 
commentaries,  translations,  &c.  &c,  defy  calculation.  In  the 
matter  of  translations  it  may  be  noted  that  before  the  year 
1763  there  had  been  four  of  Paradise  Lost  into  German,  two 
into  Dutch,  three  into  French,  and  two  into  Italian.   There  had 


790  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

also  been  at  least  one  complete  translation  of  it  into  Latin,  by 
William  Dobson,  LL.B,  Oxon,  in  two  volumes  quarto,  besides 
the  efforts  in  that  now  obsolete  style  of  labour  by  the  in- 
genious and  learned  William  Hog"  or  Gulielmus  Hogseus,  a 
Scotchman  from  the  Carse  of  Gowrie,  who  had  "  known  only 
misfortune  since  he  came  into  England, "  and  whose  Para- 
ph rasis  Poetica  of  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise  Regained,  and 
Samson  Agonistes,  published  in  1690,  his  Paraphrasis  Latina 
of  Lycidas,  published  in  1694,  and  his  Comcedia  (Comus) 
Joannis  Miltoni,  viri  clarissimi,  paraphrastice  Reddita,  published 
in  1698,  lie  in  old  libraries  as  records  of  a  wasted  life1. 

POSTHUMOUS    PROSE    PUBLICATIONS    OF    MILTON   AND    FATE    OF 

HIS    PAPERS. 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  Milton  left  a  single  scrap 
of  verse  he  cared  a  farthing  about  that  has  not  come  down  to 
ns  in  our  printed  editions  of  his  poems.  It  was  otherwise 
with  his  prose-writings.  He  left  masses  of  miscellaneous 
manuscript,  and  among-  them  some  prose  compilations  about 
the  future  fate  of  which  he  was  by  no  means  indifferent2. 

Two  of  his  manuscripts  about  which,  as  we  know,  he  was 

1  Cambridge  Milton,  I.  28—33;  original  is  a  thin  manuscript  which  had 
Todd's  List  of  Editions,  &c.  been  used  byMilton  at  intervals  through 

2  Phillips,  closing  his  Life  of  Milton,  his  life  for  receiving  references  to  books 

.says: — '•He  had,  as  I  remember,  pre-  he  was  reading,  and  notes  of  facts  or  ideas 

"  pared  for  the  press  an  answer  to  some  that  there  struck  him.  The  entries  are 

"  little  scribbling  cpiack  in  London,  who  in  English,  Latin,  French,  and  Italian, 

"  had  written  a  scurrilous  libel  against  and  are  arranged  in  three  sections, — viz. 

"  him  ;  but,  whether  by  the  dissuasion  Index  Ethicus,  Index  Oeconomicus, 

"  of  friends,  as  thinking  him  a  fellow  not  Index  Politicus,—  each  entry  with  a 

"  worth  his   notice,  or  for  what  other  heading   denoting  the   particular  sub- 

•■  cause   I  know  not,   the  answer   was  jeet.     The    handwriting  in  the  earlier 

"  never    published."      From    Phillips's  entries  is  generally  Milton's  own^most 

description   one   imagines  that   it    be-  of   it   before  his  Italian  journey ;   but 

longed    to    the    Parker  -  Marvell    con-  other  hands  gradually  come  in,  among 

troversy,   and    was   provoked   by  that  which  have    been  recognised  those  of 

particular    lampoon    upon    Milton    in  several    of  Milton's    otherwise    known 

conjunction   with   Marvell,  called  The  amanuenses  from  1652   to  1674.     The 

Transjproser  Rehearsed,  the   author  of  chief  value  of  the  relic  lies  in  its  con- 

which   was    Eiehard   Leigh    (ante,  pp.  taining  so  much  of  Milton's  undoubted 

703 — 706). — An  interesting   relic  from  autograph.    It  contains  nothing  in  the 

among  the  papers  left  by  Milton  was  shape  of  original  writing.     There  were 

discovered  a  few  years  ago  at  Netherby  found  with  it,  however,  a  fragment  of 

in  Cumberland,  the  seat  of  Sir  Frederick  Latin  prose  on   the    subject    of  early 

IT.  Graham,  bart.,  in  the  course  of  re-  rising,    apparently    a   Latin   prolusion 

searches  made  by  Mr.  Alfred  J. Horwood  of  Milton's  at  Cambridge,  not  thought 

for  the  Historical    Manuscripts    Com-  worth  printing  by  him  with  his  other 

mission,  and  was  edited  for  the  Camden  Prolusiones  Orntorice  iu  1674,  and  also  a 

Society  by  Mr.  Horwood  (Revised  Edi-  short  Latin  poem  on  the  same  subject, 

(ton,  1877),  under  the  title  A  Common  mainly  in  elegiacs.    Copies  of  these  are 

l'loce    Book    of  John    Milton.      The  appended  to  Mr.  Horwood's  volume. 


DANIEL    SKINNER    AND    THE    MILTON   MSS.  791 

especially  anxious  just  before  his  death  were  the  small  one 
containing  the  fair  transcript  of  his  Latin  Letters  of  State  and 
the  much  larger  one  containing  that  complete  Treatise  of 
Christian  Doctrine  or  Systematic  Body  of  Divinity,  also  in  Latin, 
on  which  he  had  so  long  been  engaged.  He  had  attempted 
the  publication  of  the  former,  as  we  saw,  in  or  about  June 
1674,  through  the  bookseller  Brabazon  Aylmer.  in  conjunction 
with  his  Latin  Familiar  Mpistles ;  but,  that  attempt  having 
failed  by  the  refusal  of  the  necessary  licence  from  L'Estrange 
or  from  higher  authorities,  the  transcript  had  remained  in 
Milton's  hands.  It  was  left  by  him,  together  with  the  manu- 
script of  the  Theological  Treatise,  to  the  charge  of  the  young, 
scholar,  Daniel  Skinner,  B.A.,  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
who  had  for  some  time  been  his  amanuensis,  and  whose  chief 
employment  for  him  indeed  had  been  the  making  of  the 
transcript  of  the  State  Letters,  and  the  transcribing  also, 
in  his  singularly  clear  and  elegant  hand,  of  the  first  196 
pages  of  the  treatise,  with  revision  of  the  remaining  540 
pages  (ante,  p.  720).  The  bequest  seems  to  have  been  made 
on  the  understanding  that  Skinner  would  do  his  best  to  have 
the  two  books  printed  in  Holland,  making  what  he  could  out 
of  them  for  his  trouble.  At  all  events,  the  two  manuscripts, 
with  some  other  papers  of  Milton,  did  come  to  Skinner  by 
Milton's  directions.  "  The  works  of  Milton  which  he  left 
behind  him  to  me "  are  Skinner's  own  words1. 

Skinner,  one  finds,  had  been  admitted  a  junior  fellow  of  his 
college  at  Cambridge  on  the  2nd  of  October  1674,  Dr.  Isaac 
Barrow  being  then  still  master.  If  the  manuscripts  came 
to  him  there,  he  probably  did  not  show  them  about  in  college. 
But,  in  fact,  he  was  tired  of  Cambridge  residence,  much  fonder 
of  London,  and  very  anxious  to  obtain  an  appointment  of 
some  public  kind  there  or  abroad.  He  had  already,  by  his 
own  merits,  or  through  his  father,  Daniel  Skinner,  senior,  one 
of  a  firm  of  well-to-do  merchants  in  the  City,  or  perhaps  even 

1   Tn    the.    introduction    to    Milton's  about  16S2,    into    the    family   of   the 

Common  Place  Book,  described  in  last  Grahams   of   Netherby.     Two    of   the 

note,  Mr.  Horwood  furnishes  very  pro-  entries  in  the  Common  Place  Book,  at 

bable  evidence  that  Skinner  possessed  all  events,  both  written  apparently  in 

also  that  manuscript  after  Milton's  death,  1673,  are  in  Skinner's  hand. 
and  that  it  was  from  him  that  it  passed, 


792  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOKY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

through  Milton,  found  friends  of  influence  in  London  ;  and  it 
seems  to  have  been  some  time  in  1675  that  lie  took  courage 
to  introduce  himself  to  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys,  then  forty-two 
years  of  age,  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty,  and  M.P.  for 
Harwich,  wealthier  and  busier  than  ever,  though  not  a  whit 
less  honest  and  kindly.  Young  Skinner  found  Mr.  Pepys  so 
affable,  so  "  favourable  and  countenancing,"  that  he  could  not 
express  his  thanks  sufficiently,  and  hoped  everything  from 
the  influence  of  "  so  good  and  great  a  patron ;"  and  he  did 
not  conceal  from  Mr.  Pepys  that  he  had  some  of  the  late 
Mr.  Milton's  writings,  and  had  negotiated  or  was  negotiating 
for  their  publication  by  the  printer  Daniel  Elzevir  of  Am- 
sterdam. Whether  the  negotiation  was  by  letter,  or  with  an 
agent  of  Elzevir  in  London,  or  with  Elzevir  himself,  who 
is  known  to  have  been  on  a  visit  to  London  about  this  time, 
does  not  appear ;  but  it  is  certain  that,  in  or  about  November 
1675,  Elzevir  had  agreed  with  Skinner  to  print  the  two 
manuscripts,  and  that  shortly  afterwards  they  were  in  Elzevir's 
possession  in  Amsterdam. 

Months  passed,  and  Skinner  was  still  vainly  waiting  on  in 
London  for  the  desired  public  appointment,  or  going  and 
coming  between  London  and  Cambridge.  One  infers  that 
his  father  was  troubled  by  his  restlessness,  and  trying  to  drive 
him  back  to  Cambridge  and  College  routine  by  stopping  sup- 
plies. In  the  course  of  1676,  at  all  events,  he  was  in  such 
straits  for  money  that  he  made  bold  to  ask  Mr.  P.epys  for  jflO. 
The  good-natured  Pepys  seems  to  have  signified  to  the  young 
man  that  he  was  taking  a  liberty,  but  to  have  lent  the  ^10 
nevertheless.  After  that  Mr.  Pepys  saw  no  more  and  heard 
no  more  of  Skinner  for  some  time,  the  reason  afterwards 
assigned  by  him  to  Pepys  for  such  abscondence  being  his 
sorrow  and  shame,  "  occasioned  on  no  other  account  but  con- 
"  tinual  and  daily  hopes  of  receiving  ten  pounds  of  my  father, 
"  whereby  I  might  safely  approach  and  make  a  grateful 
"  return  of  your  worship's  kindness,  not  being  able  to  appear 
"  till  I  could  procure  that."  While  he  was  in  this  unhappy 
condition,  avoiding  Pepys,  and  exhausting  his  other  shifts, 
lo !   in  October   1676,  the   appearance,  from   some  unnamed 


DANIEL    SKINNER   AND   THE    MILTON   MSS.  793 

printing-- press  and  some  unnamed  bookseller's  shop  in  London, 
of  an  edition  of  those  very  Latin  State  Letters  of  Milton  which 
he  had  given  to  Elzevir  to  print.  The  consequences  to 
Skinner  were  immediate  and  serious  ;  but,  before  we  tell  the 
rest  of  his  story,  we  must  describe  the  little  volume  itself. 

It  is  a  rather  neatly  printed  small  duodecimo  of  234  pages, 
with   an   anonymous    Latin  preface,   and   this   title-page : — 
' '  Literee  Pseudo-Senatus  Anglicani,    CromweUii,   reliquorunique 
Perduettium  nomine  acjussu  conscripta  a  Joanne  Miltono.     Im- 
presses Anno  1676."     ("  Letters  in  the  name  and  by  the  order 
of  the  Pretended  English  Parliament,  of  Cromwell,  and  of  the 
rest  of  the  Rebels,  written  by  John  Milton.     Printed  in  the 
year  1676.'1)    The  writer  of  the  anonymous  preface  introduces 
the  volume  thus : — "  When  first  these  papers  came  to  our 
"  hands,    I  doubted  long  whether   I   should    rather  commit 
"  them  to  the  press  or  to  the  flames,  till,  mindful  of  that  mercy 
"  which  had  pardoned  the  Author  long  ago,  however  foully 
"  delinquent  against  his  Sacred  Majesty,  we  judged  that  it 
"  would  be  a  most  foolish  act  of  inclemency  not  to  spare  his 
"  papers  to  perish  naturally.    For  it  has  always  seemed  to  the 
"  majority  the  most  proper  course  to  imitate  the  actions  of 
"  that  Prince,  whoever  he  is,  whose  injunctions  and  command 
"  we  ought  to  obey.     Not  that  we  here  present  you  anything 
"  with  which  we  go  about  to  corrupt  the  manners  and  dispo- 
"  sitions  of  the  younger  members  of  society  or  to  flatter  the 
"  seditious  and   impotent    lust  of  ruling  in   others.     All  we 
"  commend  to  you  is  the  ornamental  setting  of  the  written 
"  transactions,  and  the  elegance  of  the  Latin  expression ;  for 
"  Milton  is  perhaps  a  writer  most  worthy  to  be  read  by  all, 
"  had  he  not  stained  the  eloquence  and  purity  of  his  style  by 
"  most  abominable  conduct.     But,   inasmuch    as    from   these 
1 '  letters  you  may  be  able  perhaps  to  extract  some  things  which 
"  may  illustrate  the  annals  of  the  time  in  which  they  were 
"  written,   and  by  which    you  may   detect  and  explain    the 
"  stubborn  malignity  of  those  rebels,  on  this  account  have  we 
"  caused  them  to  be  given  to  the  light.     Meanwhile  behold, 
"  after  the   expulsion    of   kings,  how    gracefully   the    ass   is 
"  attired  with  the  lion's  skin,  and  how  rebels,  while  commis- 


794  LIFE    OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

"  sioning  embassies,  sending-  envoys,  undertaking*  wars,  and 
"  assuming  the  other  prerogatives  of  Royal  Majesty,  think 
"  the  power  they  have  unjustly  usurped  their  proper  due  and 
"  regularly  entrusted  to  them.  Have  the  letters,  therefore, 
"  Reader,  and  enjoy  them  to  your  own  advantage  and  the 
"  confusion  of  bad  men/'  It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  this 
was  not  written  by  some  one  who  was  more  a  Miltonist  at 
heart  than  he  could  allow,  and  who  was  clever  at  irony. 

The  publication  of  Milton's  State  Letters  would  certainly 
have    attracted    the    notice   of  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  then 
Secretary  of  State,  or  of  some  of  his  colleagues  in  the  Govern- 
ment, even  if  Skinner  had  not  moved  in  the  matter.     But, 
in  his  first  annoyance  at  being  forestalled  in  one  of  his  own 
intended  Milton  publications  through  Elzevir  at  Amsterdam, 
he  took  a  very  bold  step.     Such,  at  least,  is  his  own  account. 
"  There  creeps  into  the  world/'  he  says,  "  a  little  imperfect 
"  book  of  Milton's  State  Letters,  procured  to  be  printed  by 
"  one  Pitts,  a  bookseller  in  London,  which  he  had  bought 
"  of  a  poor  fellow  that  had  formerly  surreptitiously  got  them 
"  from  Milton.     These   coming  out  so  slily,  and  quite  un- 
"  known  to  me,  and  when  I  had  the  true  and  more  perfect 
"  copy,  with    many  other  papers,   I   made  my  addresses    to 
"  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,   to    acquaint  him    that  there  was 
"  a  book  come  out  against  his  authority :  that,  if  his  honour 
"  connived  at  that,  he  would  please  to  grant  me  licence  to 
"  print  mine  ;  if  not,  that  he  would  either  suppress  that  little 
"  book,  or  give  me  leave  to  put  in  the  bottom  of  the  Gazette 
u  that  they  were  printing  in  Holland  in  a  larger  and  more 
"  complete  edition."     Here  Skinner  represents  himself  as  the 
informer  against  Pitts,  not  in  dishonourable  spite,  but  in  the 
interest  of  his  own  projected  Amsterdam  edition  of  the  State 
Letters.     There  has  been  preserved,  however,  in  the  Record 
Office,  the  attestation  or  abstract,  in  Skinner's  own  hand,  and 
endorsed  by  the  hand  of  Sir  Joseph  Williamson's  secretary, 
of  the  information  actually  given  to  Sir  Joseph.     It  is  dated 
Oct.  18,  1676,  and  runs  thus :— "  That  Mr.  Pitts,  bookseller  in 
"  Paul's  Churchyard,  to  the  best  of  my  remembrance  about 
"  four  or  five  months  a«o,  told  me   he  had  met  withal  and 


DANIEL  SKINNER  AND  THE  MILTON  MSS.       795 

"  bought  some  of  Mr.  Milton's  papers,  and  that,  if  I  would 
"  procure  an  agreement  betwixt  him  and  Elzeviere  at  Ara- 
"  sterdam  (to  whose  care  I  had  long-  before  committed  the 
"  true  and  perfect  copy  of  the  State  Letters  to  be  printed),  he 
"  would  communicate  them  to  my  perusal ;  if  I  would  not, 
"  he  would  proceed  his  own  way,  and  make  the  best  advantage 
"  of  'em  :  so  that,  in  all  probability,  I  not  procuring  Elzeviere's 
'k  concurrence  with  him  (and  'tis  impossible  it  should  be  other- 
';  wise),  Mr.  Pitts  has  been  the  man  by  whose  means  this  late 
"  imperfect  surreptitious  copy  has  been  published."  In  this 
attestation  there  in  nothing  necessarily  inconsistent  with 
Skinner's  own  above-quoted  account,  as  given  for  subsequent 
and  independent  purposes.  He  had  been  aware  of  Mr.  Pitts's 
possession  of  the  surreptitious  copy  of  the  Letters  as  eai'ly  as 
May  or  June  1676,  and  had  then  been  in  communication  with 
him  ;  but  the  actual  appearance  of  the  edition  in  October 
1676  may  have  surprised  him,  and  may  have  been  the  cause 
of  his  application  to  Sir  Joseph. 

Sir  Joseph,  it  seems,  took  the  affair  much  more  seriously 
than  Skinner  had  expected.  He  seems  to  have  been  satisfied, 
indeed,  that  Skinner  had  not  been  concerned  in  the  publication 
of  the  anonymous  London  edition  of  the  State  Letters ;  but 
Skinner's  information  that  he  had  arranged  for  the  publication 
of  a  more  perfect  edition  of  the  same  by  Elzevir  of  Amsterdam, 
with  the  fact  that  he  had  other  unpublished  papers  of  Milton 
in  his  charge,  suggested  only  one  course.  "  Little  thinking," 
says  Skinner,  "  that  Sir  Joseph  was  such  an  enemy  to  the 
"  name  of  Milton,  he  told  me  he  could  countenance  nothing  of 
"  that  man's  writings."  He  would  give  Skinner  no  licence, 
therefore,  for  an  English  edition  of  the  State  Letters,  or  for 
an  advertisement  of  the  Amsterdam  Edition  in  the  London 
Gazette.  That  is  not  surprising;  but  we  should  hardly  have 
been  prepared  for  the  sequel.  "  In  this  answer,"  says  Skinner, 
"  I  acquiesced.  A  little  while  after,  his  honour  sends  for  me 
"  to  know  what  papers  I  had  of  Milton's  by  me,  and  that 
"  I  should  oblige  him  if  I  would  permit  them  to  his  perusal ; 
"  which  very  readily  I  did,  thinking  that  it  might  prove  ad- 
ei  vantageous  to  me  ;  and,  finding  upon  this  so  great  an  access 


796  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

"to  his  honour,  I  presented  him  with  a  Latin  petitionary 
"  epistle  for  some  preferment,  either  under  him  or  hy  his 
"  means.  His  honour  was  pleased  graciously  to  receive  it, 
"  and  in  a  most  expressive  manner  to  promise  me  any  advance- 
'•  ment  that  might  be  in  his  power."  Evidently,  Sir  Joseph, 
on  the  one  hand,  had  taken  a  liking  to  the  young  man,  and 
was  disposed  to  be  his  friend  after  farther  probation,  and 
Skinner,  on  the  other  hand,  was  delighted  at  having  found 
such  a  patron,  and  was  resolved  that  neither  Milton's  memory 
nor  his  manuscripts  should  stand  in  the  way. 

Meanwhile,  before  those  interviews  with  Sir  Joseph  which 
had  changed  his  plans,  Skinner  had  drafted  a  Latin  prospectus 
of  his  forthcoming  edition  of  Milton's  State  Letters,  to  be 
inserted  in  the  London  Gazette  or  sent  to  Elzevir  for  publication 
abroad,  warning  people  against  the  anonymous  London  edition 
as  an  abortion  and  imposition.  A  copy  of  it  has  been  pre- 
served. "  Be  it  known  to  all  the  learned,"  it  begins,  "  whether 
"  in  the  Universities  or  in  London,  as  well  as  to  booksellers, 
"  if  any  there  are  with  more  than  usual  knowledge  of  Latin, 
"  and  also  to  all  foreigners  whatsoever,  that  the  letters  of  John 
"  Milton,  Englishman,  written  in  the  time  of  the  Interregnum, 
"  which  a  certain  London  bookseller,  taking  counsel  with 
"  himself  how  much  to  his  profit  and  reputation  might  be 
"  yielded  him  by  anything,  however  imperfect  and  crude,  from 
"  among  the  works  of  so  great  a  man,  has  lately  caused 
"  to  creep  to  light,  besides  being,"  &c. ;  and  it  goes  on  to 
denounce  the  obscure  bookseller,  the  beggarly  wretch  who  had 
sold  him  the  papers,  the  mutilated  and  untrustworthy  cha- 
racter of  the  edition,  the  confused  arrangement  of  its  contents, 
and  the  meanness  and  dishonesty  of  the  preface  to  it,  an- 
nouncing at  the  same  time  the  speedy  appearance  of  the  full, 
true,  and  perfect  edition  in  elegant  type,  now  at  press  in 
Holland,  and  to  be  accompanied  by  copies  of  the  Spanish, 
Portuguese,  French,  and  Dutch  Treaties,  and  by  other  illus- 
trative documents,  German,  Danish,  and  Swedish. 

Precisely  at  this  point  in  the  business  news  came  to 
Skinner  in  London  so  good  that,  in  his  own  words,  he 
"  leaped  at  it."    What  had  seemed  most  feasible,  and  what  he 


DANIEL    SKINNER    AND   THE   MILTON    MSS.  797 

liad  for  some  time  desired  most,  was  an  appointment  in  the 
English  embassy  at  Nimeguen  in  Guelderland,  East  Holland, 
already  the  head-quarters  for  some  time,  and  to  continue  such 
for  a  year  or  two  more,  of  the  complex  negotiations  going  on  in 
the  great  Spanish  Succession  cause  between  Louis  XIV.  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  Spanish  and  Dutch  on  the  other,  with  Eng- 
land intervening.  The  English  plenipotentiary  or  Lord  Am- 
bassador at  Nimeguen  was  then  Sir  Leoline  Jenkins,  the  same 
who  had  been  Judge  of  the  Prerogative  Court  of  Canterbury 
when  Milton's  nuncupative  will  was  tried  in  that  Court ;  and 
one  of  Mr.  Pepys's  kindnesses  to  young  Skinner  had  been 
a  hearty  recommendation  of  him,  with  a  "  good  and  gracious 
character,"  to  this  Sir  Leoline.  Nothing  had  come  of  the 
recommendation  till  now,  when,  says  Skinner,  "  heaven  was 
Ci  so  propitious  as  to  cause  a  letter  to  be  sent  from  Nimeguen 
i(  to  know  whether  I  would  embrace  the  opportunity  of  being 
"  under  Mr.  Chudleigh,  Secretary  to  the  Embassy,  the  same 
"  I  had  hopes  of  long  ago."  He  prepared  to  start  for 
Nimeguen  immediately ;  and,  on  the  day  before  he  left, 
waited  on  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  to  take  his  leave,  and  beg 
the  favour  of  "some  recommendations "  that  might  assist 
him  in  his  journey.  Sir  Joseph  then  returned  him  his  Milton 
papers,  whatever  they  were,  "  with  many  thanks/'  and  "  was 
pleased,"  adds  Skinner,  "  to  give  me  a  great  deal  of  advice 
"  not  to  proceed  in  the  printing  of  my  papers  at  Amsterdam  ; 
"  and  this,  he  said,  he  spoke  out  of  mere  kindness  and  affec- 
"  tion  to  me."  Skinner  tendered  Sir  Joseph  the  profoundest 
thanks  in  return,  and  assured  him  that,  as  soon  as  he  got  to 
Amsterdam,  which  he  would  purposely  take  on  his  way  to 
Nimeguen,  he  would  recover  the  two  Milton  manuscripts 
from  Elzevir  "and  suppress  them  for  ever."  He  had  hardly 
gone  when  Sir  Joseph  sat  down  and  wrote  the  following 
note  to  Sir  Leoline  Jenkins,  dated  "  Whitehall,  31st  Octob., 
1676"  :— 

"I  come  casually  to  know  that  Mr. Chudleigh  is  taking  one 
Mr.  Skinner,  a  young  man  of  Cambridge,  to  be  his  Secretary.  The 
person  is  a  very  pretty  young  man,  writes  Latin  very  well,  and 
a  tine  character.     But  he  is  most  unfortunately  fallen  into  an  ugly 


798  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

business  now  freshly,  he,  it  seems,  being  the  party  that  hath  put 
out  Milton's  works  to  be  printed  by  the  Elzevirs  in  Holland,  and 
among  other  papers  his  Letters  of  State  written  for  the  Usurpers 
as  their  Latin  Secretary.  I  have  told  the  young  man  plainly  what 
I  thought  of  his  mixing  with  that  sort  of  men,  and  how  taking 
such  pitch  is,  and  that  indeed,  till  he  had  very  well  aired  himself 
from  such  infectious  a  commerce  as  the  friendship  of  Milton  is,  he 
could  not  be  at  all  proper  to  touch  any  degree  in  the  King's  service. 
And  I  pray  your  Excellency  to  say  so  much  to  Mr.  Chudleigh, 
if  you  please,  to  prevent  his  making  so  ill  a  step." 

Little  knowing*  what  missive  to  Sir  Leoline  Jenkins  was 
crossing-  the  seas  with  himself,  Mr.  Skinner  duly  presented 
himself  at  Nimeguen,  with  the  result  he  has  left  described  in 
a  very  long  and  pitiful  letter,  of  date  "  Nov.  19,  1676," 
written  from  Rotterdam,  and  addressed  to  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys. 
The  first  part  of  the  letter  is  taken  up  with  a  statement  of 
his  past  relations  and  obligations  to  Mr.  Pepys,  expressions 
of  boundless  gratitude  to  him,  and  apologies  for  having  kept 
away  from  Mr.  Pepys  so  long  and  even  left  England  without 
paying  his  respects,  all  from  shamefacedness  on  account  of 
the  borrowed  ^10.  Then  he  reminds  Mr.  Pepys  of  the  two 
Milton  manuscripts  which  Mr.  Pepys  knew  to  have  been  in 
his  possession  some  time  ago,  and  tells  the  story  of  his  recent 
interviews  with  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  concerning  those 
manuscripts,  and  of  his  journey  to  Nimeguen  in  secure  hope 
at  last  of  the  very  post  which  Mr.  Pepys  had  tried  to  obtain 
for  him  : — 

"  After  a  hazardous  passage  cross  the  seas,  though  first  a  great 
expense  in  clothing  myself  for  so  great  an  appearance  as  this  at 
Nimeguen,  and  a  long,  tedious,  and  mighty  chargeable  journey 
through  all  the  parts  of  Holland  (a  country  serving  only  to  set 
a  greater  value  on  our  own),  I  at  last  arrived  at  Nimeguen,  meeting 
with  a  very  kind  and  beyond  expectation  fair  reception  from  Mr. 
(  hudleigh,  though  (which  is  the  misfortune  I  am  telling  you  of) 
1  was  surprised  with  an  unkind  letter  which  his  honour  Sir  Joseph 
AVilliamson  had  conveyed  before  my  arrival  to  my  Lord  Jenkyns 
concerning  me  .  .  .  His  honour  was  pleased  (whether  I  shall  term 
it  unkindly  or  unnaturally)  to  despatch  a  letter  after  me  to  my  lord 
Jenkyns,  to  acquaint  his  Lordship  that  I  was  printing  Milton's 
works,  and  wished  them  to  have  a  care  of  me  in  the  King's  service ; 
which  has  put  a  little  stop  to  my  being  employed  as  yet,  till  I  can 


DANIEL    SKINNER    AND   THE   MILTON    MSS.  799 

write   to  England  and   procure  so  much   interest  as  to  clear  Sir 
Joseph  Williamson's  jealousy  of  my  being  yet  engaged  in  the  print- 
ing of  these  papers ;  though  my  Lord  Jenkyns  and  Mr.  Chudleigh 
are  so  well  satisfied,  after  my  giving  them  a  full  account  of  the 
business,  and  bringing  my  copies  with  me  to  Nimeguen,  ready  to 
dispose  of  them  where  Sir  Joseph  shall  think  fit,  that  they  seem  as 
much  concerned  at  Sir  Joseph's  letter  as  I  do,  and  have  sent  me 
here  to  Rotterdam  at  their  charge  (so  kind  they  are),  to  remain 
here  till  I  can  write  to  England  and  they  have  an  answer  from  Sir 
Joseph  "Williamson  how  that  his  honour  is  satisfied  .  .  .  Now,  may 
it  please  your  worship,  having  given  you  a  full  and  true  account  of 
the  whole  affair,  seeing  the  fortune  of  a  young  man  depeuds  upon 
this  small  thing,  either  perpetual  ruin  or  a  fair  and  happy  way 
to  future  advancement,  pray  give  me  leave  to  beg  of  you,  which 
I  most  humbly  and  submissively  do,  that  you  would  please  instantly 
to  repair  to  his  honour  Sir  Joseph,  and  acquaint  him  that  I  am  so 
far  from  printing   anything  of  Milton's  now  that  I  have  followed 
his  honour's  advice,  and,  upon  due  pensitation  with  myself,  have 
nulled  and  made  void  my  contract  with  Elzevier  at  Amsterdam, 
have  returned  my  copies   to   myself,  and  am  ready  to  dispose  of 
them  where  his  honour  pleases,  either  into  the  hands  of  my  Lord 
Jenkyns,  or   into  his  own  for  better  satisfaction  ;    and  am  so  far 
from  ever  procuring  a  line  from  Milton  printed  that,  if  his  honour 
pleases,  he  shall  command  my  copies  and  all  my  other  papers  to 
the  fire.     And,  though  I  happened  to  be  acquainted  with  Milton 
in  his  lifetime  (which  out  of  mere  love  to  learning  I  procured,  and 
no   other  concerns  ever  passed  betwixt  us  but  a  great  desire  and 
ambition  of  some  of  his  learning),  I  am,  and  ever  was,  so  far  from 
being  in  the   least  tainted  with  any  of  his  principles  that  I  may 
boldly  say  none  has  a   greater  honour  and  loyalty  for  his  Majesty, 
more   veneration   for    the    Church   of   England,  and  love   for  his 
country,  than   I  have.      Once  more  I  beg  your  worship,  and,  with 
tears  instead  of  ink  that  might   supply  my  pen,  I  implore   that 
you  would  prevail  with  Sir  Joseph  to  write  another  letter  to  my 
Lord  Jenkyns  and  to  Mr.  Chudleigh  and  to  recall  his  former  .... 
Lest  I  should  leave  any  stone  unturned,  I  have  penned  out  a  letter 
to  his   honour  myself,  wherein  I  have  humbly  and  with  great  sub- 
mission cleared  myself.     Likewise  Elzevier  the  printer  has  written 
to  him  by  this  post.    Here  at  Rotterdam  I  shall  stay  till  his  honour 
is  pleased  to  send  to  my  Lord  Jenkyns  ;  which  I  pray  your  worship 
may  be  the  next  post  after  the  receipt  of  this  letter,  which  is  next 
Friday,    which   will   arrive   at  Nimeguen   the  Tuesday  after,   God 
willing,  when  I  shall  be  sent  for  from  hence  and  be  received  under 
Mr.  Chudleigh,  with  all  imaginable  kindness,  as  soon  as  Sir  Joseph's 
letter  arrives.'' 

Elzevir's  letter  to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  here  mentioned 
by  Skinner  as  despatched  by  the  same  post  as  his  own,  is  still 


800  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

extant.  It  is  dated  "  from  Amsterdam  the  20th  November 
1676/'  the  post  from  Amsterdam  to  England  being*  then  a 
day  later,  I  suppose,  than  the  post  from  Rotterdam.  It  is  in 
French,  as  follows  : — 

"  Sir, — It  is  about  a  year  since  I  agreed  with  Mr.  Skinner  to 
print  the  Letters  of  Milton  and  another  manuscript  on  Theology  ; 
but,  having  received  the  said  manuscripts,  and  having  found  there 
things  which  I  judged  fitter  to  be  suppressed  than  published, 
I  resolved  to  print  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  I  wrote  to  that 
effect  to  Mr.  Skinner  at  Cambridge ;  but,  as  he  has  not  been  there 
for  some  time,  my  letter  did  not  reach  him.  Since  tben  he  has 
been  in  this  town,  and  was  delighted  to  bear  tbat  I  have  not  begun 
to  print  the  said  treatises,  and  has  taken  back  his  papers.  He 
told  me  that  you  were  informed,  Sir,  that  I  was  going  to  print  all 
the  works  of  Milton  collectively.  I  can  assure  you  that  I  never 
had  such  a  thought,  and  that  I  should  have  a  horror  of  printing 
the  treatises  which  he  made  for  the  defence  of  so  wicked  and 
abominable  a  cause,  even  if  it  were  not  independently  unbecoming 
for  the  son  of  him  who  first  printed  the  Defensio  Regia  of  Sal- 
masius,  and  who  would  have  given  his  life  if  he  could  have  saved 
the  late  King  of  glorious  memory,  to  print  a  book  so  detested 
by  all  honest  people.  I  am  bound  to  tell  you.  Sir,  that  Mr.  Skinner 
expressed  to  me  very  great  joy  over  the  fact  that  I  had  not  begun 
the  printing  of  the  said  works,  and  told  me  it  was  his  intention,  in 
case  the  said  book  had  been  begun,  to  buy  up  the  sheets  for  the 
purpose  of  suppressing  them,  and  that  he  had  taken  a  firm  reso- 
lution so  to  dispose  of  the  said  manuscripts  that  they  should  never 
appear ;  and  I  shall  venture  to  be  answerable  to  you,  Sir,  for  the 
strong  resolution  I  have  seen  in  him  so  to  dispose  of  them,  and 
chiefly  since  he  has  had  the  honour  to  speak  with  you,  and  you 
have  shown  him  that  you  would  not  quite  like  the  said  manu- 
scripts to  appear ;  and,  as  he  expects  his  advancement  from  you, 
one  need  not  doubt  that  he  will  keep  his  word.  Sir,  I  cannot 
conclude  without  expressing  my  acknowledgements  for  your  good- 
ness to  me  when  I  was  in  London  ;  and  I  should  desire  to  have 
occasion  to  be  able  to  serve  you  in  anything  that  would  show 
with  how  much  respect  I  am,  Sir,  your  very  humble  and  very 
obedient  Servant, — Laniel  Elzevier. 

P.S.  I  forgot  to  say,  Sir,  that  neither  Mr.  Skinner  nor  I  had  any 
part  in  what  has  of  late  appeared  of  the  said  Milton,  and  that  I 
never  heard  tell  of  it  till  Mr.  Skinner  told  me  here.  He  had 
indeed  informed  me  before  that  a  certain  bookseller  of  London  had 
received  some  letters  from  some  one  who  had  stolen  them  from  the 
late  Milton ;  but  neither  he  nor  I  have  had  any  connexion  with 
that  impression, — of  which  I  pray  you  will  be  persuaded." 


DANIEL    SKINNER   AND   THE    MILTON   MSS.  801 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  Mr.  Chudleigh  was  as  anxious 
to  have  Mr.  Skinner  for  his  under-seeretary  as  he  led  Mr. 
Skinner  to  believe.  This  is  the  impression,  at  all  events,  from 
Sir  Joseph  Williamson's  single  preserved  note  of  response 
to  all  the  letters  with  which  he  had  been  assailed  from 
Nimeguen,  Rotterdam,  and  Amsterdam,  and  also  to  any 
pressure  that  had  been  brought  to  bear  upon  him  in  White- 
hall by  Mr.  Pepys.  It  is  to  Mr.  Chudleigh,  is  dated  "  White- 
hall, the  28th  Nov.  1676,"  and  begins,  "  Mr.  Chudleigh,— 
"  Sir,  I  have  the  favour  of  yours  of  the  14th  and  20th."  It 
then  continues  : — "  I  should  have  been  very  glad  to  have  had 
"in  my  eye  any  youth  that  I  could  have  said  had  been  fit 
"  for  you  as  secretary.  But  indeed  at  present  I  have  none 
"  such  :  I  mean  not  exactly  such  as  I  could  wish.  And  surely, 
"  if  the  young  man  we  last  spoke  of, — I  mean  Mr.  Skinner, — 
"  had  French  perfectly,  and  that  he  were  a  little  aired  from 
"  the  ill  name  Mr.  Milton's  friendship  ought  to  leave  upon 
"  one,  there  were  not  many  more  hopeful  young  men  to  be 
"  found  of  that  rank."  One  construes  this  into  a  renewed 
hint  to  Mr.  Chudleigh  that  it  would  be  better  not  to  employ 
Skinner  just  yet,  both  on  account  of  his  Milton  associations 
and  because  of  his  deficiency  in  French.  Skinner,  therefore, 
who  had  been  waiting  in  Rotterdam,  "  at  one  Mr.  Shepherd's 
house/'  was  not  recalled  to  Nimeguen. 

At  this  point,  however,  Skinner's  father,  Mr.  Daniel  Skinner, 
senior,  merchant,  of  Mark  Lane  and  Crutched  Friars,  comes 
to  the  rescue.  He  had  probably  been  advised  to  keep  his 
son  abroad  for  some  time,  that  he  might  learn  French  and  be 
"  a  little  aired  "  otherwise  for  such  employment  as  Sir  Joseph 
was  very  willing  to  find  for  him  in  time.  When  we  next 
hear  from  young  Skinner,  accordingly,  it  is  from  Paris.  On 
the  20th  of  January  1676-7  he  writes  from  that  city  to 
Mr.  Pepys  as  follows  : — ■ 

"  Most  honoured  and  worthy,— Since  my  late  and  most  unfortu- 
nate repulse  at  Nimeguen,  caused  by  the  groundless  and  severe 
jealousies  of  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  (for,  invoeato  Deo,  never  had  I 
the  least  thought  of  prejudicing  either  King  or  State,  being  in- 
finitely  loyal  to   one   and    mighty   zealous   for  the  other,  all  the 

VOL.  VI.  3   F 


802         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

concerns  I  ever  had  with  Milton  or  his  works  heing  risen  from  a 
foolish,  yet  a  plausible,  ambition  to  learning),  being  at  Rotterdam, 
in  expectation  of  returning  into  England,  my  father  by  his  letters 
commanded  me  instantly  to  repair  to  France,  there  to  retire 
privately  and  complete  myself  in  the  French  tongue.  "Which 
having  no  sooner  done,  arriving  in  France  and  being  commodiously 
settled  at  Paris,  I  received  a  whole  packet  of  letters  from  Holland : 
amongst  the  rest  one  from  your  most  worthy  self, — a  letter  so 
beyond  expression  kind  and  favourable,  so  infinitely  obliging,  that 
I  may  safely  declare  you  to  be  one  of  the  worthiest,  most  generous, 
persons  living.  I  see,  Sir,  my  unhandsome  departure  out  of  England 
has  not  quite  ruined  the  friendship  and  inclination  that  your  noble 
breast  entertains  for  me.  .  .  .  Please  give  me  leave  to  salute  you  in 
French  very  speedily,  and  to  give  you  testimony  of  my  advancement 
that  I  make  here,  hoping  in  six  months'  time  to  return  to  England 
with  those  advantages  that  few  English  gentlemen  here  make  in 
twelve,  and  withal  to  be  more  deserving  of  yours  and  Sir  Joseph 
Williamson's  favours  :  whom,  pray,  Sir,  let  me  beg  of  you  to  certify 
that,  though  'twas  his  pleasure  to  shipwrack  me  in  the  very  port 
of  Nimeguen,  merely  out  of  jealousy,  I  hope  he  will  be  so  com- 
passionate as  to  give  me  another  vessel  when  I  come  to  London. 
Assure  him  also  that,  as  for  Milton  or  his  works  or  papers,  I  have 
done  withal,  and  never  had  had  to  do  with  him  had  not  ambition 
to  good  literature  made  me  covet  his  acquaintance.  Pray  tell  him, 
Sir,  that  all  his  papers  will  be  very  suddenly  in  his  hands,  as  soon 
as  the  printer  Elzevir  at  Amsterdam  can  find  an  opportunity  of 
sending  them  over,  and  that  I  am  here  indefatigably  studying  the 
French  tongue,  only  to  render  myself  more  capable  of  serving  him 
and  yourself,  intending  ever  to  acknowledge  you  for  my  grand 
patron. — I  am,  Sir,  with  all  imaginable  gratitude,  your  most  obliged 
and  devoted  servant,  Daniel  Skinner. — A  mon  loge  chez  Mad. 
Albert,  d,  la  porte  St.  Germain,  j>roche  la  Fountain,  a,  Paris." 

There  is  still  a  little  mystery  about  the  two  Milton  manu- 
scripts. Unless  Skinner  had  prevaricated  in  his  former  letter 
to  Pepys,  he  had  taken  them  out  of  the  hands  of  Elzevir  in 
Amsterdam  on  his  way  to  Nimeguen,  carried  them  with  him 
to  Nimeguen,  and  exhibited  them  there ;  and  Elzevir's  letter 
at  the  same  time  to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  was  to  the  same 
effect.  Yet  now,  it  seems,  two  months  later,  the  MSS.  are 
still  in  Elzevir's  hands.  One  has  an  impression  that  Skinner, 
after  all,  was  unwilling-  to  part  with  them  until  he  had  some 
guarautee  of  the  quid  pro  quo.  They  were  worth  money; 
and,  if  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  remained  obdurate,  might  they 
not  be  published  abroad  in  spite  of  him  ? 


DANIEL   SKINNER   AND   THE   MILTON   MSS.  803 

Sir  Joseph  must  have  suspected  some  sulky  reserve  of  this 
kind  in  young  Skinner's  mind,  and  was  angry,  at  all  events, 
at  the  continued  detention  of  the  manuscripts.  He  must 
have  conveyed  the  fact  to  Mr.  Skinner  senior ;  for  on  the  2nd 
of  February  1676-7  that  gentleman  wrote  to  Elzevir.  His 
letter  has  not  been  preserved  ;  but  the  following  was  Elzevir's 
reply,  sent  in  French,  and  dated  Amsterdam,"  Feb.  19, 1676-7. 

"Sir, — The  honour  of  yours  of  the  2nd  of  this  month  has  duly 
reached  me.  It  is  very  true  that  I  received  by  Symon  Heere  the 
two  manuscripts  of  Milton, — to  wit,  his  work  on  Theology  and 
his  Letters  to  Princes ;  which  are  still  in  the  same  state  in  which 
I  received  them,  not  having  found  it  convenient  to  print  them. 
You  will  know,  doubtless,  that  Monsieur  your  son  did  me  the  honour 
to  come  to  see  me, — who  was  greatly  satisfied  when  he  saw  that  I 
had  not  printed  the  said  works,  and  begged  me  to  send  them  by  the 
first  opportunity  to  Nimegr.en  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Embassy. 
But  it  began  to  freeze  before  I  could  carry  out  his  orders,  and  I 
have  since  received  your  said  son's  order  from  Paris  to  send  them 
to  you  by  the  first  shipping  opportunity  ;  which  commission  I  will 
not  fail  to  execute,  and  shall  give  them,  well  packed,  to  Jacob 
Hendrincx,  who  will  be  the  first  to  leave  this  for  your  city.  I 
have  been  much  vexed  at  not  being  able  to  execute  his  orders 
sooner;  but  the  frost,  which  has  lasted  here  more  than  three 
months,  has  prevented  the  vessels  from  leaving.  At  the  request  of 
your  son  I  wrote  a  letter  to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  Secretary  of 
State,  in  which  I  assured  that  gentleman  that  the  said  books  were 
still  in  my  hands,  that  I  had  no  intention  to  print  them,  and  that 
Monsieur  your  son  would  place  them  in  his  hands.  Thus,  Sir,  you 
have  no  cause  to  trouble  yourself  on  this  account ;  for,  in  the  first 
place,  I  am  sure  that  your  son  has  no  intention  to  cause  them  to 
be  printed,  but  on  the  contrary  to  place  them  in  the  hands  of  the 
gentleman  above  named,  and,  for  my  own  part,  I  would  not  print 
them  though  one  were  to  make  me  a  present  of  £1000  sterling, 
and  this  for  various  reasons.  I  pray  you,  Sir,  to  believe  that  the 
said  books  will  be  sent  you  through  Jacob  Hendrincx,  and  will  be 
forwarded  to  you  at  his  leisure." 

Before  Elzevir's  re-assuring  letter  had  been  despatched,  Sir 
Joseph  "Williamson,  in  his  impatience,  had  brought  stronger 
means  to  bear  upon  young  Skinner  in  his  Paris  retreat.  It 
was  on  the  13th  of  February  1676-7  that  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow, 
master  of  Trinity  College,  sent  a  letter  from  Cambridge  to 
his  reverend  friend  "  Mr.  George  Seignior,  at  Ely  House, 
Holborn,  London,"  enclosing  a  note  to  be  forwarded  to  young 

3  F  2 


804  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

Skinner.  :<  I  am  sorry  for  the  miscarriages  of  that  wild  young- 
man  to  whom  I  have  written  the  enclosed,  which  you  may 
please  to  seal  and  send,"  was  Dr.  Barrow's  message  to  Mr. 
Seignior.  That  gentleman  does  not  seem  to  have  known  how 
to  communicate  with  young  Skinner  directly ;  for  it  was 
after  some  delay,  and  through  Sir  Joseph  Williamson's  own 
secretary  in  the  Foreign  Office,  Mr.  Bridgeman,  that  Dr. 
Barrow's  note  did  reach  young  Skinner.  It  was  delivered  to 
him  by  a  Mr.  Perwich,  who  took  the  precaution,  as  instructed 
by  Mr.  Bridgeman,  of  doing  so  "  before  witness,"  on  or  before 
the  15th  of  March  1676-7.     It  was  as  follows  : — 

"Trin.  Coll.,  Feb.  13,  1676-7. 
Sir, — By  order  of  a  meeting  you  are  enjoined,  immediately 
without  delay,  upon  the  receiving  this,  to  repair  hither  to  the 
college,  no  further  allowance  to  discontinue  being  granted  to  you. 
This  you  are  to  do  upon  penalty  of  the  Statute  ;  which  is  expulsion 
from  the  College  if  you  disobey.  We  do  also  warn  you  that,  if  you 
shall  publish  any  writing  mischievous  to  the  Church  or  State,  you 
will  thence  incur  a  forfeiture  of  your  interest  here.  I  hope  God 
will  give  you  the  wisdom  and  grace  to  take  warning.  So  I  rest 
your  loving  friend, — Isaac  Baekow. 

For  Mr.  Daniel  Skinner." 

How  Skinner  received  this  peremptory  order  from  the  head 
of  his  college  we  learn  only  from  Mr.  Pervvich's  report  to 
Mr.  Bridgeman.  "I  found  him  much  surprised,"  Mr.  Perwich 
writes,  "  and  yet  at  the  same  time  slighting  any  constraining 
"  orders  from  the  superior  of  his  college,  or  any  benefit  he 
"  expected  thence ;  but,  as  to  Milton's  works  he  intended  to 
"  have  printed, — though  he  saith  that  part  which  he  had  in 
"  MSS.  are  no  way  to  be  objected  against,  either  with  regard 
"  to  royalty  or  government, — he  hath  desisted  from  causing 
"  them  to  be  printed,  having  left  them  in  Holland  ;  and  that 
"he  intends,  notwithstanding  the  college  summons,  to  go  for 
"  Italy  this  summer.  This  is  all  I  can  say  in  that  affair." 
The  date  of  this  report  was  March  15,  1676-7.  Skinner  did 
go  to  Italy ;  and  we  hear  nothing  more  of  him  till  May  23, 
1679,  on  which  day  the  registers  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
show  that  he  was  "  sworn  and  admitted  as  a  major  fellow." 
The  college  was  then  under  a  new  master,  Barrow  having 


DANIEL   SKINNER   AND   THE   MILTON   MSS.  805 

died  in  May  1677,  hardly  three  months  after  he  had  sent  his 
threatening- note  to  Skinner;  but,  as  Skinner's  admission  to 
the  major  fellowship  was  after  an  unusual  interval  from  his 
admission  to  the  minor  fellowship,  and  also  on  an  irregular 
day,  the  conclusion  is  that  he  was  completely  forgiven  and 
restored  to  favour.  In  other  words,  the  Milton  manuscripts 
had  been  surrendered  to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson. 

They  had  been  sent  to  London  by  Elzevir,  in  all  probability, 
shortly  after  the  date  of  that  letter  of  his,  of  Feb.  19,  1676-7, 
to  Mr.  Daniel  Skinner,  senior,  in  which  he  had  so  punctually 
promised  them  through  Skipper  Jacob  Hendrincx.  They 
came  to  London,  it  is  quite  certain,  wrapped  up  in  a  paper 
parcel,  addressed  on  the  outside  "  To  Mr.  Skinner,  mercM. ;" 
and  it  was  this  Mr.  Skinner,  the  father  of  the  culprit,  that 
delivered  them,  wrapped  up  as  they  had  come,  and  with  that 
address  still  on  the  outside,  into  Sir  Joseph  Williamson's 
possession.  The  parcel  was  put  into  a  press  in  the  old  State 
Paper  Office  in  Whitehall,  and  was  to  be  heard  of  or  looked 
at  no  more  for  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  *. 

Meanwhile,  though  not  by  Daniel  Skinner's  means,  there 
had  been  given  to  the  world,  in  that  surreptitious  London 
edition  of  the  State  Letters  in  October  1676  which  Skinner 
had  reviled  so  much,  one  most  important  publication  from 
Milton's  posthumous  papers.  Notwithstanding  Skinner's  de- 
nunciations of  it  for  incompleteness  and  inaccuracy,  it  was,  in 
the  main,  a  perfectly  authentic  collection  of  the  State  Letters, 

1  The  authorities  for  this  story  of  20,  1676-7.      These   interesting   docu- 

Daniel  Skinner  and  the  manuscripts  of  ments  in  the  series  are  from  the  MSS. 

Milton's  State  Letters  and  his  Treatise  in  the  Bodleian  ^Rawl.  A.  352andEawI. 

of  Christian  Doctrine  are  the  letters  and  A.  185).     I  know  not  whether  they  have 

other  documents  that  have  been  men-  been  printed  before. — One  or  two  of  the 

tinned  and  quoted.     Perwich's  note  was  facts  about  Skinner  are  from   Bishop 

printed  in  1825  by  the  Rev. C.R.Sumner,  Sumner's  "Preliminary  Observations" 

afterwards  Bishop  Sumner,  in.  his  "  Pre-  just   mentioned;    but    he   and    others 

liminary  Observations"  to  his  transla-  were  totally  in  the  dark  on  the  whole 

tion  of  theTreatise  of  Christian  Doctrine.  subject  when  those  "  Observations  "  were 

The  other  letters  and  documents  were  written. — Todd  notes  that,  at  the  very 

printed  in  full  by  Mr.W.  Douglas  Hamil-  time  when  Daniel  Elzevir  was  expressing 

ton  in  1859  in  his  Milton  Papers  for  the  his  virtuous  horror  of  Milton's  writings 

Camden  Society, — with  the  exception  of  to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson,  he  had  copies 

Sir  Joseph  Williamson's  Letter  to   Sir  of   Milton's   Defensio   Prima  and  De- 

Leoline  Jenkins   of  Oct.  31,  1676,  Sir  fensio  Secunda  on  sale  in  Amsterdam. 

Joseph's   Letter  to  Mr.  Chudleigh  of  The  proof  exists   in   his  Latin  trade- 

Nov.  28,  1676,    and    young    Skinner's  catalogue  for  1674. 
second  letter  to  Mr.  Pepys,  of  date  Jan. 


806  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

with  only  about  a  dozen  omitted  that  were  in  Skinner's  own 
transcript.  At  all  events  it  is  that  so-called  surreptitious 
edition  of  the  State  Letters  that  has  served  as  the  substantive 
edition  to  this  day.  I  have  little  doubt  that  Edward  Phillips 
was  the  person  who  conveyed  them  into  the  publisher's 
hands,  if  he  did  not  also  write  the  Latin  preface  for  him. 
Aubrey  distinctly  records,  on  information  from  Milton's  widow 
before  1681,  that  she  had  given  "  all  his  papers  "  to  Edward 
Phillips ;  and  to  this  statement  in  Aubrey's  jottings  there 
is  the  marginal  note  "  In  the  hands  of  Moyses  Pitt."  The 
inference  is  that  Phillips,  examining  Milton's  papers  in  1676, 
found  those  drafts  of  the  State  Letters  from  which  Skinner 
had  made  his  transcripts  in  1674,  and  sold  them  and  other 
things  to  the  bookseller  Pitts  of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard.  No 
steps  seem  to  have  been  taken  to  suppress  the  book.  I  have 
a  copy  before  me  which  has  been  in  the  Library  of  Edin- 
burgh University  since  1678,  "ex  dono  P.  D.  Jacobi  Nairn." 

The  next  posthumous  publication  in  Milton's  name  is 
"  Mr.  John  Milton's  Character  of  the  Long  Parliament  and 
Assembly  of  Divines.  In  MDCXLI.  Omitted  in  his  other  Works, 
and  never  before  Printed,  And  very  seasonable  for  these  times. 
London:  Printed  for  Henry  Brome,  at  the  Gun  at  the  West-end 
of  St.  Paul's,  1681/'  It  is  a  thin  small  quarto,  of  eleven 
pages  of  text,  the  gist  of  which  was  as  follows  : — 

"  Of  these  who  swayed  most  in  the  late  troubles  few  words  as 
to  this  point  may  suffice.  ...  A  Parliament  being  called,  to  address 
many  things,  as  it  was  thought,  the  people,  with  great  courage,  and 
expectation  to  be  eased  of  what  discontented  them,  chose  to  their 
behoof  in  Parliament  such  as  they  thought  best  affected  to  the 
public  good,  and  some  indeed  men  of  wisdom  and  integrity,  the 
rest  (to  be  sure  the  greater  part)  whom  wealth  or  ample  possessions 
or  bold  aud  active  ambition,  rather  than  merit,  had  commended 
to  the  same  place.  But,  when  once  the  superficial  zeal  and  popular 
fumes  that  acted  their  new  magistracy  were  cooled  and  spent  in 
them,  straight  every  one  betook  himself  (setting  the  Commonwealth 
behind,  his  private  ends  before)  to  do  as  his  own  profit  or  ambition 
led  him.  Then  was  justice  delayed,  and  soon  after  denied ;  spite 
and  favour  determined  all :  hence  faction  ;  thence  treachery,  both 
at  home  and  in  the  field ;  everywhere  wrong  and  oppression ; 
foul   and  horrid  deeds   committed  daily,  or  maintained   in  secret 


"CHARACTER   OP   THE    LONG   PARLIAMENT."  807 

or  in  open.  Some  who  had  been  called  from  shops  and  ware- 
houses, without  other  merit,  to  sit  in  supreme  councils  and  com- 
mittees, as  their  breeding  was,  fell  to  huckster  the  Common- 
wealth ;  others  did  thereafter  as  men  could   soothe   and   humour 

them  best Their  votes  and  ordinances,  which  men  looked 

should  have  contained  the  repealing  of  bad  laws  and  the  im- 
mediate constitution  of  better,  resounded  with  nothing  else  but 
new  impositions,  taxes,  excises,  yearly,  monthly,  weekly.  £*ot  to 
reckon  the  offices,  gifts,  and  preferments  bestowed  and  shared 
among  themselves,  they  in  the  meanwhile  who  were  ever  faithfulest 
to  this  cause,  and  freely  aided  them  in  person  or  with  their  sub- 
stance when  they  durst  not  compel  either,  slighted  and  bereaved 
after  of  their  just  debts  by  greedy  sequestrations,  were  tossed  up 
and  down  after  miserable  attendance  from  one  committee  to  another 
with  petitions  in  their  hands.  .  .  .  And,  if  the  State  were  in  this 
plight,  Religion  was  not  in  much  better.  To  reform  which  a 
certain  number  of  divines  were  called,  neither  chosen  by  any  rule 
or  custom  ecclesiastical,  nor  eminent  for  either  piety  or  knowledge 
above  others  left  out, — only,  as  each  member  of  Parliament  in  his 
private  fancy  thought  fit,  so  elected  one  by  one.  The  most  part 
of  them  were  such  as  had  preached  and  cried  down,  with  great 
show  of  zeal,  the  avarice  and  pluralities  of  bishops  and  prelates 
.  .  . ;  yet  these  conscientious  men,  ere  any  part  of  the  work  dune 
for  which  they  came  together,  and  that  on  the  public  salary,  wanted 
not  boldness,  to  the  ignominy  and  scandal  of  their  pastorlike  pro- 
fession, and  especially  of  their  boasted  Reformation,  to  seize  into 
their  hands,  or  not  unwillingly  to  accept,  (besides  one,  sometimes 
two  or  more,  of  the  best  livings)  collegiate  masterships  in  the  Uni- 
versities, rich  lectures  in  the  city,  setting  sail  to  all  winds  that 
might  blow  gain  into  their  covetous  bosoms.  .  .  .  Thus  they  who 
of  late  were  extolled  as  our  greatest  deliverers,  and  had  the  people 
wholly  at  their  devotion,  by  so  discharging  their  trust  as  we  see, 
did  not  only  weaken  and  unfit  themselves  to  be  dispensers  of  what 
liberty  they  pretended,  but  unfitted  also  the  people,  now  grown 
worse  and  more  disordinate,  to  receive  or  digest  any  liberty  at  all. 
.  .  .  But,  on  these  things  and  this  parallel  having  enough  insisted, 
1  return  to  the  story  which  gave  us  matter  of  this  digression." 

Appended  to  the  eleven  pages  of  text  thus  given  to  the 
world  in  1681  were  two  pages  of  advertisement  "  To  the 
Reader  "  by  the  editor  or  publisher,  as  follows : — 

"The  Reader  may  take  notice  that  this  Character  of  Mr.  Milton's 
was  a  part  of  his  History  of  Britain,  and  by  him  designed  to  be 
printed.  But,  out  of  tenderness  to  a  party  (whom  neither  this  nor 
much  more  lenity  has  had  the  luck  to  oblige),  it  was  struck  out  for 
some  harshness,  being  only  such  a  digression  as  the  History  itself 
would  not  be  discomposed  by  its  omission ;  which,  I  suppose,  will 


808         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTOKY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

be  easily  discerned  by  reading  over  the  beginning  of  the  Third 
Book  of  the  said  History,  very  near  which  place  this  Character 
is  to  come  in.  It  is  reported  (and  from  the  foregoing  Character 
it  seems  probable)  that  Mr.  Milton  had  lent  most  of  his  personal 
estate  upon  the  public  faith ;  which  when  he  somewhat  earnestly 
and  warmly  pressed  to  have  restored  (observing  how  all  in  offices 
had  not  only  feathered  their  own  nests,  but  had  enriched  many  of 
their  relations  and  creatures,  before  the  public  debts  were  dis- 
charged), after  a  long  and  chargeable  attendance,  met  with  very 
sharp  rebukes ;  upon  which  at  last,  despairing  of  any  success  in 
this  affair,  he  was  forced  to  return  from  them  poor  and  friendless, 
having  spent  all  his  money  and  wearied  all  his  friends.  And  he 
had  not  probably  mended  his  worldly  condition  in  those  days  but 
by  performing  such  service  for  them  as  afterwards  he  did ;  for 
which  scarce  anything  would  appear  too  great." 

The  Character  of  the  Long  Parliament  and  Assembly  of 
Divines,  so  introduced  to  the  public  as  Milton's  seven  years 
after  Milton's  death,  is  now  always  inserted,  on  the  faith  of 
this  tract,  in  Milton's  History  of  Britain,  at  the  point  indi- 
cated, i.e.  immediately  after  the  first  paragraph  of  the  Third 
Book.  It  forms  eleven  paragraphs  of  the  text  from  that 
point ;  and  the  only  caution  against  these  eleven  paragraphs 
in  modern  editions  of  the  History  is  that  they  are  enclosed 
within  brackets,  to  denote  that  they  are  an  insertion  of 
matter  first  made  public  in  1681  into  the  text  of  the  original 
edition  as  published  in  1670.  It  may  be  a  question,  how- 
ever, whether  they  ought  to  have  been  adopted  into  the 
History  at  all  and  ought  not  now  to  be  turned  out.  They 
are  an  attack  upon  the  memory  of  the  Long  Parliament 
and  the  Westminster  Assembly  ;  and,  though  the  part  of  the 
attack  that  concerns  the  Westminster  Assembly  corresponds 
closely  enough,  in  parts  of  the  wording,  with  what  Milton 
had  written  in  his  wrath,  more  than  once,  against  the  Presby- 
terian Divines,  or  indeed  against  Divines  generally,  the  part 
about  the  Long  Parliament  seems  positively  renegade  from 
his  previous  testimonies  of  reverence  for  the  persons  and 
acts  of  that  body,  and  from  all  that  we  now  remember  as 
historically  Miltonic.  Can  Milton  have  either  dictated  such 
an  insertion  in  1670  into  the  previous  manuscript  of  his 
History,  or  allowed  it  then  to  stand  there  for  publication  if 
it  was  already  written  ?    Can  we  imagine   such  a  semblance 


"  CHARACTER  OF  THE  LONG  PARLIAMENT/'     809 

of  approach  to  time-serving  on  his  part  in  a  prose  book,  at 
the  very  moment  when  he  was  chaunting  to  himself  the 
great  anti-Restoration  song  of  his  Samson  Agonistes,  with  its 
passages  of  regret  and  moralizing  over  the  fates  of  so  many 
of  his  comrades,  the  flower  of  the  Parliamentary  and  Re- 
publican faithful  ? 

It  is  not  the  mere  irrelevancy  of  the  diatribe  to  the  context 
in  which  it  is  imbedded  that  ought  to  make  us  sceptical. 
True,  there  is  a  look  of  oddity  in  such  a  "digression,"  foisted 
in  at  that  point  of  the  History  where  the  ancient  Britons  are 
left  to  anarchy  after  the  departure  of  the  Roman  governors 
and  garrisons  from  the  Island.  But,  as  we  saw  at  the  time, 
one  of  the  very  characteristics  of  the  book,  as  published  by 
Milton  in  1670,  was  that  it  seemed  to  delight  in  such 
parallelisms  and  modern  applications.  Farther,  the  general 
Miltonism  of  the  style  of  the  new  paragraphs  cannot  be 
denied.  What  causes  us  to  pause  is  rather  the  anti-Miltonism 
of  the  sentiments  conveyed  in  a  style  so  generally  Miltonic. 
The  doctrine  that  pervades  the  whole  diatribe,  for  example, 
the  very  "  point "  that  starts  Milton  on  his  supposed  "  digres- 
sion," is  the  natural  unfitness  of  the  British  genius  and 
temper,  as  proved  in  all  ages,  for  real  liberty  or  any  high 
political  undertaking ;  and  no  one  can  read  the  sarcastic 
language  in  which  this  doctrine  is  asserted  without  remember- 
ing on  the  instant  that  extraordinary  passage  in  the  Areo- 
pagitica  of  1644  in  which  Milton  had  asserted  the  dead 
opposite,  declaring  it,  on  the  evidence  of  all  British  history, 
to  be  God's  established  manner,  when  He  had  any  great  new 
design  in  hand  for  the  whole  world,  invariably  to  move  it 
first  among  His  own  Englishmen. 

The  statement  of  the  editor  of  the  recovered  fragment  in 
1681  was  that  it  had  actually  stood  in  the  manuscript  of 
Milton's  History  of  Britain  in  1670,  but  had,  "out  of  tender- 
ness to  a  party," — i.e.  to  the  Presbyterians  and  other  old 
Parliamentarians, — been  "  struck  out  for  some  harshness." 
The  statement  must  be  taken  in  connexion  with  the  inde- 
pendent tradition  which  comes'to  us  through  Phillips  and 
Toland.     Phillips,  writing  in  1694,  says  that  the  History,  as 


810  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS   TIME. 

published  by  his  uncle  in  1670,  was  complete  as  it  had  been 
written,  "some  passages  only  excepted,  which,  being"  thought 
"  too  sharp  against  the  clergy,  could  not  pass  the  hand  of 
"  the  licencer,  [and]  were  in  the  hands  of  the  late  Earl  of 
"  Anglesey  while  he  lived  [i.e.  till  1686]:  where  at  present 
"  is  uncertain."  In  the  same  page  Phillips  says,  more  ex- 
plicitly, that  it  was  his  uncle  himself  that  presented  the  Earl, 
who  was  his  frequent  visitor,  "  with  a  copy  of  the  unlicensed 
papers  of  his  History"  Toland,  writing  in  1698,  somewhat 
amplifies  the  tradition,  and  doubtless  on  good  authority.  Of 
the  History  he  says  that  "the  licencers,  those  sworn  officers 
"  to  destroy  learning,  liberty,  and  good  sense,  expunged  several 
"  passages  of  it  wherein  he  exposed  the  superstition,  pride, 
''and  cunning  of  the  Popish  monks  in  the  Saxon  times,  but 
"  which  were  applied  by  the  sagacious  licencers  to  Charles  the 
"  Second's  bishops."  Now,  most  obviously,  the  Character  of 
the  Long Parliament  and  Assembly  of 'Divines ;  published  in  1681, 
does  not  answer  to  either  Phillips's  or  Toland's  description 
of  the  passages  that  were  suppressed  in  1670 ;  nor  is  it  such 
a  thing  as  any  licencer  of  that  date  would  have  been  likely 
to  suppress.  It  is  the  very  reverse.  It  is  precisely  such  a 
passage  as  the  licencers  in  1670  would  have  been  glad  to 
keep  in  a  book  of  Milton's  and  to  send  forth  with  his  name. 
No  one  can  imagine  Roger  L'Estrange,  who  seems  to  have 
been  the  licencer  in  question,  expunging  such  a  passage  "  out 
of  tenderness  "  to  the  old  Parliamentarians  and  Presbyterians. 
The  difficulty,  therefore,  still  remains.  Two  hypotheses 
occur  to  me : — (!)  Such  a  passage  may  have  been  written  by 
Milton  just  before  the  abolition  of  the  Monarchy  and  the 
institution  of  the  Republic  in  1648-9,  when  he  was  leading 
a  private  life  in  his  house  off  High  Holborn,  and  had 
brought  down  the  manuscript  of  his  History  to  the  end  of 
the  fourth  book.  In  the  very  sentences  where  he  gives  us 
this  information,  already  quoted  at  p.  78  of  Vol.  IV.,  he  hints 
that  he  might  then  have  had  reasons  for  personal  complaint 
against  the  ruling  powers,  not  unlike  those  supposed  for  him 
in  the  bookseller's  advertisement  appended  to  the  Character 
of  the    Long   Parliament   and  Assembly;    though,    by    lucky 


"CHARACTER    OF    THE    LONG    PARLIAMENT."  811 

anticipation,  he  had  at  the  same  time  given  the  lie  direct 
to  the  present  vulgar  invention  of  1681  by  expressly  de- 
claring that  he  then  bore  his  personal  grievances  in  perfect 
silence,  never  went  about  troubling  people  with  suits  and 
petitions,  never  asked  anything  from  anybody.  Add  this 
to  the  larger  fact  that  the  two  years  or  so  before  1648-9 
were  precisely  that  period  in  the  history  of  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment with  which  Milton,  like  all  the  other  forward  spirits, 
was  most  dissatisfied  and  disgusted  on  public  grounds, — the 
period  of  renewed  Presbyterian  obstinacy, — and  it  will  not 
appear  so  very  surprising  if  Milton  did,  in  1648,  or  a  year 
or  two  later,  put  on  paper  the  disappointment  of  his  earlier 
hopes  of  the  Parliament.  In  that  case,  the  old  date  of  the 
writing  has  to  be  distinctly  remembered,  and  the  diatribe 
has  to  be  read  as  nothing  more  than  Milton's  animadversion 
on  the  wretched  state  of  things  in  England  just  before 
Pride's  Purge  and  the  happy  establishment  of  the  Republic. 
In  that  case  also  it  must  be  part  of  the  hypothesis  that  this 
portion  of  his  manuscript  of  the  History  of  Britain  had  long 
become  obsolete  in  his  regards  in  its  existing  form,  and 
that  it  was  he  himself,  and  not  the  licenser,  who  cancelled 
it  on  the  publication  of  the  History  in  1670,  perhaps  modify- 
ing the  preceding  sentences  so  as  to  indicate  that  there  was 
a  gap.  (2)  Should  this  hypothesis  fail,  we  may  revert  to 
the  suspicion,  already  hinted  at  page  647,  that  the  liberties 
taken  by  the  licenser  with  Milton's  manuscript  in  1670  did 
not  consist  merely  in  the  excision  of  passages,  but  included 
also  doctorings  of  some  passages  so  as  to  give  them  a  new 
significance.  May  not  Milton,  while  submitting  to  some  of 
the  slighter  interpolations  or  changes  of  wording,  as  well  as 
to  the  excisions,  have  rebelled  against  the  more  serious 
(factorings  ?  May  not  the  doctored  passages  which  he  refused 
to  accept,  as  well  as  the  passages  suppressed  by  the  licenser, 
have  been  among  the  curiosities  given  to  the  Earl  of 
Anglesey,  and  may  not  the  Character  of  the  Long  Parliament 
and  Assembly  of  Divines,  as  published  in  Brome's  catch- 
penny tract  of  1681,  have  been  one  of  them?  One  cannot 
suppose,  indeed,  that  the  Earl,  who  was  then  still  alive,  had 


81.2  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY    OF   HIS  TIME. 

anything*  to  do  with  the  affair.  L'Estrange  himself  might 
be  suspected,  were  it  not  that  the  title-page  and  the  ad- 
vertisement betray  the  hand  of  some  still  coarser  and  less 
informed  hack.  He  commits  the  blunder  of  giving-  1641, 
instead  of  1643,  as  the  date  of  the  Westminster  Assembly. 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  the  authenticity  of  the 
next  of  the  posthumous  Milton  publications.  It  was  "A  Brief 
History  Of  Moscovia  and  of  other  less  known  Countries  lying 
eastward  of  Russia  as  far  as  Cathay.  Gather  d  from  the 
Writings  of  several  Eye-tvitnesses.  By  John  Milton.  London, 
Printed  by  M.  Flesher,  for  Brabazon  Aylmer  at  the  Three 
Pigeons  against  the  Royal  Exchange,  1682."  The  printer, 
Miles  Flesher,  was  the  same  who  afterwards  printed  for 
Tonson  the  great  fourth  or  1688  edition  of  Paradise  Lost, 
called  the  Somers  Edition  ;  and  Brabazon  Aylmer  is  known 
to  us  already  as  not  only  Milton's  last  publisher  in  his  life, 
but  also  in  this  very  year  1682  the  proprietor  of  the  copy- 
right in  Paradise  Lost  by  purchase  from  Simmons,  though 
about  to  transfer  half  of  it  to  Tonson.  It  may  have  been  this 
interim  proprietorship  of  Paradise  Lost  that  reminded  him  of 
a  manuscript  of  Milton's  that  had  been  put  into  his  hands  by 
Milton  himself  about  the  same  time  as  those  of  the  Ejjistoke 
Familiares  and  Prolusiones  Oratories,  but  had  remained  un- 
published. The  following,  at  all  events,  is  Aylmer's  adver- 
tisement, inserted  between  Milton's  preface  to  the  History  of 
Moscovia,  which  is  signed  "  J.  M.,"  and  the  text  of  the  book  : — 

"  This  Book  was  writ  by  the  authour's  own  hand,  before  he  lost 
his  sight.  And  some  time  before  his  death  dispos'd  of  it  [sic]  to  be 
printed.  But  it  being  small,  the  Bookseller  try'd  to  have  pro- 
cured some  other  suitable  Piece  of  the  same  Authour's  to  have 
joyn'd  with  it,  or  else  it  had  been  publish'd  ere  now." 

The  volume  is  a  very  neatly  printed  duodecimo  or  small  octavo, 
with  five  unnumbered  pages  of  preface  and  109  pages  of 
text.  Aylmer's  information  that  the  original  was  in  Milton's 
own  hand  is  interesting.  One  might  else  have  referred 
it  to  about  the  year  1657,  when  Russia  came  a  good  deal 
into    Oliver's    calculations    of   foreign    politics    and    one    of 


milton's  history  of  moscovia,  etc.  813 

Milton's  state-letters  for  him  was  to  the  Czar.  As  it  is,  one 
must  refer  the  compilation  to  the  early  years  of  Milton's 
Secretaryship,  between  1649  and  1652,  or  possibly  to  his 
days  of  private  study  and  pedagogy.  He  seems  to  have  had 
a  special  fondness  for  geographical  readings  and  compilations, 
and  he  has  dashed  some  of  the  most  sounding  geographical 
names  from  this  prose  performance  into  his  epic  verse.  He 
had  taken  considerable  pains  with  it,  and  has  appended  a  list 
of  his  authorities. 

What  of  Milton's  almost  life-long  compilations  towards 
a  Latin  Dictionary  ?  They  were,  Aubrey  tell  us,  among  the 
papers  given  by  his  widow  to  Edward  Phillips  ;  and  we  have 
seen  Wood's  statement  that  Phillips  made  large  use  of  them 
for  his  Enchiridion  Lingua  Latins  and  his  Speculum  Lingua 
Lalina  of  1684.  But  that  was  not  the  last  use  of  them. 
Till  1693  the  latest  and  most  popular  Latin  Dictionary  in 
England  was  that  by  Dr.  Adam  Littleton;  but  in  1693  there 
appeared  "  The  Cambridge  Dictionary  "  or  "  Lingua  Romance 
Dictionarium  Lucuienfum  Novum"  described  as  " made  by 
several  persons,  whose  names  have  been  concealed  from  public 
knowledge."  The  words  are  from  the  preface  to  the  sub- 
sequent and  more  famous  Latin  Dictionary  of  Robert  Ains- 
worth, the  first  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1736.  Giving  an 
account  of  all  the  Latin  Dictionaries  of  this  country  previous 
to  his  own,  Ainsworth,  after  mentioning  the  use  made  by  the 
Cambridge  Editors  of  1693  of  preceding  printed  Dictionaries, 
adds  that  "  they  likewise  used  a  manuscript  collection  in 
"  three  large  folios,  digested  into  an  alphabetical  order,  made 
"  by  Mr.  John  Milton  out  of  all  the  best  and  purest  Roman 
"  authors."  As  Ainsworth  incorporated  the  Cambridge  Dic- 
tionary, and  as  all  subsequent  Latin  Dictionaries  have  in- 
corporated Ainsworth,  something  of  Milton's  Latinity  must 
be  flowing  latently  still  in  every  schoolboy's  veins. 

The  Revolution  of  1688  had,  of  course,  removed  much  of  the 
obloquy  attached  to  the  recollection  of  Milton's  prose-writings. 
The  very  fact  of  the  conspicuous  mention  of  them,  together 
with  those  of  Knox  and  Buchanan,  Owen,  Baxter,  and  others, 
in  that  famous  Decree  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  of  July  21, 


814  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

1683,  by  which  the  High  Church  party  had  sought  to  back 
up  the  then  tottering  system  of  English  Absolutism,  had 
again  recommended  them  to  general  attention.  The  Decree 
had  enumerated  certain  "  damnable  doctrines  "  of  anti-monar- 
chical tendency  to  be  found  in  various  ancient  and  modern 
books,  and  had  ordered  copies  of  the  books  to  be  publicly 
burnt  in  Oxford  by  the  hands  of  the  University  marshal ;  and 
in  an  academic  poem  on  the  occasion  there  had  been  these 
lines  of  delight  over  the  burning  of  Milton  in  particular  : — 

"  In  media  videas  flamma  crepitante  cremari 
Miltonum,  ccelo  terrisque  inamabile  nomen." 

So  much  less  mamabile  had  the  name  become  before  the 
close  of  the  century,  so  efficiently  had  the  events  and  con- 
sequences of  the  Revolution  concurred  with  the  now  fully 
established  celebrity  of  Milton's  poetry  in  bringing  his  prose- 
writings  back  into  fashion,  that  one  is  not  surprised  at 
having  to  note  the  publication  of  the  first  collective  edition 
of  Milton's  prose-works  as  an  incident  of  the  reign  of  King 
William.  It  appeared  in  1698,  in  two  volumes  folio,  under 
the  superintendence  of  Toland,  and  with  Toland's  Life  of 
Milton  prefixed ;  and  that  the  publication  was  even  then 
deemed  somewhat  venturesome  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
volumes,  though  really  printed  in  London,  purported  to  have 
been  printed  at  Amsterdam.  This  first  edition  of  the  prose- 
works,  the  predecessor  of  Birch's  editions  of  1738  and  1753, 
carries  us  into  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  1743  was  published  a  very  remarkable  thin  folio  volume 
of  180  pages,  entitled  "  Original  Letters  and  Papers  of  State, 
addressed  to  Oliver  Cromwell ;  concerning  the  affairs  of  Great 
Britain  from  the  year  1649  to  1658.  Found  among  the  Political 
collections  of  Mr.  John  Milton.  Now  first  published  from  the 
Originals.  By  John  NicJcolls,  Jim.,  member  of  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries,  London."  The  volume  consists  of  a  large  number  of 
the  most  private  documents  in  Cromwell's  correspondence  and 
relating  to  his  affairs  through  the  time  indicated.  There  are 
letters  of  secret  military  intelligence  and  political  information 
received  by  him  during  his  campaigns  in  Ireland  and  Scotland, 
some  of  them  in  cipher ;  there  are  admiring  and  enthusiastic 


MILTON    AND   THE    CROMWELL   PAPERS.  815 

letters  to  him  through  that  military  part  of  his  career  from 
Bradshaw,  Harrison,  St.  John,  Vane,  and  others  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  Commonwealth,  varying-  in  their  style  of  address  from 
"  Honest  Noll  "  to  "  My  Lord  "  or  "  My  dear  Lord  "  ;  there 
are  familiar  family  letters,  including*  one  from  Cromwell's 
wife  to  him,  the  only  letter  of  hers  known  to  have  survived ; 
and  about  half  of  the  volume  is  filled  with  those  letters 
and  addresses  to  Cromwell,  through  his  Protectorate,  from 
individuals,  corporations,  churches,  counties,  and  councils  of 
officers,  which  he  valued  so  much  as  to  refer  to  them  in  his 
speeches  as  "  witnesses "  to  his  Government.  That  Milton 
should  have  been  in  possession  of  such  a  quantity  of  intimate 
Cromwellian  papers,  the  very  papers  that  Cromwell  himself 
must  have  kept  in  a  locked  cabinet,  is  somewhat  surprising, 
and  the  rather  when  we  consider  that  more  than  half  of  them 
were  written  after  Milton  had  become  blind,  and  that  they  were 
not  such  as  could  have  been  required  by  him  for  the  purposes 
of  his  Secretaryship.  Yet  Milton  had  certainly  possessed  and 
treasured  them.  "  From  him  they  came  into  the  possession  of 
"Thomas  Ellwood,"  says  the  editor  in  his  preface;  who  then 
recapitulates  the  story  of  Ellwood's  connexion  with  Milton  as 
told  in  Ell  wood's  History  of  his  own  Life,  and  continues, 
"  That  history  aforesaid  of  Thomas  Ellwood's  life,  written  by 
"  himself  to  the  year  1683,  was  published  in  octavo  1714, 
"  a  year  after  his  death,  with  a  supplement  concerning  his 
"  writings  and  the  remainder  of  his  life  by  J.  W. ;  who  was 
u  Joseph  Wyeth,  citizen  and  merchant  of  London,  and  for 
"  several  years  intimate  with  him  ;  into  whose  hands,  among 
"  the  other  papers  of  the  said  Ellwood,  these  letters  fell ;  and 
"  through  the  hands  of  J.  Wyeilis  widow  they  came  into  the 
"  possession  of  the  present  editor."  The  pedigree  is  perfect, 
and  the  only  question  is  how  Milton  became  possessed  of  the 
papers.  The  likelihood,  almost  the  certainty,  is  that  he  had 
contemplated  a  Life  of  Cromwell  or  some  Histoiy  of  Crom- 
well's Time,  and  that  the  papers  had  been  entrusted  to  him 
confidentially  for  that  purpose.  As  the  last  of  them  is  an 
address  to  Richard  Cromwell  after  his  accession  to  the  Protec- 
torate, the  conjecture  may  be   that   they  were  entrusted   to 


816  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

Milton  about  that  time.  They  had  never  been  reclaimed  ; 
and  Ellwood  may  have  appeared  to  Milton  a  more  trust- 
worthy custodian  for  papers  of  that  class  after  his  own  death 
than  either  Phillips  or  Skinner. 

Phillips  was  dead,  Skinner  was  dead,  Sir  Joseph  Williamson 
and  all  that  generation  were  dead,  and  there  had  been  the 
lapse  of  those  four  eventful  generations  more  which  made  the 
British  world  of  the  Four  Georges,  when,  one  day  in  the 
year  1823,  Mr.  Robert  Lemon,  Deputy  Keeper  of  the  State 
Papers,  had  occasion  to  search  one  of  the  presses  of  the  Old 
State  Paper  Office,  then  still  in  the  Middle  Treasury  Gallery, 
Whitehall.  Among  other  things  there  that  had  not  seen  the 
light  for  many  a  day,  he  came  upon  the  identical  parcel,  with 
the  words  "  To  Mr.  Skinner,  merch1.,"  on  its  wrapper,  which 
had  been  deposited  there  by  Sir  Joseph  Williamson  or  his 
Secretary  in  1677,  and  which  contained  the  long-lost  Skinner 
Transcript  of  Milton's  Latin  State  Letters  and  the  manu- 
script of  his  Latin  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine.  The  Latin 
State  Letters  having  already  been  before  the  world  since 
1676,  there  seemed  no  particular  need  for  publishing  the 
recovered  Skinner  transcript  of  them ;  and  that  elegant  little 
manuscript  still  remains  in  the  State  Paper  Office,  now  part 
of  the  new  Record  Office  between  Fetter  Lane  and  Chancery 
Lane.  The  manuscript  of  the  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine 
is  also,  of  course,  there  now ;  but  it  was  thought  that  such  a 
Treatise,  a  totally  new  revelation  of  Milton,  ought  not  to 
remain  in  manuscript.  Accordingly,  by  command  of  George 
IV.,  the  Rev.  Charles  Richard  Sumner,  M.A.,  then  Keeper  of 
the  King's  Library,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Winchester,  under- 
took to  edit  it.  His  edition  of  the  original  Latin  appeared 
in  1825,  in  the  form  of  a  handsome  quarto  volume  from  the 
Cambridge  University  Press,  with  the  title  Joannis  Miltoui 
Angli  L)e  Doctrina  Christiana  Libri  Duo  Posthumi ;  and  in  the 
same  year  appeared  his  English  Translation  of  the  work,  with 
the  title  A  Posthumous  Treatise  on  The  Christian  Doctrine, 
compiled  from  the  Holy  Scriptures  alone,  in  tioo  Books :  By  John 
Milton. 


milton's  tkeatise  of  christian  doctrine.      817 

milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine. 

The  Treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine  is  a  very  important  and 
very  curious  book.  Had  it  been  published  while  Milton  was 
alive,  or  shortly  after  his  death,  it  would  certainly  have 
become  notorious,  and  would  probably  have  exerted  very 
considerable  influence  on  the  course  of  English  theological 
thought  through  the  last  two  centuries,  as  well  as  on  the 
traditional  reputation  of  Milton  himself.  As  it  is,  though  it 
has  been  fifty  years  before  the  world,  it  seems  to  have  found 
few  real  readers.  Our  interest  in  it  here  is  purely  biographical ; 
and  in  that  respect,  at  all  events,  it  is  not  to  be  over- 
looked or  dismissed  carelessly.  Not  only  does  it  throw  light 
upon  Paradise  Lost,  not  only  does  it  form  an  indispensable 
commentary  to  some  obscure  parts  of  that  poem  by  presenting 
in  explicit  and  categorical  prose  what  is  there  imaginatively 
assumed  and  even  veiled  ;  but  it  tells  us  a  good  deal  about 
Milton  and  his  opinions  besides,  peculiarly  and  even  oddly 
characteristic,  that  we  should  not  have  known  otherwise,  or 
should  have  known  but  vaguely. 

Milton's  fundamental  idea  in  the  treatise  is  that,  though 
the  belief  in  a  God  is  impressed  on  all  men  by  the  wonders 
of  the  universe  and  by  the  phenomenon  of  conscience,  and 
though  every  sane  man  must  be  naturally  a  theist,  yet  no 
one  can  have  right  thoughts  of  God  by  natural  reason  alone, 
and  the  condition  of  mankind  as  respects  matters  supernatural 
would  have  been  that  of  almost  complete  agnosticism  but  for 
the  divine  revelation  contained  in  the  Christian  Scriptures. 
The  divine  origin  and  inspiration  of  these  Scriptures,  defined 
as  comprising  only  and  precisely  those  books  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  which  Protestants  have  accepted  as  canonical, 
is  Milton's  assumption  throughout.  His  assumption  we  say  ; 
for  the  most  extraordinary  thing  about  the  treatise,  the  thing 
that  must  strike  every  modern  critic  of  it  most  strongly,  is 
that  no  proof  whatever  is  attempted  or  thought  necessary  on 
that  subject  of  the  divine  inspiration  and  authority  of  the 
Bible  which  might  seem  to  underlie  all  the  rest.  There  is  no 
discussion  of  the  credibility  of  a  direct  or  miraculous  revela- 

VOL.  VI.  3   G 


818         LIFE   OF  MILTON   AND   HISTOEY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

tion  from  God  to  the  human  race  at  any  place  or  in  any  time, 
or  of  the  special  claims  of  the  Hebrew  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  Greek  books  of  the  New  to  be  regarded 
as  the  unique  revelation  of  the  kind  hitherto  in  the  history 
of  the  human  race,  or  of  the  meaning  of  inspiration,  its 
modes,  Or  the  variety  of  its  degrees;  and  this  is  the  more 
remarkable  because  the  dates  and  authorship  of  some  of  the 
canonical  books  are  admitted  to  be  uncertain,  and  discrepancies 
among  them  in  various  particulars  and  corruptions  and  falsi- 
fications of  the  text  are  also  confessed.  It  is  as  if  Milton's 
own  regard  for  the  Bible  was  so  settled  and  profound,  as  if 
its  divine  and  radical  distinctness  from  all  the  other  books  of 
the  world  was  so  much,  of  an  axiom  with  himself,  that  he 
had  no  patience  for  argument  on  the  subject,  little  belief  that 
argument  could  be  of  use,  and  would  only  rest  in  the  cer- 
tainty that,  wherever  the  Bible  penetrated,  it  would  carry 
its  own  fire  and  prove  itself.  Partly,  however,  the  omission 
of  an  argument  which  seems  now  so  vital  may  have  been 
owing  to  the  fact  that  his  treatise  was  not  a  discourse  on  the 
Christian  evidences  addressed  to  unbelievers,  but  a  compendium 
of  Christian  doctrine  addressed  to  believers,  not  an  examina- 
tion of  the  vouchers  of  the  Bible  so  much  as  an  exposition 
of  its  contents.  On  that  understanding  he  has  only  to  ask 
the  assent  of  his  readers  to  one  or  two  propositions  as  to  the 
mode  of  dealing  with  the  Scriptures. 

One  is  that  the  plain  sense  of  Scripture  is  always  to  be 
taken  boldly,  without  reserve  and  without  sophistication.  As 
we  should  have  been  all  agnostics  in  things  supernatural 
without  the  Bible,  so  let  us  not  shrink  from  anything  the 
Bible  plainly  tells  us  because  it  may  seem  strange  to  our 
reason.  For  example,  in  such  a  high  and  abstruse  matter  as 
the  nature  of  God,  while  we  may  know  that  God  as  he  really 
is  in  himself  is  incomprehensible  and  unimaginable  by  us, 
yet  "  our  safest  way  is  to  form  in  our  minds  such  a  conception 
"  of  God  as  shall  correspond  with  his  own  delineation  and 
"  representation  of  himself  in  the  sacred  writings."  If  it  is 
there  said  on  any  occasion  that  God  "  repented,"  let  us  believe 
that  he  did   repent;    if  it  is  said  that  he  "grieved,"  let  us 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       819 

believe  that  he  did  grieve ;  if  it  is  said  that  he  "  feared," 
let  us  believe  that  he  did  fear ;  if  it  is  said  that  he  "  rested 
and  was  refreshed,"  let  us  believe  that  it  was  so  ;  if  anything1 
even  of  the  outward  corporeal  form  of  man  is  attributed  in 
any  place  to  God,  let  us  not  avoid  the  distinct  conception  so 
suggested.  They  may  or  may  not  be  figurative  expressions : 
that  is  no  business  of  ours  ;  they  are  at  all  events  the  ex- 
pressions by  which  God  himself  has  chosen  to  intimate  to  us 
how  he  would  have  himself  conceived,  and  it  is  not  for  us  to 
refuse  them  or  turn  them  into  mist.  The  cautions  of  theo- 
logians against  what  they  call  anthropomorphism  or  an- 
thropopathy  in  our  notions  of  Deity  have  been  excessive,  and 
may  have  done  harm.  God,  we  may  be  sure,  has  taken  care 
of  his  own  dignity  in  his  representations  of  himself  in  the 
Scriptures ;  and  to  avoid  these  representations,  or  tamper  with 
them,  or  attenuate  them,  or  do  anything  else  than  accept 
them  plainly  and  thankfully,  is  to  frustrate  the  very  intention 
with  which  the  Scriptures  were  given.  On  this  point  Milton 
solicits  the  agreement  of  his  readers  at  the  outset.  Another 
point,  stipulated  generally  at  the  outset,  but  insisted  on  more 
particularly  in  the  course  of  the  treatise,  is  the  right  of  in- 
dividual interpretation  of  the  Scriptures.  No  one  can  safely 
depute  the  formation  of  his  Christian  creed  from  the  Scrip- 
tures to  any  other  person,  or  to  any  body  of  persons,  whether 
called  The  Church  or  by  any  other  name.  Diligent  perusal 
of  the  Scriptures,  with  collection  out  of  them  of  the  exact 
doctrines  which  they  contain,  is  the  duty  of  every  professing 
Christian.  In  all  essential  matters  the  Scriptures  are  plain 
to  the  simplest  understanding ;  and,  though  there  will  be 
differences  of  interpretation  among  the  most  honest  students 
of  the  Bible,  the  fact  that  those  who  so  differ  all  equally 
found  on  the  Bible  and  appeal  to  the  Bible  is  to  be  taken 
as  an  assurance  that,  as  the  differences  cannot  be  vital, 
so  they  are  to  be  tolerated  and  respected  by  Christians 
among  themselves.  Hardly  have  we  become  accustomed, 
however,  to  Milton's  resoluteness  in  his  fundamental  prin- 
ciple that  the  Scripture  alone  is  the  rule  and  canon  of 
religious  faith  when  we  are  startled   by  the  recognition  of 

3«2 


820  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

another  principle,  which  might  seem  incompatible  with  the 
supreme  authority  assigned  to  the  written  Bible.  "  Under 
"  the  Gospel,"  he  says  in  one  place,  "  we  possess,  as  it  were, 
"  a  twofold  Scripture :  one  external,  which  is  the  written 
"  word,  and  the  other  internal,  which  is  the  Holy  Spirit, 
"  written  in  the  hearts  of  believers,  according  to  the  promise 
"of  God;"  after  which  he  adds,  "Hence,  although  the 
"  external  ground  which  we  possess  for  our  belief  at  the 
"  present  day  in  the  written  word  is  highly  important,  and, 
"  in  most  instances  at  least,  prior  in  point  of  reception,  yet 
"  that  which  is  internal  and  the  peculiar  possession  of  each 
"  believer  is  far  superior  to  all,  namely  the  Spirit  itself." 
Again,  after  dwelling  on  the  fact  that  the  New  Testament 
has  not  come  down  to  us  pure  and  perfect,  but  with  cor- 
ruptions, falsifications,  and  mutilations,  he  remarks,  "  It  is 
"  difficult  to  conjecture  the  purpose  of  Providence  in  com- 
"  mitting  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament  to  such  un- 
"  certain  and  variable  guardianship,  unless  it  were  to  teach  us 
"  by  this  very  circumstance  that  the  Spirit  which  is  given  to 
"us  is  a  more  certain  guide  than  Scripture ;  whom  therefore 
"  it  is  our  duty  to  follow."  But,  though  thus  apparently  at 
one  with  the  Quakers  and  some  other  sects  in  the  theory  of 
a  mystic  inner  revelation  over  and  above  the  Bible,  Milton 
hardly  gives  the  same  practical  prominence  to  the  doctrine 
of  the  inner  light  that  it  receives  in  the  system  of  the 
Quakers.  Whether  because  he  regards  the  inner  spiritual 
apprehensions  of  the  believer  as  things  incalculable  in  the 
general  account,  or  because  he  conceives  that  they  come 
always  or  chiefly  in  the  act  of  commerce  with  the  written 
Scriptures  and  are  inscrutably  imbedded  in  that  act,  it  is  to 
this  commerce  with  the  written  Scriptures  that  he  assigns 
the  practical  supremacy  throughout  his  treatise. 

His  treatise,  he  explains,  had  been  prepared  strictly  by 
this  method  in  his  own  case.  Having  in  early  life  resolved 
not  to  take  his  religion  on  trust,  but  to  derive  it  directly 
"  from  divine  revelation  alone,"  he  had  begun  an  assiduous 
and  systematic  study  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  in  the 
original  languages,  extracting  passages  and  arranging  them 


milton's  tkeatise  of  christian  doctrine.       821 

under  heads;  and,  though  he  had  assisted  himself  at  first  by 
a  few  of  the  shorter  systems  of  theology  written  by  approved 
Protestant  divines,  and  had  afterwards  resorted  to  more 
copious  theological  works,  the  result  had  been  an  increasing 
dissatisfaction  with  all  previous  attempts  of  that  kind,  and 
a  conviction  that,  if  he  would  have  a  system  of  divinity 
genuinely  Biblical,  free  from  shifts  and  evasions,  he  must 
persevere  in  compiling  his  own.  It  was  by  such  perseverance 
for  years  that  the  present  treatise  had  grown  on  his  hands ; 
and,  as  he  had  found  it  a  treasure  to  himself,  he  gives  it  to 
the  world  in  the  hope  that  it  may  be  useful  to  others.  It 
is  addressed  to  the  learned  and  to  those  of  manly  understand- 
ing. One  particular  in  which  it  will  be  found  to  differ  from 
previous  works  of  the  kind  is  that  it  does  not  merely  cite 
texts  or  give  references  to  them  in  the  margin,  but  quotes 
them  in  full  in  the  pages  themselves,  quotes  them  in  abund- 
ance and  what  may  seem  over-abundance,  never  advancing 
any  proposition  or  indulging  in  any  exposition  except  in 
connexion  with  a  complete  conspectus  of  all  the  texts  of 
Scripture  bearing  on  the  point  pro  or  con.  He  does  not 
expect  immediate  or  universal  agreement  with  him  on  all 
points,  and  indeed  advises  his  readers  to  exercise  their  own 
judgments  freely ;  but  he  requests  a  candid  hearing,  with 
abstinence  from  bad  temper  or  outcry  of  heresy  where  any- 
thing may  seem  new  or  unusual.  He  can  assure  them  that 
he  had  not  read  the  works  of  some  so-called  heretics  with 
whose  opinions  he  may  be  found  to  be  here  and  there  in 
unison  till  he  had  himself  worked  out  those  opinions  in- 
dependently from  Scripture.  All  this,  with  more  to  the 
like  effect,  is  contained  in  the  preliminary  address  which 
introduces  the  treatise;  and  the  highly  ceremonious  form 
of  that  preliminary  address  proves  Milton's  belief  that  the 
treatise  would  be  found  unusually  important.  It  is  no 
ordinary  preface  by  an  author  to  his  readers,  but  a  kind  of 
Apostolic  Epistle  or  Dedication  to  all  Christendom,  headed 
with  this  benediction  : — "  John  Milton,  Englishman,  to  all 
the  Churches  of  Cheist,  and  also  to  all  everywhere  on 
Earth  professing  the  Christian  Faith,  Peace  and  Know- 


822         LIFE    OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 
LEDGE    OF   THE    TRUTH,    AND   ETERNAL  SALVATION   IN   GOD   THE 

Father  and  in  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."     Milton  clearly- 
expected  that  his  treatise  would  become  notorious. 

The  expectation  cannot  have  been  founded  on  anything- 
extraordinary  or  stimulating*  in  the  style  of  the  treatise.  It 
is  written  throughout  in  the  calmest  and  most  prosaic  mood, 
with  a  rig-id  suppression  of  the  imaginative,  not  a  single  out- 
break of  rage  or  real  anger,  and  hardly  a  flower  or  nettle  of  the 
peculiar  Miltonic  rhetoric  of  the  prose  pamphlets.  Consisting, 
to  so  large  an  extent,  of  mere  collections  of  texts  from 
Scripture,  all  duly  cited,  it  is  not  even  continuously  fluent 
as  any  ordinary  book  is,  but  breaks  itself,  as  it  were,  into  a 
maze  of  expository  rivulets  trickling  among  banks  of  Biblical 
quotations.  It  is  these  expositions,  winding  among  the  banks 
of  texts,  and  professing  wholly  to  be  washings  from  them, 
that  contain  the  substance  of  the  treatise.  That  is  Miltonic 
enough.  Though  professing  only  to  be  Milton's  Christian 
theology  as  derived  from  the  Bible,  it  involves  at  the  same  time 
his  physics,  his  metaphysics,  his  ethics,  the  entire  system  of 
his  speculative  notions  and  beliefs.  The  Miltonic  philosophy, 
presented  to  us  in  the  other  writings  only  in  dispersed  poetic 
gleams  or  in  diffused  living  glow  and  fervour,  is  here  ex- 
hibited coolly  and  connectedly,  as  we  have  already  said,  in  its 
driest  bones  of  abstract  thesis  and  proposition.  This  is  done 
in  two  Books  or  divisions,  the  first  theoretical,  or  treating 
of  Christian  Knowledge,  the  second  practical,  or  treating  of 
Christian  Duty. 

The  theoretical  part  begins  with  a  disquisition  on  the 
Nature  and  Attributes  of  God.  After  Milton's  characteristic 
advice  to  his  readers  to  receive  frankly  whatever  Scripture 
teaches  on  this  subject,  and  not  to  be  alarmed  by  the  bug- 
bears  of  anthropomorphism  and  anthropopathy,  he  proceeds  to 
define  or  describe  God,  the  Jehovah  or  Jah  or  Ehie  of  the 
Hebrews,  as  an  infinite,  eternal,  immutable,  incorruptible, 
omnipresent,  omnipotent,  single,  living,  omniscient,  all-holy, 
most  gracious,  true,  just,  incomprehensible,  self- subsisting 
Spirit.     There  is  nothing  so  far  in  the  description  that  is  not 


MILTON  S   TREATISE    OF   CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE.  823 

at  least  generally  orthodox.  Nor  in  the  next  two  chapters, 
treating-  of  what  is  called  "  the  internal  efficiency  "  of  God, 
or  the  Divine  Decrees  in  general  and  Predestination  in  par- 
ticular, is  there  anything1  specially  heterodox,  unless  a  refusal 
of  strict  Calvinistic  doctrine  on  those  subjects,  and  an  ac- 
cordance rather  with  the  Arminian  doctrine,  is  to  be  regarded 
as  heterodoxy.  Milton  is  no  necessitarian,  but  holds  that, 
though  God  foreknew  and  foreknows  all  events,  he  "has  not 
decreed  them  all  absolutely,"  but  has  left  all  his  reasonable 
creatures,  whether  angels  or  men,  perfectly  free  agents,  sub- 
ject only  to  "  contingent  decrees/'  or  decrees  that  if  they 
act  thus  or  thus  then  such  or  such  will  be  the  consequence. 
"  I  allow,"  he  says,  "  that  future  events  which  God  has  fore- 
"  seen  will  happen  certainly,  but  not  of  necessity.  They  will 
"  happen  certainly,  because  the  divine  prescience  cannot  be 
"  deceived  ;  but  they  will  not  happen  necessarily,  because  pre- 
"  science  can  have  no  influence  on  the  object  foreknown,  in- 
"  asmuch  as  it  is  only  an  intransitive  action."  So,  he  main- 
tains, "  there  is  no  particular  predestination  or  election,  but 
only  general :  "  i.  e.  John  or  Peter  is  not  predestined  to  be 
saved  as  John  or  Peter,  but  believers  are  predestined  to  be 
saved,  and  John  and  Peter  will  be  saved  if  they  are  in  the 
class  of  believers.  So,  on  the  other  hand,  "  there  can  be  no 
reprobation  of  individuals  from  all  eternity."  The  rejection 
of  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  Calvinism  thus  distinctly 
declared  at  the  outset  of  the  treatise  had  already  been  in- 
timated in  various  passages  of  'Paradise  Lost. 

It  is,  however,  when  we  come  to  the  discussion  of  the 
"  external  efficiency"  of  God,  or  the  execution  of  His  decrees, 
that  Milton's  heterodoxy  first  becomes  flagrant.  The  first 
and  most  important  of  God's  effected  decrees,  as  revealed 
in  Scripture,  was,  he  says,  the  generation  of  the  Son ;  and 
he  goes  on  to  propound  in  a  long  chapter  views  about  the 
nature  of  Christ  which  are  expressly  and  emphatically  those 
of  high  Arianism.  The  Son  of  God,  he  concludes  from  an 
examination  of  all  the  relevant  Scripture  texts,  did  not  exist 
from  all  eternity,  is  not  coeval,  or  co-essential,  or  co-equal 
with  the  Father,  but  came  into  existence  by  the  will  of  the 


824         LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

Father,  to  be  the  next  being*  in  the  universe  to  Himself,  the 
first-born  and  best-beloved,  the  Logos  or  Word  through  whom 
all  creation  should  take  its  beginnings.  But,  though  thus  in- 
ferior to  the  supreme  Godhead,  the  Son  is,  in  a  certain  grand 
sense,  divine.  We  are  to  believe  that  "God  imparted  to  the 
"  Son  as  much  as  He  pleased  of  the  divine  nature,  nay,  of  the 
"  divine  substance  itself,  care  being  taken  not  to  confound  the 
"  substance  with  the  whole  essence."  The  Anti-Trinitarianism 
apparent  in  this  representation  of  Christ  pervades  also  that 
of  the  third  person  of  the  Trinity  in  the  orthodox  system. 
The  doctrine  of  Scripture  respecting  the  nature  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  says  Milton,  is  altogether  very  shadowy  and  uncertain  ; 
but,  on  the  whole,  the  Holy  Spirit  may  be  regarded  as  a 
person,  and  it  may  be  collected  that,  "  inasmuch  as  he  is  a 
"  minister  of  God,  and  therefore  a  creature,  he  was  created 
"  and  produced  of  the  substance  of  God,  not  by  natural  neces- 
"  sity,  but  by  the  free-will  of  the  agent,  probably  before  the 
"  foundations  of  the  world  were  laid,  but  later  than  the  Son, 
"  and  far  inferior  to  Him."  It  is  even  hinted  as  Milton's 
belief  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  of  more  limited  relations  in  the 
total  purposes  and  operations  of  Deity  than  the  Son,  less 
all-filling  or  omnipresent,  perhaps  a  being  whose  functions 
do  not  extend  beyond  that  fabric  of  things  which  we  know 
as  our  heavens  and  earth. 

To  this  subject  of  the  Creation  of  the  Universe  Milton  passes, 
as  being  "  the  second  species  "  of  God's  external  efficiency  or 
known  operations  after  the  generation  of  the  Son.  What 
Deity  may  have  been  doing  through  all  eternity  is  a  mystery, 
though  it  is  "  not  imaginable  "  that  He  should  have  been 
wholly  occupied  from  all  eternity  in  forethinking  the  single 
creation  of  the  six  days  and  the  brief  history  of  mankind. 
In  other  words,  there  may  have  been  universes  and  universes 
that  are  out  of  our  ken.  All  created  existence  over  and  above 
our  visible  mundane  universe  is  summed  up  for  us  by  Scrip- 
ture, however,  in  the  conception  of  a  single  other  universe, 
higher  and  invisible,  consisting  of  the  Heaven  of  Heavens, 
the  throne  and  habitation  of  God,  and  the  realm  of  the 
heavenly  powers  or  angels.   It  is,  on  all  grounds,  most  probable 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.        825 

that  this  Heaven  of  Heavens,  if  not  eternal,  was  formed  long 
before  the  beginnings  of  our  world,  and  also  that  the  creation 
of  the  Angels  was  long  antecedent  to  that  of  Man.  Even  the 
apostasy  of  a  portion  of  the  Angels  and  their  expulsion  from 
Heaven  were  probably  antecedent.  Already,  before  this  point, 
Milton  has  introduced  the  idea  of  Matter,  in  the  supposed 
form  of  a  prime  or  original  matter  which  may  have  been  used 
even  in  the  formation  of  the  Heaven  of  Heavens,  and  in  that 
of  the  Hell  into  which  the  fallen  angels  were  driven.  In  speak- 
ing of  this  original  matter  he  attaches  much  importance  to  the 
notion  that  matter  cannot  have  been  created  out  of  nothing,  as 
most  of  the  moderns  had  maintained,  but  must  be  regarded  as 
a  phenomenon  or  efflux  of  God  Himself,  a  something  produced 
out  of  his  own  substance.  One  consequence  of  this  view  is 
that,  the  material  used  in  creation  being  thus  not  only  from 
God  but  actually  of  the  substance  of  God,  "  no  created  thing 
can  be  finally  annihilated."  Another  is  that  there  is  serious 
error  in  the  common  antithesis  which  opposes  matter  so 
persistently  to  spirit,  as  if  the  former  were  something 
intrinsically  brute,  bad,  and  despicable,  and  goodness  or  di- 
vinity resided  only  in  the  latter.  "  The  original  matter  of 
"  which  we  speak  is  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  an  evil  or  trivial 
"  thing,  but  as  intrinsically  good,  and  the  chief  productive 
"  stock  of  every  subsequent  good.  It  was  a  substance,  and 
ft  derivable  from  no  other  source  than  the  fountain  of  every 
"  substance,  though  at  first  confused  and  formless,  being  after- 
"  wards  adorned  and  digested  into  order  by  the  hand  of  God." 
This  view  of  Matter  as  originally  nothing  else  than  an  efflux 
from  the  very  substance  of  Deity  places  Milton,  it  can  hardly 
be  doubted,  in  the  company  of  the  Pantheists.  There  is  no 
evidence,  indeed,  of  any  approach  on  his  part  to  such  thorough 
and  systematized  Pantheism  as  that  of  his  junior  contem- 
porary, Spinoza;  but  the  inference  from  his  language  is  that 
his  mode  of  imagining  Nature  had  come  to  be  that  of  a 
modified  or  arrested  Pantheism,  stopping  short  of  Spinoza's 
mainly  by  a  strong  prior  reservation  of  that  freedom  of  will 
for  all  rational  intelligences  which  Spinoza  denied.  The 
prime  matter  of  all  finite  existence,  Milton  seems   to  have 


826  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF    HIS   TIME. 

held,  was  an  emanation  or  production  from  the  substance  of 
God ;  but  God  had  voluntarily  loosened  his  hold,  as  it  were, 
on  those  living-  portions  or  centres  of  finite  existence  which 
he  had  endowed  with  free  will,  so  that  their  independent 
actions  might  originate  consequences  not  morally  referable 
to  Himself.  This  seems  also  the  doctrine  hinted  in  Raphael's 
words  to  Adam,  Paradise  Lost,  V.  469-471  : — 

"  0  Adam,  one  Almighty  is,  from  whom 
All  things  proceed,  and  up  to  him  return, 
If  not  depraved  from  good." 

Milton,  it  will  have  been  seen,  propounds  in  his  treatise  for 
actual  belief  a  conception  of  the  invisible  universe  of  pre-human 
existence  corresponding1  most  closely  with  that  adopted  for  his 
Paradise  Lost.  There  was  the  one  eternal,  infinite,  and  incom- 
prehensible God ;  there  was  the  divinely-generated  Son,  inferior 
to  the  Father,  but  His  delegate  and  representative  for  all  the 
worlds ;  there  was  the  Heaven  of  Heavens,  framed  mysteriously 
for  the  more  immediate  dwelling  of  Paternal  Deity  and  of  the 
Divine  Son  ;  there  were  the  hosts  of  angelic  spirits,  ranged 
round  the  throne  in  this  Heaven  of  Heavens  or  dispersed  innu- 
merably through  its  boundless  depths  ;  there  was  already  the 
Hell  that  had  been  formed  for  the  reception  of  the  apostate 
angels  and  was  now  populous  with  them  ;  and  there  was  also 
Chaos,  or  that  aggregate  of  prime  matter  which  remained 
unabsorbed  into  either  the  everlasting  Heaven  of  Heavens 
or  the  more  recently  formed  Hell.  Only  in  one  point  does 
the  treatise  seem  to  convey  an  impression  different  from  that 
conveyed  in  the  poem.  In  the  treatise  Christ,  the  Logos, 
is  distinctly  antecedent  to  the  angelic  world,  and  is  repre- 
sented indeed  as  the  energy  by  which  that  world  had  come 
into  existence,  while  in  the  poem  we  read,  in  one  passage 
(V.  600-605),  of  the  presentation  of  Christ  to  the  assembled 
angels  as  a  kind  of  epoch  or  novelty  in  the  history  of  the 
Empyrean,  announced  to  the  angels  by  Paternal  Deity  thus  : — 

"  This  day  I  have  begot  whom  I  declare 
My  only  Son,  and  on  this  holy  hill 
Him  have  anointed." 

The  impression,  however,  is  corrected  for  us  in  another  passage 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       827 

(III.  383-391),  where  the  angelic  hosts  themselves  adopt  the 

doctrine  of  the  treatise  in  their  song",  saluting-  Christ  as  "  of 

all   creation    first,"    the   unclouded   image    of  the  Almighty 

Father,  and  expressly  adding : — 

"  He  Heaven  of  Heavens,  and  all  the  powers  therein, 
By  thee  created." 

In  the  account  given  in  the  treatise  of  the  Creation  of  the 
Visible  or  Mundane  Universe,  and  of  Man  at  the  centre  of  it, 
there  is  no  deviation  from  the  orthodox  view  of  the  work 
of  the  six  days,  except  in  so  far  as  a  deviation  may  be  already 
involved  in  the  notion  that  the  creation  was  not  out  of 
nothing,  but  out  of  pre-existing  chaotic  matter,  and  except 
in  so  far  as  there  may  be  a  peculiarity  in  Milton's  doctrine 
as  to  the  body  and  soul  of  the  human  being.  As  he  has 
protested  against  too  strong  a  distinction  between  matter  and 
spirit,  so  he  does  not  like  the  common  distinction  between 
body  and  soul.  "  Man  is  a  living  being,  intrinsically  and 
"  properly  one  and  individual,  not  compound  or  separable, 
"  not,  according  to  the  common  opinion,  made  up  and  framed 
"  of  two  distinct  and  different  natures,  as  of  soul  and  body," 
but  so  that  "the  whole  man  is  soul  and  the  soul  man.-r- 
"  that  is  to  say,  a  body  or  substance,  individual,  animated, 
f<  sensitive  and  rational."  Again,  "  That  the  spirit  of  man 
"  should  be  separate  from  the  body,  so  as  to  have  a  perfect 
"  and  intelligent  existence  independently  of  it,  is  nowhere 
"  said  in  Scripture,  and  the  doctrine  is  evidently  at  variance 
u  both  with  nature  and  reason."  Milton  here,  therefore,  re- 
pudiates that  doctrine  of  the  immateriality  of  the  soul  which 
Descartes  had  so  vigorously  maintained,  and  which  had 
become  generally  the  doctrine  of  orthodox  theology,  and 
reverts  to  the  older  notion  of  a  certain  corporeity  of  the 
soul,  a  certain  rooted  inherence  of  mind  and  thought  some- 
how in  the  network  of  the  bodily  organism.  The  dust- 
formed  man  of  the  sixth  day  of  creation,  Milton  held,  was 
not  a  shaped  material  clod  or  mechanism  with  an  independent 
soul  put  into  it  from  without  itself,  but  was  actually  the 
whole  man,  body  and  soul  together,  or  rather  soul  because 
and  by  virtue  of  that  divinely  formed  and  organized   body. 


828         LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

That  "  breath  of  life  "  which  is  said  in  Genesis  to  have  been 
breathed  by  God  into  the  dust-formed  man  is  explained  as 
not  having1  been  the  soul  at  all,  but  a  certain  something 
else,  in  the  nature  of  a  mere  initial  quickening  or  impulse. 
It  will  have  been  noted  even  that,  in  defining  man  as  "  a 
body  or  substance,  individual,  animated,  sensitive,  rational," 
Milton  uses  words  almost  identical  with  those  of  Hobbes  in 
the  same  connexion  (see  ante,  p.  283);  and,  though  the  dif- 
ference between  Milton's  general  system  of  thought  and  that 
of  Hobbes  is  enormous,  inasmuch  as  Milton  starts  avowedly 
from  pure  Theistic  Spiritualism,  and  treats  matter  as  secondary 
or  derivative,  yet  there  is  so  far  an  agreement  with  Hobbes 
that  Milton's  cosmological  conception,  his  conception  of  the 
processes  of  the  visible  world,  those  of  mind  included,  is  un- 
doubtedly materialistic.  All  cosmical  life,  he  holds,  is  but  a 
diversified  organization  of  that  common  matter  which  was 
originally  an  efflux  or  production  out  of  the  substance  of  God. 
So  in  the  very  subtle  continuation  of  the  last  passage  we  have 
quoted  from  Paradise  Lost.  The  whole  world  of  God,  animate 
and  inanimate,  angels  and  men  as  well  as  the  brute  creatures, 
consists,  Raphael  there  informs  Adam,  of — 

"  One  first  matter  all, 
Endued  with  various  forms,  various  degrees 
Of  substance,  and,  in  things  that  live,  of  life, 
But  more  refined,  more  spiritous  and  pure, 
As  nearer  to  Him  placed,  or  nearer  tending, 
Each  in  their  several  active  spheres  assigned, 
Till  body  up  to  spirit  work " ; 

and  the  possibility  of  such  a  gradual  evolution  of  the  common 
matter  of  all  things  from  lower  to  higher  is  farther  in- 
timated by  the  conjecture  that  the  bodies  of  men,  though 
fed  from  corporal  nutriments, 

"  May  at  last  turn  all  to  spirit, 
Improved  by  tract  of  time,  and  wing'd  ascend 
Ethereal,  as  we." 

Without  venturing  on  this  evolution  hypothesis  in  his 
treatise,  Milton  is  content  with  impressing  there  as  strongly 
as  he  can  his  theory  of  the  evident  materiality  of  the  human 


milton's  teeatise  of  christian  doctrine.       829 

soul  at  present.  Important  consequences  are  to  follow  from  it ; 
but  meanwhile  he  insists  chiefly  or,  one.  It  is  that  soul  and 
body  are  propagated  .  towtl^r  from  fathers  to  children  by 
I'laTunu  'descent,  and  that  there  is  no  foundation  for  the 
opinion  that  God  creates  a  new  soul  immediately  and  super- 
naturally  for  every  person  that  comes  into  the  world.,..  That 
opinion,  he  says,  must  be  rejected  as  degrading  to  God  when 
we  think  what  horrible  sorts  of  souls  there  are  and  how  im- 
perfect are  even  the  best  of  them.  Man  is  a  body-and-soul, 
or  a  soul-body,  and  transmits  himself  as  such. 

From  Creation  Milton  passes  on  to  ".  the  remaining  species 
of  God's  external  efficiency,"  viz.  his  Providence,  or  Govern- 
ment of  the  whole  Creation.  After  a  general  chapter  on  the 
subject,  recognising  a  certain  fixed  or  immutable  order  of 
nature  arising  from  God's  absolute  decrees,  but  leaving 
abundant  room  for  the  free  will  of  all  rational  creatures 
in  matters  decreed  only  contingently,  and  room  also  for 
miracles  or  extraordinary  providences,  he  discusses  the  special 
government  of  the  Angels.  Here  he  is  quite  at  one  with 
himself  in  Paradise  Lost.  He  believes  not  only  in  the  exist- 
ence of  Angels,  and  their  distribution  into  good  and  bad, 
but  also  in  the  organization  of  both  varieties  into  ranks  and 
degrees,  with  archangels  and  princes  among  them,  separate 
provinces  and  ministries,  and  permitted  powers  of  transit 
from  their  native  habitations,  whether  in  the  Empyrean  or 
in  Hell,  into  and  through  the  Mundane  Universe.  Thus  we 
arrive  at  a  chapter  entitled  "  Of  the  special  Government  of 
Man  before  the  Fall,  including  the  institutions  of  the  Sabbath 
and  of  Marriage."  Acknowledging  that  God  hallowed  the 
seventh  day  to  Himself  and  consecrated  it  to  rest  in  re- 
membrance of  the  consummation  of  His  work,  and  referring 
for  proof  to  Gen.  ii.  2,  3,  and  Exod.  xxxi.  17,  he  maintains 
that  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  that  the  Sabbath  was  a 
Paradisaic  institution,  or  known  to  Adam,  or  to  the  Israelites 
before  the  delivery  of  the  law  on  Mount  Sinai,  and  thinks 
it  most  probable  that  Moses,  "  who  seems  to  have  written 
the  book  of  Genesis  much  later  than  the  promulgation  of 
the  Law,"  took  the  words  out  of  the  Fourth  Commandment 


830  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

relating  to  God's  rest  on  the  seventh  day  and  inserted  them  in 
what  appeared  suitable  places,  for  the  purpose  of  additionally 
fortifying  the  commandment  then  "Stf*  5ivlen:..  The  institu^ 
tion  of  Marriage  is  discussed  more  at  large,  and  in  a  mannei 
more  shocking  to  common  opinion.  Not  only  is  the  Miltonic 
Doctrine  of  Divorce  fully  re-asserted  and  re-argued  from  Scrip- 
ture, with  a  reference  to  one  of  Milton's  previous  writings 
on  the  subject ;  but  there  is  a  grave  and  elaborate  argument 
for  the  lawfulness  of  Polygamy.  As  a  plurality  of  wives 
was  allowed  to  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  and  saints,  so  Milton 
sees  no  reason  for  concluding  that  the  liberty  is  abrogated 
under  the  Gospel,  or  should  now  be  considered  dishonour- 
able or  shameful.  This  defence  of  Polygamy  is  one  of  the 
novelties  of  the  Treatise.  There  is  a  slight  hint  in  the 
direction  in  one  passage  in  the  History  of  Britain,  and  it 
may  have  been  known  to  Milton's  contemporaries  that  he 
entertained  the  Polygamy  heresy  as  well  as  the  Divorce 
heresy;  but  only  in  the  Treatise  is  the  matter  clearly  divulged. 
Of  course,  the  polygamy  contemplated  by  Milton  is  for  men 
only.  While  arguing  for  the  man's  right  to  a  plurality  of 
wives,  he  does  not  even  glance  at  the  possibility  of  a  counter- 
part claim  on  behalf  of  women  for  a  plurality  of  husbands. 
The  necessary  subjection  of  woman  to  man,  indeed,  is  explicitly 
re-affirmed  in  the  Treatise,  and  is  a  permanent  Miltonism. 

The  Fall  of  Man,  Sin,  and  the  consequences  of  Sin  in  death 
and  all  the  other  evils  that  have  ruined  the  once  fair  world, 
are  the  topics  leading  Milton  naturally  to  that  part  of  his 
exposition  of  God's  special  Providence  for  the  human  race 
which  treats  of  the  Christian  scheme  of  Redemption  and 
Renovation.  It  occupies  a  series  of  closely  arranged  chapters, 
the  nature  of  which  may  be  gathered  from  the  following  main 
propositions : — 

"  Redemption  is  that  act  whereby  Christ,  being  sent  in  the  ful- 
ness of  time,  redeemed  all  believers  at  the  price  of  his  own  blood, 
by  his  voluntary  act,  conformably  to  the  eternal  counsel  and  grace 
of  God  the  Father." 

'  The  Humiliation  of  Christ  is  that  state  in  which,  under  the 
character  of  God-Man,  he   voluntarily  submitted    himself  to  the 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       831 

divine  justice,  as  well  in  life  as  in  death,  for  the  purpose  of 
undergoing  all  things  requisite  to  accomplish  our  redemption." 

"  The  Exaltation  of  Christ  is  that  hy  which,  having  triumphed 
over  death,  and  laid  aside  the  form  of  a  servant,  he  was  exulted 
by  God  the  Father  to  a  state  of  immortality  and  the  highest  glory, 
partly  by  his  own  merits,  partly  by  the  gift  of  the  Father,  for  the 
benefit  of  mankind ;  wherefore  he  rose  again  from  the  dead, 
ascended  into  Heaven,  and  sitteth  on  the  right  hand  of  God." 

"  Regeneration  is  that  change  operated  by  the  "Word  and  Spirit 
whereby,  the  old  man  being  destroyed,  the  inward  man  is  regene- 
rated by  God  after  his  own  image  in  all  the  faculties  of  his  mind, 
insomuch  that  he  becomes  as  it  were  a  new  creature,  and  the  whole 
man  is  sanctified  both  in  body  and  soul  for  the  service  of  God  and 
the  performance  of  good  works." 

"  Justification  is  the  gratuitous  purpose  of  God  whereby  those 
who  are  regenerated  and  ingrafted  in  Christ  are  absolved  from  sin 
and  death  through  his  most  perfect  satisfaction,  and  accounted  just 
in  the  sight  of  God,  not  by  the  works  of  the  law,  but  through 
faith." 

"  Adoption  is  that  act  whereby  God  adopts  as  his  children  those 
who  are  justified  through  faith." 

"  Imperfect  glorification  is  that  state  wherein,  being  justified  and 
adopted  by  God  the  Fathei',  we  are  filled  with  a  consciousness  of 
present  grace  and  excellency,  as  well  as  with  an  expectation  of 
future  glory,  insomuch  that  our  blessedness  is  in  a  manner  already 
begun." 

"Assurance  of  Salvation  is  a  certain  degree  or  gradation  of  Faith, 
whereby  a  man  has  a  firm  persuasion  and  conviction,  founded  on 
the  testimony  of  the  Spirit,  that,  if  he  believe  and  continue  in  faith 
and  love,  having  been  justified  and  adopted,  and  partly  glorified  by 
union  and  fellowship  with  Christ  and  the  Father,  he  will  at  length 
most  certainly  attain  to  everlasting  life  and  the  consummation  of 
glory." 


These  propositions,  and  the  entire  texture  of  the  chapters 
which  contain  them,  are  sufficiently  in  accord  with  the  most 
evangelical  Christian  orthodoxy,  save  in  so  far  as  the  form  of 
statement  here  and  there  may  betray  a  tinge  of  Milton's  Ar- 
minianism  or  of  his  Arianism.    At  all  events,  Bishop  Sumner, 


832  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

the  editor  and  translator  of  the  Treatise,  "  rejoices  in  being 
able  to  state  that  the  doctrine  of  the  satisfaction  of  Christ  is 
so  scripturally  and  unambiguously  enforced  as  to  leave,  on  that 
point,  nothing  to  be  desired."  The  Bishop  may  have  found 
some  compensation  for  Milton's  Arianism  in  the  resoluteness 
with  which,  in  this  part  of  his  treatise,  he  rejects  that  lower 
Unitarian  or  Socinian  view  of  the  person  of  Christ  which 
would  deny  his  divinity  in  any  real  sense.  In  opposition  to 
"  those  who  contend  for  the  merely  human  nature  of  Christ," 
he  maintains  the  doctrine  of  the  union  of  the  two  natures 
in  Christ,  holding  that  no  name  short  of  The-Anthropos  or 
God-Man  adequately  describes  the  Christ  who  walked  and 
suffered  on  our  earth,  inasmuch  as  that  very  mystery  of 
mysteries  which  we  are  told  to  believe,  though  we  cannot 
explain  it,  is  that  somehow  the  Divine  Logos  or  Filial  Divinity 
which  pre-existed  all  created  things,  and  stood  alone  with 
God  the  Father  ere  angels  or  men  were  in  the  universe, 
became  incarnate  at  a  particular  point  of  historical  time  in 
the  man  Jesus,  the  son  of  Mary. 

But,  while  this  acknowledgment  of  the  mystery  of  the  In- 
carnation may  be  a  compensation  with  orthodox  theologians  for 
much  that  has  preceded  in  the  Treatise,  there  runs  through  all 
Milton's  account  of  Christ's  ministry  and  its  effects  a  surprise 
of  another  kind,  which  the  commentators  hitherto  have  shrunk 
from  bringing  out.  Milton  himself  introduces  it  cautiously. 
It  grows  out  of  his  doctrine  of  the  radical  unity  of  the  soul 
and  body  in  man,  their  necessary  inseparability.  Applying 
this  doctrine  to  the  consideration  of  Death  as  brought  into 
the  world  by  the  first  sin,  and  as  part  of  the  decreed  punish- 
ment for  sin,  he  has  to  ask  what  Death  really  is.  The 
common  notion,  which  defines  it  as  the  separation  of  soul 
and  body,  is  of  course  inadmissible  in  his  theory.  "  Here 
"  then,"  he  says,  "  arises  an  important  question,  which, 
"  because  of  the  prejudice  of  divines  in  behalf  of  their  pre- 
"  conceived  opinions,  has  usually  been  dismissed  without 
"  examination,  instead  of  being  treated  with  the  attention  it 
"  deserves.  Is  it  the  whole  man,  or  the  body  alone,  that  is 
"  deprived  of  vitality  ?    As  this  is  a  subject  which  may  be 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       833 

iC  discussed  without  endangering  our  faith  or  devotion,  I 
"  shall  declare  freely  what  seems  to  me  the  true  doctrine, 
"  as  collected  from  numberless  passages  of  Scripture."  The 
result  is  uncommon.  Whereas  the  orthodox  Protestant  notion 
is  that  at  the  death  of  every  human  being  the  soul  takes 
flight  at  once  to  Heaven  or  to  Hell,  leaving  the  body  in  the 
grave  till  the  Resurrection,  Milton's  conclusion  is  that,  at 
the  last  gasp  of  breath,  the  whole  man  dies,  soul  and  body 
together,  and  that  not  till  the  Resurrection,  when  the  body 
is  revived,  does  the  soul  live  again,  does  the  man  or  woman 
live  again  in  any  sense  or  way,  whether  for  happiness  or 
misery.  This,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  the  heresy  of  the  Soul- 
Sleepers  or  Mortalists,  of  whom  we  had  to  take  account  among 
the  English  sects  of  1644  (Vol.  III.  156-157),  when  there 
was  no  sign  that  Milton  was  one  of  them  or  would  ever  be 
one  of  them.  In  his  present  treatise,  though  he  tries  not  to 
obtrude  his  view  too  violently,  he  leaves  no  doubt  what  it  is. 
Are  the  souls  of  the  millions  on  millions  of  human  beings 
who  have  died  since  Adam,  are  these  souls  already  either  with 
God  and  the  Angels  in  Heaven  or  down  in  the  diabolic  world, 
waiting  to  be  rejoined  to  their  bodies  on  the  Resurrection 
Day  ?  They  are  not,  says  Milton ;  but  souls  and  bodies 
together,  he  says,  are  dead  alike,  sleeping  alike,  defunct  alike, 
till  that  day  come.  There  they  lie,  is  Milton's  vision  of  the 
dead  of  the  world  before  his  own  time — there  they  lie,  all 
really  dead,  all  feelingless,  all  silent,  the  millions  and  millions 
of  them,  thick  and  sere  as  the  autumnal  leaves  in  Vallom- 
brosa,  till  the  last  trump  shall  stir  their  multitudes.  When 
he  himself  lay  down  to  die,  what  he  felt  in  his  pillowed  blind- 
ness was  that  he  too  was  about  to  become  one  of  the  sleepers, 
wholly  at  rest,  wholly  extinct,  hearing  nothing,  knowing 
nothing,  till  the  great  reawakening.  What  matter  for  regret 
or  disappointment,  he  virtually  asks,  is  there  in  this  view  of 
the  Scripture  doctrine  of  immortality  ?  If  those  who  fell 
asleep  in  the  temples  of  the  heroes  were  fabled  to  have  no 
sense,  when  they  awoke,  after  however  long  an  interval,  that 
they  had  slept  more  than  an  instant,  how  much  more  would 
intervening  time  be  annihilated  for  those  who  sleep  in  Jesus  ? 
vol.  vi.  3  H 


834  LIFE   OF   MILTON    AND   HISTORY   OF   HIS  TIME. 

They  die ;  they  awake  to  be  with  Christ :  to  them,  though 
there  may  have  been  hundreds  or  thousands  of  years  of  a 
noisy  world  meanwhile,  will  not  the  dying-  and  the  awakening" 
seem  to  be  in  one  and  the  same  moment  ?  Would  there  be 
any  degradation  of  Christianity,  he  virtually  asks,  in  such  an 
interpretation  of  the  effects  of  Christ's  mission  and  ministry 
on  earth  ?  What  greater  boon  could  there  be  to  a  world  of 
fallen  and  sinful  humanity  than  a  religion  offering  redemp- 
tion and  pardon  through  Christ,  renovation  of  nature,  adoption 
by  God,  the  imperfect  glorification  possible  in  this  life,  and 
the  assured  hope  at  last  of  perfect  glorification  when  body 
and  soul  shall  be  revivified  together  and  there  shall  be  the 
call  into  God's  presence  and  the  life  everlasting? 

This  Religion,  or  Covenant  of  Grace,  Milton  goes  on  to 
say,  had  passed  through  two  dispensations,  that  of  the  Law 
and  that  of  the  Gospel.  Under  the  Gospel  the  Mosaic  Law  is 
abolished  in  all  its  parts,  even  the  Decalogue  included.  After 
a  chapter  on  this  subject,  he  proceeds  to  such  matters  as 
"  the  external  sealing  of  the  Covenant  of  Grace  "  by  sacra- 
ments, the  constitution  of  the  Visible  Church  universal,  the 
use  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  the  constitution  of  particular 
churches,  church-discipline,  forms  of  worship,  tkc.  It  is  here 
that  we  learn  definitely  that  Milton  agreed  with  the  Baptists 
in  rejecting  Infant  Baptism  and  in  holding  immersion  in 
\\  ater  to  be  the  proper  form  of  the  rite,  and  that  we  have  also 
the  formal  repetition  that  was  to  be  expected  of  such  old 
Miltonisms  as  his  life-long  principle  of  Protestant  indi- 
vidualism, his  preference  for  Congregationalism  or  Indepen- 
dency over  Prelacy  or  Presbyterianism  as  a  form  of  church- 
organization,  his  antipathy  to  a  State  Church  or  professional 
and  paid  clergy,  and  his  detestation  of  the  interference  of  the 
State  or  Civil  Magistrate  in  any  way  in  matters  of  religious 
belief.  On  the  details  of  these  repetitions  we  need  not  dwell, 
but  may  pass  to  the  concluding  chapter  of  the  theoretical  di- 
vision of  the  Treatise.  It  is  entitled  "  Of  Perfect  Glorification, 
including  the  Second'Advent  of  Christ,  the  Resurrection  of  the 
Dead,  and  the  General  Conflagration,"  and  exhibits  Milton  as 
an  enthusiastic  Millennarian.    He  expected,  it  appears,  a  real 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       835 

second  coming"  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  suddenly  and  glo- 
riously, at  some  future  moment  of  historical  time,  with  the 
rousing  then  of  the  sleeping  dead,  and  with  some  wondrous 
change  also  in  those  that  should  be  alive  on  the  earth  to 
behold  the  advent.  At  this  point  he  becomes  rather  obscure 
or  uncertain  in  his  interpretations  of  Scripture ;  but  he  ex- 
pected, it  seems,  not  a  single  Day  of  Judgment,  but  a  slow 
process  of  judgment,  to  be  prolonged  perhaps  through  the 
thousand  years  of  Christ's  predicted  terrestrial  reign,  and  to 
be  wound  up  by  a  new  revolt  of  Satan  and  his  confederates, 
their  final  overthrow,  the  sentencing  equally  of  the  devils 
and  bad  men,  the  destruction  by  fire  of  the  present  Mundane 
World,  the  departure  of  bad  men  and  devils  into  their  extra- 
mundane  Hell  of  eternal  torments,  and  the  exaltation  of  the 
Saints  into  a  perpetuity  of  happiness  in  the  Heaven  of 
Heavens,  or  in  a  new  Heavens  and  Earth  created  for  their 
enjoyment. 

Of  the  second  or  practical  part  of  the  Treatise,  entitled 
"  Of  the  Worship  or  Love  of  God,"  less  needs  be  said  here 
than  of  the  theoretical.  It  is  an  Essay  on  Christian  Ethics 
and  Casuistry,  and  is,  in  the  main,  serious  and  sensible, 
rather  than  powerful  or  exciting.  It  first  expounds  Milton's 
notions  of  duty  towards  God,  or  of  the  duties  and  forms  of 
religion,  and  then  his  notions  of  the  duties  of  man  to  himself 
and  to  his  neighbours,  or  the  virtues  that  go  to  constitute  ideal 
character  and  citizenship.  As  duties  to  oneself  he  recommends 
temperance  in  its  two  forms  of  sobriety  and  chastity,  modesty, 
decorum,  contentment,  frugality,  industry,  liberality,  humility, 
magnanimity,  fortitude,  and  patience  ;  and  through  his  exposi- 
tions of  these  duties,  and  of  the  corresponding  duties  to  our 
neighbours,  there  runs,  with  all  the  strength  and  strictness,  an 
unmistakeable  vein  of  high  manner  or  gentlemanlike  habit. 
Thus,  when  he  defines  the  virtue  of  "  liberality"  to  be  "a  tem- 
perate use  of  our  honest  acquisitions  in  the  provision  of  food 
and  raiment  and  of  the  elegancies  of  life,"  and  proceeds  to 
include  among  the  comforts  or  elegancies  of  life  authorized  by 
Scripture  such  things  as  occasional  gaieties,  wine,  ointment 

3  h  2 


836  LIFE   OF   MILTON   AND    HISTORY   OF   HIS   TIME. 

and  fragrances,  gold  ornaments  and  jewels,  tapestry  and  other 
furnishings,  and  when  again  he  rebukes  churlishness  of  any 
kind  and  makes  the  special  virtue  of  urbanity  to  comprehend 
"  not  only  the  innocent  refinements  and  elegancies  of  con- 
versation," but  also  wit,  grace,  and  sprightliness  in  reply, 
we  seem  to  be  reminded  of  the  handsome  young  Milton  of 
Cambridge,  the  Milton  of  L' Allegro,  II  Penseroso,  and  Comus  in 
the  Horton  days,  the  later  Milton  who  could  dictate  a  sonnet 
in  his  blindness  inviting  a  friend  to  a  neat  repast,  light  and 
choice,  of  Attic  taste,  with  wine  and  music,  and  the  still 
more  aged  Milton,  of  whom  the  uniform  report,  by  those  who 
saw  him  as  he  walked  about  in  his  grey  suit  with  his  silver- 
hilted  sword,  or  sat  at  home  in  black,  was  of  his  distinguished 
politeness  and  affability  in  combination  with  dignity  of  bear- 
ing. One  may  be  a  little  surprised  at  finding  the  Milton  of 
the  controversial  pamphlets  reprehending  "  evil  speaking," 
"  malicious  construction  of  the  motives  of  others,"  "  con- 
tumely and  personal  abuse,"  "  hasty  anger  "  and  "  revenge  "  ; 
but,  as  he  recommends  also  "  veracity,"  freedom  of  speech 
even  to  boldness,  and  a  "  spirit  of  admonition,"  we  can 
imagine  the  compromise.  In  speaking  of  the  duties  of 
citizens  to  magistrates  or  the  constituted  authorities  he 
does  not  forget  his  old  doctrine  of  the  right  of  resistance  to 
usurped  or  unjust  rule ;  but,  on  the  whole,  he  handles  that 
topic  cautiously,  inserting  also  a  sentence  which  seems  in- 
tended to  describe  his  own  fourteen  years  of  compelled  ac- 
quiescence with  the  state  of  things  in  England  after  the 
Restoration.  "  That  it  may  be  the  part  of  prudence,"  he 
says,  "  to  obey  the  commands  even  of  a  tyrant  in  lawful 
"  things,  or,  more  properly,  to  comply  with  the  necessity 
"  of  the  times,  for  the  sake  of  public  peace,  as  well  as  of 
"  personal  safety,  I  am  far  from  denying  " ;  and  so  he  dis- 
misses that  subject.  Whatever  his  sympathies  with  the 
Quakers,  he  is  no  Quaker  in  the  matter  of  war.  "  There 
"  seems  no  reason,"  he  says,  "  why  war  should  be  unlawful 
"  now  any  more  than  in  the  time  of  the  Jews,  nor  is  it  any- 
"  where  forbidden  in  the  New  Testament.'"  He  is  equally 
astray  from  the  Quakers  in  the  matter  of  the  lawfulness  of 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       837 

oaths ;    and  in  treating  of  oaths  and  also  generally  of  the 
virtue  of  veracity  he  is,  even  on  this  side  of  Quakerism,  far 
less  rigid  than  might  have  been  expected.     An  oath  sworn  to 
a  robber,  or  otherwise  exacted  by  compulsion,  is  not  binding ; 
"  no  rational  person  will  deny  that  there  are  certain  indi- 
viduals,"   e.  g.  madmen,    children    in    certain    circumstances, 
people  in  sickness  or  in  a  state  of  intoxication,  and  enemies, 
"  whom   we   are    fully  justified   in    deceiving " ;    feints    and 
stratagems  in   war,  even  when  they  are  "  the  greatest  un- 
truths and  with  the  indisputable    intention    of  deceiving," 
are   perfectly    legitimate,    if   unaccompanied    by   perjury    or 
breach  of  faith.     These  relaxations  of  the  rule  of  veracity 
were  probably  intended  as  common-sense  answers  to  questions 
of  casuistry  discussed  in  Milton's  day  ;  and  they  are  less  after 
Milton's  own  heart  than  another  oddity  of  opinion  or  senti- 
ment, which  occurs  in  his  dissertation  on  Prayer.     While  we 
are  commanded  to   pray  not  for  ourselves  only,  but  for  all 
mankind,  even  our  enemies,  we  are  also  commanded,  Milton 
holds,  "to  call  down  curses  publicly  on  the  enemies  of  God 
"  and  the  Church,  as  also  on  false  brethren,  and  on  such  as 
"  are  guilty  of  any  grievous  offence  against   God,   or  even 
"  against  ourselves," — the  same  being  lawful  in  private  prayer, 
"  after  the  example  of  some  of  the  holiest  of  men."     For  the 
rest,  about  times  and  places  of  prayer,  and  the  other  forms  and 
ordinances  of  public  worship,  Milton  is  very  latitudinarian. 
Church-going   is   good ;    fasting  and    the   like  are  good ;    a 
moderate  attention  to  ceremonial  in  worship  is  good ;  but  a 
devout  heart  is  the  main  thing.     Times  and  places  for  prayer 
are  indifferent ;  liturgies  and  set  forms  of  prayer  are  bad ;  the 
Lord's  Prayer  itself  was  not  meant  as  a  formula  for  incessant 
repetition  ;  and  prayer  need  not  even  be  audible  to  be  real  and 
efficient.     The  most  pronounced  feature  of  this  part  of  the 
treatise,  however,  is  its  Anti- Sabbatarianism.     Milton  is  an 
Anti-Sabbatarian  thoroughly  and  to   the  last  extreme.     The 
Mosaic  Law  having  been  abolished  under  the  Christian  dis- 
pensation, and  the  Decalogue  as  part  of  it,  the  Jewish  Sabbath 
has  vanished  ;  nor  is  there  any  shade  of  divine  authority  for 
the  substitution  of  the   first  day  of  the  week  for  equivalent 


VoS  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTORY    OF    HIS   TIME. 

or  corresponding-  observance  by  Christians.  It  is  uncertain 
whether  the  festival  of  "  the  Lord's  Day,"  which  is  men- 
tioned but  once  by  that  name  in  Scripture,  was  weekly  or 
annual ;  and  the  sole  reasons  for  observing-  Sunday  as  a  day 
of  rest  and  of  public  worship  are  that  one  day  in  seven  seems 
convenient  for  those  purposes  and  that  the  Sunday  has  been 
generally  selected.  One  must  be  careful,  he  says,  to  allow  no 
more  than  this, — which  he  perceives  to  be  very  much  the  view 
of  Calvin,  Bucer,  and  others  he  names, — and  to  protest  against 
the  allegation  of  a  divine  commandment  for  Sunday  observ- 
ance, and  also  against  any  edict  of  magistrates  requiring  such 
observance.  It  is  even  a  sin  to  keep  Sunday  if  by  keeping  it 
one  should  seem  to  acknowledge,  or  should  encourage,  the 
notion  of  its  Sabbatic  obligation,  inasmuch  as  it  is  always  a 
sin  to  limit  Christian  liberty  by  inventing  imaginary  sins,  or 
to  burden  human  life  with  laws  and  prohibitions  not  imposed 
by  the  Gospel. 

With  various  classes  of  persons,  on  very  various  grounds,  it 
may  be  matter  for  regret  that  such  a  treatise  as  that  of  which 
we  have  thus  given  a  summary  was  ever  written  by  Milton 
or  has  come  down  with  his  name  attached.  That  is  no  concern 
of  ours.  The  book  exists  ;  it  is  Milton's,  and  was  his  solemn 
and  last  bequest  to  all  Christendom;  and,  having  done  our 
proper  duty  by  it  in  the  preceding  summary,  we  have  only  to 
append  such  remarks  as  seem  requisite  historically.  These 
are  three  : — (1)  Milton's  theological  views  had  been  progres- 
sive and  had  undergone  changes.  He  certainly  was  not  an 
Arian  or  Anti-Trinitarian  of  any  kind  in  1629,  when  he  wrote 
the  Ode  on  the  Nativity,  and  there  spoke  of  Christ  as  having 
sat  from  all  eternity  as  "  the  midst  of  Trinal  Unity,"  nor  as  late 
as  1641,  when  he  closed  his  first  prose-pamphlet,  Of  Reforma- 
tion, with  the  tremendous  prayer  in  which  he  invoked  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Spirit,  as  "  one  Tri-personal  Godhead,"  to  look 
down  with  pity  on  the  afflicted  Church  and  State  of  England. 
As  certainly,  he  did  not  hold  the  doctrine  of  soul-sleeping  or 
the  suspension  of  personal  consciousness  between  death  and 
the  Resurrection  when  he  wrote  lines  85-92  of  his  Pemeroso, 


milton's  treatise  of  christian  doctrine.       839 

or  the  ecstatic  conclusions   of  his   Lycidas  and  Epltaphlum 
Damonis  in  1637  and  1639.     Nor  was  he  an  Arniinian   or 
Anti- Calvinist  on  the  subject  of  Predestination  and  Free  Will 
in  1644,  when  he  spoke  in  his  Areopagitica  of  "  the  acute  and 
distinct  Arminius  "  as  having"  been  "  perverted  "  by  reading  an 
anonymous  book,    Similarly,  his  Metaphysical  Pantheism,  his 
Cosmological  Materialism,  and  even  his  Anti- Sabbatarianism, 
may  have  been  opinions  of  comparatively  late  formation.    His 
drift  into  these  and  other  heterodoxies  may  have  begun  about 
1644,  when  he  exchanged  his  temporary  Presbyterianism  or 
semi-Presbyterianism  in  Church-government  for  Independency 
or  Congregationalism,  breaking  off  also  from  the  Presbyterians 
and  associating  himself  rather  with  the  freer  Independents  and 
miscellaneous  sects  in  the  interest  of  his  special  Divorce  con- 
troversy.    Most  probably  the  definite  formation  of  the  system 
of  views  propounded  in  his  posthumous  treatise  is  to  be  ascribed 
to  the  time  of  his  Secretaryship  to  the  Commonwealth  and 
the  Protectorate  between  1649  and  1660 ;  but  it  is  possible 
enough  that  the  system  was  not  finally  consolidated  and  did 
not  receive  some   of  its  most  characteristic  peculiarities  till 
after  the  Restoration.     (2)  Milton  cannot  be  identified,  by 
the  sum-total  of  his  theological  views  at  the  last,  with  any 
one  of  the  English  sects  or  denominations  of  his  time.     A 
professed  Congregationalist  in  Church-polities,  though  with  a 
tendency  to  absolute  Individualism,  a  strenuous  Protestant  in 
the  main  principle  of  reverence  for  no  other  external  authority 
in  religion  than  that   of  the   Bible,  and    a   confirmed  anti- 
Prelatist  and  Anti-State-Church-man,  he  had  manifest  points 
of  sympathy  theologically  with  several  of  the  massive  sects  of 
English  Nonconformists,  but  complete  agreement  with  none 
of  them.     The  Baptists,  and  especially  the  General  Baptists, 
might  have  claimed  him  for  some  of  his  views,  but  would 
have  repudiated  him    for   others  ;    he   had  a  liking  for  the 
Quakers,  and  for  some  of  their  habits  and  principles,  but  no 
patience  for  their  Peace  and  Non-interference  notions,  their 
rigidity  in  trifles,  and  their  proscription  of  the  graces  ;  and, 
while   he   acknowledged   the  Socinians  as    honest   and  very 
tolerable  Christians,   he   thought  them  too  low  and  merely 


840  LIFE    OF    MILTON    AND    HISTOBY    OF    HIS    TIME. 

rationalistic  in  their  version  of  Christianity,  too  incapable  oi 
the  Biblical  mysteries  and  grandeurs.  (3)  It  would  be  a 
mistake  to  say  of  Milton,  on  any  of  these  accounts,  or  on 
account  of  his  Anti-Sabbatarianism  and  Latitudinarianism 
generally,  or  on  account  of  the  extreme  boldness  and  hetero- 
doxy of  some  of  his  speculations,  that  he  did  not  belong 
most  truly  and  properly  to  the  great  Puritan  body  of 
his  countrymen.  We  have  seen  sufficiently  in  these  pages 
what  English  Puritanism  really  was,  through  what  phases  it 
passed,  what  multiform  varieties  of  thinking  and  of  free- 
thinking  it  included.  Only  an  unscholarly  misconception 
of  Puritanism,  a  total  ignorance  of  the  actual  facts  of  its 
history,  will  ever  seek,  now  or  henceforward,  to  rob  English 
Puritanism  of  Milton,  or  Milton  of  his  title  to  be  remembered 
as  the  genius  of  Puritan  England. 


THE    EXD. 


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